Investors inject funds into healthcare realty

Dubai: Gulf investors are queueing up to get their hands on land they can develop into healthcare assets.

“Rising life expectancies, rapidly growing populations and per capita incomes, a high incidence of lifestyle-related diseases, and ambitious medical infrastructure projects are driving health care industry growth in the Middle East,” said Matthew Dadd, Partner at Knight Frank.

“Real estate typically represents 40 per cent of a hospital’s balance-sheet — the third largest expense on the income statement and, all too often, healthcare real estate is an untapped asset.”

Master-developers are rushing out with solutions to help create more land available. There are the medical ‘clusters’ such as the DHCC (Dubai Health Care City) and the under development Dilmunia, as well as Mubadala Healthcare’s venture with the Cleveland Clinic in Abu Dhabi.

According to the Knight Frank update, an important “trend is the single destination for multiple types of medical care. Multi- speciality locations will often include medical, office and lifestyle solutions… the purpose of which is to make it more appropriate for customers.

“It is not just large scale projects and global brands looking at entering the Middle Eastern markets, but from smaller clinics, dentists to physiotherapists and specialist diagnostic centres.”