BlogsHybrid Healthcare in Saudi Arabia: The Rise of Teleconsultation
The 2020 COVID-19 pandemic accelerated the transition to hybrid healthcare services in Saudi Arabia and across the globe. This transition was primarily driven by Patients' willingness to use telehealth and digital health services.
Additionally, hospitals and healthcare providers faced a substantial burden on their available resources from the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital health offers to massively reduce the over-reliance on physical space, resources, and staff. By using video conferencing technology, healthcare providers can deliver virtual care to remote patients with chronic conditions.
This form of hybrid healthcare – combining both hospital visits and virtual care – allows physicians to continuously monitor their patients' recovery process. Organized in October 2025, the Global Health Exhibition in Saudi Arabia unveiled a host of innovative digital technologies, including virtual care and teleconsultation. Considering Saudi Arabia’s vast geography, digital health is a necessity that makes quality health accessible to its people in rural areas.
The Vision 2030 plan has also helped Saudi Arabia reshape its healthcare industry from a “traditional” facility-based system to a more “inclusive” digital health initiative. For healthcare providers in the country, hybrid care is beneficial in terms of lower costs and improved patient care (that goes beyond physical hospital visits).
Understanding the Teleconsultation Workflow
Healthcare apps on mobile phones are enabling patients to receive medical care and consultation without physically visiting healthcare facilities. Alternatively, patients can switch to teleconsultation services for follow-up visits - after making their first visit to hospitals.
Typically, a “virtual” teleconsultation workflow involves pre-consultation steps, the doctor’s consultation itself, and the post-consultation services. Here’s how it works:
- Appointment Booking: The teleconsultation process starts with booking the doctor's appointment on the mobile app. This scheduling can be with a specific physician or with any available doctor.
- Payment and e-ticket Issuing: The appointment schedule is confirmed with online payment (either self-pay or through health insurance). Following a successful payment, the patient is issued a unique e-ticket (along with the appointment date and time). The patient is also provided with timely appointment-related notifications on their healthcare app.
- Check-in Process: The next step in the teleconsultation process involves the patient entering a virtual waiting room at the scheduled time and waiting for the selected physician to join the virtual call. After check-in, the patient enters a virtual waiting room with information like their approximate waiting time and queue status.
- Virtual Consultation: At this step, the doctor conducts the virtual consultation using video or audio calls. They can also consult patients after reviewing their medical reports or imagery. Patients also have the convenience to chat with physicians and share their test results and reports during the virtual consultation.
- Post-Consultation: In the post-consultation phase, the physician provides patients with follow-up care, which can be another appointment or virtual monitoring of their condition. Patients can also provide their post-consultation feedback about the prescribed treatment.
How Teleconsultation Merges Virtual with In-Person Care
Teleconsultation is not simply about virtual care and mobile apps. With hybrid healthcare, patients can combine their online consultation with in-person visits to medical facilities. With seamless integration, healthcare services can provide virtual care and also guide their patients to a physical care facility whenever needed.
With an integrated patient flow management system, healthcare providers can manage the patient’s entire journey on a single intelligent platform. Patients can check in to the system through multiple entry points, including self-service kiosks, mobile app check-ins, or using QR codes. With a single, unified ticket, patients can be registered and monitored across their entire journey, be it through in-person visits or virtual consultations. For instance, a patient can receive in-clinic care, followed by a “virtual” follow-up.
Benefits of Hybrid Care
- Patient Convenience and Flexibility: With hybrid care, patients have greater convenience and flexibility in accessing healthcare services. They can now check in and schedule appointments from remote locations – and consult healthcare experts at any convenient time.
- Improved Access: Hybrid care overcomes the accessibility challenges of people in remote villages or areas, which lack proper medical facilities and resources. Elderly patients can also access virtual healthcare services from the comfort of their homes.
- Continuity of Care: Through virtual follow-ups and remote monitoring, physicians can now continue to deliver patient care using mobile devices. This is beneficial for patients suffering from chronic conditions.
- Lower Costs: With hybrid care services, healthcare providers can reduce their overhead expenses by reducing their workforce. Hospitals can also leverage the expertise of their specialized doctors and medical practitioners by reducing the volume of missed patient appointments.
Meeting Security and Regulatory Requirements
For wider adoption and benefits, hybrid care and teleconsultation services need to meet robust security requirements to protect sensitive patient information from unauthorized access. Healthcare providers need a multi-dimensional security infrastructure with capabilities including:
- Advanced data encryption during storage and in transit.
- Role-based access control and multi-factor authentication to ensure authorized user access.
- Secure integration with Electronic Health Records.
Additionally, teleconsultation services must comply with Saudi Arabia's regulations, like the Saudi Health Information Exchange (SeHe), which deals with data security and privacy. At the same time, virtual care using video consultation is subject to the same legal requirements in Saudi Arabia as in-person care. Telehealth providers also need specific licenses from the Ministry of Health (MoH).
How Saudi Arabia Can Improve Its Healthcare Infrastructure
To boost the use of teleconsultation in the healthcare domain, Saudi Arabia must address barriers by improving its digital infrastructure and literacy.
- Digital literacy: This requires Saudi Arabia to educate its citizens about digital technologies, particularly elderly patients, to efficiently use teleconsultation services for their benefit.
- Reimbursement: This is another common barrier to the use of teleconsultation, which arises due to lower insurance coverage and payment rates when compared to in-person visits to medical facilities.
- Clinician adoption: Saudi Arabia can elevate the use of teleconsultation services by clinicians through proper training and support, as well as by including teleconsultation as an integral part of their medical education curriculum.
- Regulatory framework: Besides infrastructure development, Saudi Arabia must focus on building and improving their regulatory framework to support telehealth and teleconsultation (for example, in the form of service reimbursements).
SEDCO – Building a Virtual Hospital on a Unified Platform
With its customized teleconsultation services for Saudi Arabia, SEDCO offers much more than simply a virtual consultation platform. The company's teleconsultation platform integrates the patient’s journey by combining physical and digital visits. Additionally, its integration with Electronic Health Record (EHR) helps in centralizing patient care beyond the hospital walls. Besides a complete patient experience, SEDCO's teleconsultation services ensure continuity of care in the post-treatment phase, thus delivering healthcare services to remote areas.
Introduced at the 2025 Global Health Exhibition, SEDCO’s AI-powered Telehealth Pod is its latest innovation for delivering teleconsultation services to healthcare providers. Easy to install at any location or facility, the pod enables real-time teleconsultations by connecting patients directly to doctors, while also supporting self-measurement of vital signs and AI-driven medical triage to streamline the care process.
