UK-Qatar health tech startup Rhazes AI has launched a first-of-its-kind pilot at Al Hamshari Hospital in southern Lebanon, bringing advanced clinical AI scribes into one of the most under-resourced medical environments in the region. The initiative is part of a controlled trial to evaluate how artificial intelligence can ease administrative burden on frontline doctors working under extreme pressure.
AI Hamshari, operated by the Palestine Red Crescent Society, is located near Ein el Hilweh, Lebanon’s largest Palestinian refugee camp. Palestinian refugees in Lebanon are excluded from the national healthcare system, leaving hospitals like Al Hamshari to carry the full burden of care with limited international support.
The hospital has 80 beds, 56 doctors, and 31 nurses, yet serves over 4,000 patients each month and frequently performs more than 400 surgeries during times of crisis. It remains the only facility with a working dialysis unit serving the southern camps.
Under the new partnership, Rhazes is deploying an AI clinical assistant across the hospital’s outpatient and emergency departments. The agentic platform adapts to low-resource environments without requiring extensive hospital infrastructure.
Rhazes supports doctors end-to-end by transcribing consultations in real time, assisting with diagnostic reasoning, and generating evidence-based management plans. The tool also automates documentation processes, helping doctors to create structured summaries, admission notes, billing codes, and insights from the patient record. This reduces administrative burden and enables more efficient care.
The hospital is staffed primarily by Palestinian doctors who, due to the absence of referral pathways or tertiary hospitals, must act as generalists, specialists, and emergency physicians all at once. Many see upwards of 60 patients per day. The burden of clinical documentation is immense and often falls on the shoulders of already overstretched teams.
This marks the first deployment of Rhazes AI in a humanitarian hospital setting, and one of the first structured AI scribe tools in a conflict-affected health system. The pilot will run as a non-randomised, controlled implementation trial from August to November 2025, with the aim of assessing its effect on documentation time, decision confidence, and patient flow.
Dr Zaid Al-Fagih, co-founder and CEO of Rhazes AI, said: “This collaboration is about bringing tools usually reserved for high-tech, high-resource hospitals into the hands of clinicians working on the frontlines. Advanced tools don’t need to wait for perfect conditions, they, and should, start where the need is greatest.
“This isn’t about replacing doctors, it’s about surrounding them with support. When a young doctor is trying to manage dozens of complex cases a day, every second counts. Whether it’s transcribing an admission, accessing specialist-level knowledge or double-checking a differential diagnosis, Rhazes AI is there to reduce uncertainty and let doctors focus on what matters the most, the patients.
“In an age where AI too often deepens inequality, this is an example of what it looks like to close that gap. It’s time for innovation to meet people where they are.”
Rola Soboh, a Rhazes AI associate implementing the pilot, said: “I have supported multiple research and humanitarian projects focused on refugee health and wellbeing in Lebanon, and this project is deeply personal. This hospital isn’t just a building, it’s a lifeline.
“Doctors here don’t just treat patients, they carry entire communities. So, when we talk about easing their load, it’s not just administrative, it’s emotional, physical, everything. To see cutting-edge technology actually serve people like this, in a place that’s so often forgotten, gives me a sense of real hope.”
Rhazes AI previously published a study in Emergency Medical Journal showing that its tools can cut documentation time by over 60 percent. This pilot builds on that evidence and opens a pathway to scale AI support tools in similarly under-resourced environments.
The pilot is funded by Rhazes AI, conducted in partnership with the Palestine Red Crescent Society which runs the hospital, as part of a joint effort to strengthen frontline care in one of the region’s most underserved hospital systems.
