Thumbay launches Medicity in Dubai, profusely thanks leaders

An integrated system, located within the Dubai-Sharjah border in Al Qusais, Dubai, and which underscores the obligatory and inevitable education-research-innovation-healthcare alliance, is targeted to be inaugurated this 2026.

This is the Thumbay Medicity-Dubai, formally launched – complete with the presentation of its architectural scale model -- on Monday evening, led by Thumbay Group founder-president Dr. Thumbay Moideen.

Dr Moideen expressed his gratefulness to the “very supportive leaders of this country.”

He emphasised the instrumental role of “His Highness Sheikh Humaid Bin Rashid Al Nuaimi,” Supreme Council Member of the UAE and Ruler of Ajman, who had invited him in 1997 to set up a medical education college in the emirate.

Dr Moideen added: “Last year, we already announced about a medicity in Dubai. I am also thankful to my own team. This is more than an expansion.”

“It is the next chapter of a dream that began with one clear belief. That education, healthcare, and research must grow together. We are very much aligned with the vision of Dubai, and the city now gains an integrated academic medical city built to shape the future professionals, elevate patient care, and fuel new discoveries. Our vision has always been global, but deeply human,” Dr Moideen also said.

Dr Moideen wants the legacy to continue and so also the essentiality of the increase of the Dhs3 million a year budget allocation for research to Dhs10 million a year for the continuing robust “teaching and training of students not only through the Gulf Medical University (GMU) but also through the network of hospitals, clinics and pharmacies, currently concentrated in Sharjah and the Northern Emirates.”

On the sidelines, Dr Moideen told Gulf Today that “given the opportunity,” he would want to explore expanding to Abu Dhabi.

Interviewed, Thumbay Group vice president-Healthcare Division vice president Akbar Moideen Thumbay who presented the Health Zone of the Thumbay Medicity-Dubai, said, that the project with a “built-up area of 250,000 square feet,” is under construction and would be “operational this year. Everything in it, this year. Inshaallah.”

The private medicity is the second to be built in the UAE under the leadership of Dr Moideen, a third generation member of an entrepreneurial family from Mangalore, India, and who was into the timber-and-real estate industry, prior to the 1997 meeting with Sheikh Humaid.

From that meeting, a private medical college (to become the GMU, with alumni and students at more than 6,000 from 106 countries) in Ajman, was inaugurated in 1998.

This was followed in 2002 by the first 250-bed private teaching hospital in the emirate.

It was in 2019 when the Thumbay Medicity in Al Jurf, Ajman – headquarters of the GMU, Thumbay University Hospital, Thumbay Dental Hospital, and the Thumbay Physical Therapy & Rehabilitation Hospital – was inaugurated by Sheikh Ammar Bin Humaid Al Nuaimi, Crown Prince of Ajman and Chairman of the Ajman Executive Council.

In his Monday evening presentation, Thumbay said that with the full operations of “hospitals, laboratories, pharmacies, and medical tourism programmes” at the medicity in Dubai, “our focus remains clear: accessible, compassionate care backed by academic excellence.”

This is achievable since as practised through the past 28 years, the Thumbay Group of doctors and specialists who attend to the healthcare needs of patients, with the assistance of allied healthcare workers, are also the professors and mentors of the GMU students who get their medical and healthcare training within the network or hub.

On the Education Zone which GMU chancellor Prof. Manda Venkatramana presented, the Surgery consultant said that the approval for the branch in Dubai to operate within the Thumbay Medicity Dubai, was released by way of the Ministerial Resolution of 2026 of the Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research.

As the future enrollees would also be given opportunities to study and train in any of the 10 GMU university partners in Poland, Italy, Malaysia, UK, The Netherlands, Cayman Islands, St. Kitts & Nevis, Uzbekhistan, Romania, and Ghana, within the campus as well are the Thumbay College of Management of Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare, among other education and research facilities.