Abu Dhabi government collaborates with Pfizer to advance research in sickle cell disease

The Department of Health – Abu Dhabi (DoH), the regulator of the healthcare sector in the Emirate, has signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with Pfizer Gulf FZ LLC, a global pharmaceutical company. 

The entities will work to enhance Abu Dhabi's position as leading global hub for healthcare, life science and innovation. Leveraging the Emirate's unique capabilities and future-forward data services as well as Pfizer's global capabilities, the parties seek to advance research through the generation and analysis of real-world data (RWD) initially focusing on Sickle Cell Disease (SCD) and expanding to other disease areas for the benefit of patients.

In the presence of Mansoor Al Mansoori, Chairman of DoH, the MoU was signed by Dr Asma Al Mannaei, the Executive Director of the Research and Innovation Centre at DoH, and Serhat Yalcinkaya, Pfizer's Gulf Cluster Lead.

They will work together to advance Abu Dhabi's RWD capabilities by promoting global knowledge exchange and education of scientific ideas. The agreement will focus on upskilling the local healthcare workforce on RWD by establishing a dynamic and sustainable partnership model promoting education and awareness on real-world evidence (RWE) generation, collection and analysis in order to address unmet patient needs.

Dr Asma Ibrahim Al Mannaei, said "The collaboration between the DoH and Pfizer represents a significant step towards harnessing real-world data in the region and better understanding patient populations from the vast available data in Abu Dhabi. By partnering with Pfizer on real-world data, we aim to drive advancements in healthcare prediction, prevention, personalised treatment and access, not only benefiting healthcare professionals and patients in Abu Dhabi, but also contributing to the improvement of care for patients globally."