45,000 Virtual Visits, 49% Fewer Flights Abroad: What Changed in Omani Healthcare

Three years ago, if a specialist in Oman could not see you fast enough, the fallback for many families was a plane ticket abroad. In 2023, the Ministry of Health sent 779 patients overseas for treatment. By 2025, that number had fallen to 398, a drop of 49 percent, according to Minister of Health Dr Hilal bin Ali al Sabti (Oman Observer, September 19, 2026). In the same period, patients treated domestically for conditions that once meant a referral abroad rose from 536 to 1,417. Alongside that shift, a quieter change has been building: virtual doctor visits, AI-assisted screening, and QR-code pharmacies are becoming part of how ordinary Omanis actually experience healthcare.

Key Takeaways

• Patients referred abroad for treatment fell from 779 in 2023 to 398 in 2025, a 49 percent drop, while domestic specialist treatment rose from 536 to 1,417 cases.
• Oman ran 45,000 virtual medical consultations in 2025 and is targeting 70,000 in 2026.
• A QR-code pharmacy system cut prescription wait times from about 40 minutes to roughly 15.
• AI-powered retinal screening has checked more than 25,000 diabetic patients for eye disease since it launched.
• 65 percent of health institutions are linked into shared digital systems; the ministry wants 90 percent.

The number that stands out

The minister was direct about why fewer people are being sent abroad: an "expansion in specialised services within the Sultanate of Oman." That means four new hospitals under construction, at Al Namaa, Samayil, Al Falah and Sultan Qaboos, plus 18 industrial pharmaceutical and medical equipment projects backed by a Ministry of Health budget of RO 1 billion for 2026. The remaining cases sent abroad are now, in the minister's words, "confined to complex cases requiring technologies and expertise that are either unavailable locally or still being developed."

That is an honest framing worth keeping. The 49 percent drop is mostly a story about new hospitals, new equipment and more specialists, not primarily about apps. But it did not happen in isolation from the digital push, which is where the next phase of the plan is heading.

The screen is becoming part of the visit

On World Health Day 2026, the Ministry of Health laid out how much digital healthcare use had already grown in 2025 (Oman Observer, April 2026). Telemedicine now runs across six specialties, with more than 1,200 patients monitored remotely. A QR-code system at hospital pharmacies cut the average wait for medication from 40 minutes to about 15, which matters more to most families than any policy document. An AI-supported retinal screening tool has checked over 25,000 diabetic patients for early signs of eye disease, a check that used to mean a specialist appointment and a wait.

For 2026, the ministry has added virtual urgent care in general medicine, remote consultations for premarital medical exams, and second-opinion services in emergency medicine, toxicology and cardiology. Tele-ICU and tele-stroke monitoring are still being studied, not yet rolled out. A National Centre for Virtual Health is also in the works, meant to be the front door for remote consultations going forward.

Who is paying for this, and who runs it

This sits inside the Ministry of Health's 11th Five-Year Plan (2026-2030), funded through the RO 1 billion 2026 health budget alongside the hospital construction and equipment projects mentioned above. It is not a standalone tech initiative; it is one ministry's slice of a much broader pattern across Oman Vision 2040, where different agencies have digitized services on their own timelines rather than through one single database. The Ministry of Transport, Communications and Information Technology has run a parallel push that moved most day-to-day government paperwork online, and the broader scorecard for how these programs are actually landing is tracked in Oman's 2024-2025 Vision 2040 progress report. Health is simply the sector where the daily impact, a shorter pharmacy queue, a video call instead of a half-day trip to a clinic, is easiest to feel.

What still does not work yet

Be honest about the gaps. Sixty-five percent institutional connectivity means over a third of health facilities are still not fully linked into the shared digital system, so a patient's records do not always follow them between hospitals. Forty-five thousand virtual consultations, while a real jump, is still a small share of Oman's total health visits in a country of roughly five million people. Tele-ICU and tele-stroke care, the services that would matter most in a genuine emergency, are still under study rather than live. And complex referrals abroad have not disappeared, they are simply now reserved for cases Oman genuinely cannot yet handle at home.

Why this matters for ordinary Omanis

If you have ever taken a day off work to sit in a hospital waiting room, or watched a parent scramble to arrange a flight and a visa for treatment abroad, these numbers are not abstract. A pharmacy visit that used to eat 40 minutes of your afternoon now takes about 15. A diabetic relative can get an eye screening without a specialist referral. And a family that once needed savings for plane tickets and a hotel abroad is, in growing numbers, being treated at home instead. None of this means Omani healthcare has fully arrived, the connectivity targets and consultation numbers say otherwise, but the direction is now measurable, and it is one more place where Vision 2040 is showing up in something people can actually feel.