Dr. Lina Haddad joined Looms as Chief Medical Officer eighteen months ago, bringing with her a career that spans clinical cardiology, national health policy and digital health strategy across the GCC and beyond. We asked her to share how she thinks about the role of AI in patient care, what she reads when she wants to stay sharp and what she wishes she'd known when she started.
On AI in clinical medicine
"My position is simple: AI in health records is a literacy tool, not a diagnostic tool. If a patient reads their lab result and understands what it means, they have a better conversation with their doctor. That's good medicine, and it's what we're trying to enable."
"Where I draw the line is when AI starts to replace the clinical judgment that only a trained doctor can provide — the integration of symptoms, history, examination findings and test results into a coherent clinical picture. We are nowhere near replacing that, and I don't believe we should try."
On health data ownership
"When a patient undergoes a scan at a hospital, who owns that scan? Most healthcare systems would say the hospital. I think that's wrong. The patient experienced it, the patient will live with the consequences of what it shows, and the patient should decide who sees it. That belief is baked into everything we build at Looms."
What she's reading
"Vinay Prasad's work on evidence-based medicine keeps me honest. The WHO's Global Digital Health Strategy is essential context for what we're doing in the region. And I try to spend an hour a week reading patient stories on health forums — not clinical literature, just what people say about their experiences with the healthcare system. It's humbling and useful."