UAE Telehealth Licence: Cost, Timeline, and DHA Requirements

Telehealth in Dubai is licensed by the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) through the Sheryan portal. The requirements look complex from outside, but they resolve into three layers: a licensed entity and facility, licensed clinicians, and approved technology. This guide covers what the DHA expects, how the fees are structured, and a realistic timeline.

Who licenses telehealth in Dubai

The DHA licenses Dubai health facilities, telehealth, and home healthcare through Sheryan, its facility and professional licensing portal. A telehealth service is a licensed healthcare activity, not an app launch: the operator needs a health facility licence with telehealth in scope, and the clinicians delivering consultations need DHA licences.

Around the DHA sit three technical layers that shape the build. NABIDH is the DHA health information exchange. DESC certification applies to local health data hosting. TDRA approval applies to video consultation tools. Each one touches a different part of your technology stack, and each is easier to satisfy when it is designed in from the start. Treating them as afterthoughts, discovered during final review, is the most common cause of a stalled application.

The DHA requirements

We plan every telehealth project against the same checklist. It is short, but every line has to close before the service can see its first patient.

The common failure mode is treating these as sequential. The teams that go live fastest run the facility application, clinician licensing, and technology approvals in parallel, because each strand has its own authority and its own clock. Our telehealth and telemedicine licensing service manages all of the strands under one project plan.

The same DHA framework covers home healthcare, so operators pairing virtual consultations with home visits run both activities through Sheryan under one programme. Designing the scopes together at the start is simpler than widening a licence later.

Cost: how the fees are structured

We do not publish fee tables, because the total depends on your corporate structure, facility model, and headcount. What we can describe is the categories a budget should contain, so nothing arrives as a surprise.

• Company setup: trade licence and establishment costs for the operating entity
• DHA fees: facility application and licence fees processed through Sheryan
• Professional licensing: per-clinician licensing costs for the medical team
• Technology: NABIDH integration, DESC certified hosting, and TDRA approved video tooling
• Renewals: recurring facility and professional licence renewals once live

Send us your intended model and we will map these categories to your case. Request a quotation and we will price the full setup, with no figures left vague.

Timeline: approximately 45 days

A telehealth setup runs approximately 45 days end to end, subject to authority response times. The sequence we run looks like this.

Two habits protect the schedule. File complete: an application that lands with documents missing spends its first weeks in correspondence rather than review. And plan in parallel: the facility, clinician, and technology strands each carry their own clock, so serial planning stretches the same work across a longer calendar.

Explore our telehealth and telemedicine licensing service

This guide is general information, not regulatory or legal advice. DHA and related requirements evolve, so confirm current rules with the relevant authority or contact our team before acting on it.