Startup Profile

• Founded: established in Bahrain 2020; NHRA-approved and launched in 2023.

• Core Solution: NHRA-licensed telemedicine platform connecting patients in Bahrain with certified doctors and clinics locally and worldwide for online consultations, treatment packages, and coordinated cross-border medical care

• Markets Served: Bahrain

• Total Funding: $435k through angel investments from private investors and non-dilutive grants from ecosystem competitions.

• Growth Outlook: Expanding its guided medical-travel model and network of international hospital and clinic partners 

What is Saleem?

Saleem is a licensed telemedicine platform based in Bahrain, accredited by the National Health Regulatory Authority (NHRA), that connects patients with certified doctors and clinics locally and around the world. Founded by Khalid Sater, Saleem sets out to make healthcare more accessible and to help patients make informed choices about their care, removing the barriers that can stand between a patient and the right treatment, wherever it is located. Telemedicine allows the delivery of medical consultation and advice remotely, through secure video and digital tools. 

Through the platform, patients can access a network of accredited hospitals and specialists both in Bahrain and internationally in several ways: They can receive doctor guidance through an instant video consultation, or they can browse and book defined treatment packages, ranging from health check-ups to specialised programmes such as a comprehensive obesity-management programme. For patients who need more than an online consultation, Saleem provides a dedicated Case Manager, a licensed doctor who reviews the patient's case and files, returns tailored treatment plans with transparent costs, and coordinates bookings, travel, and follow-ups end to end. AI supports the team behind the scenes, streamlining coordination while keeping every medical decision in the hands of doctors.

How was Saleem built?

Saleem set out to address a practical gap in how patients in the Gulf reach specialist care. For many conditions, the most relevant expertise or treatment option sits outside a patient's immediate market. Pursuing that care traditionally meant navigating these fragmented steps alone, without a trusted guide.

The founding insight was that digital tools could connect these steps into one coordinated journey. By starting with online consultations and medical guidance, Saleem could give patients access to specialists early, before any decision to travel, and then carry that relationship through to treatment where needed. The platform was deliberately developed in and for the Gulf, using Bahrain as its base and building outward to the wider region.

Its competitive edge lies in the combination of a digital front door for online consultations and medical guidance, paired with curated hospital and clinic partnerships and end-to-end coordination of the care journey, rather than simply a standalone video-call tool. From the outset, the model paired a local clinical anchor, Bahrain Specialist Hospital, with international clinic relationships, so that patients could be matched to the right setting for their needs.

How has Saleem grown?

Saleem's progress since its founding has been built on partnerships, recognition, and the steady broadening of its model.

 On partnerships, Saleem's clinical network has grown significantly since launch. It has onboarded over 12 partner hospitals and signed four international treatment corridors spanning the Gulf, Asia, and Europe, alongside its original European clinic relationships in Germany and Switzerland. It has also signed a partnership with Novo Nordisk to deliver a dedicated obesity care programme.

On recognition, winning first place at the StartUp Bahrain Pitch in late 2024 gave Saleem visibility and credibility within the ecosystem, along with direct exposure to the investors and mentors connected to the programme. Saleem's recognition continued into 2025, when it joined the second cohort of the Riyada Business Accelerator Programme and took first place at the Futuremakers Women in Tech Bahrain Demo Day.

On product, Saleem broadened its scope over time. What began as a cross-border telemedicine service, framed as a digital bridge between patients and doctors, grew into a guided medical-travel offering that adds hospital comparison, treatment coordination, and support for patients receiving care abroad. The platform is now working on adding e-prescriptions, which would allow doctors to issue prescriptions digitally through Saleem and extend its online consultations further into a patient's ongoing care. This progression reflects a move from a single online service toward coordinating the full care journey for patients seeking specialist treatment beyond their local options.

How did the ecosystem enable Saleem's growth?

Saleem's path illustrates how Bahrain's ecosystem can support a young health-technology company from launch through early validation.

The StartUp Bahrain Pitch, supported by the Labour Fund (Tamkeen) in collaboration with the SMEs Development Board, served as a key validation point. Winning first place provided visibility, credibility with investors, and a public platform for the company, while the accompanying bootcamp offered structured support on pitching and preparing to raise investment. The competition operates as a recurring feature of Bahrain's ecosystem, connecting startups with a judging panel drawn from regional venture capital firms and accelerators.

Beyond the StartUp Bahrain Pitch, Saleem progressed through Bahrain's structured accelerator pipeline – joining the Tamkeen-backed Riyada Business Accelerator Programme (in partnership with Salica Investments) and the Futuremakers Women in Tech programme – illustrating how the ecosystem's layered support helped the platform scale.

Operating in a regulated field, Saleem also benefited from proximity to the relevant authorities. NHRA, which oversees healthcare in the Kingdom, was present and engaged at the platform's launch, reflecting the close access between new entrants and regulators that a compact market allows. The presence of Tamkeen, Bahrain Mumtalakat Holding Company, and the Bahrain Economic Development Board at the same launch signaled broad institutional attention to the venture.

Bahrain's compact market also played a structural role. The ability to launch, build clinical partnerships, and refine the model within a small, highly connected market, anchored by a local hospital relationship, allowed Saleem to establish its approach before extending its reach across the wider Gulf. In a market where key institutions and decision-makers are readily accessible, relationships and partnerships can be formed quickly, giving an early-stage health platform a practical base from which to grow.

As founder Khalid Sater puts it: “Healthcare should never depend on where you happen to live. We built Saleem because we watched patients in the Gulf carry the hardest moments of their lives alone: searching for the right specialist, comparing hospitals in unfamiliar countries, making major medical decisions without guidance. Saleem exists so that no patient goes through that journey by themselves, doctor-led at every step, with technology doing the heavy lifting in the background. Bahrain, with its accessible regulator and supportive ecosystem, gave us the right home to build that from”.

In a Nutshell

Saleem's journey from its founding to a StartUp Bahrain Pitch win and a broadening guided medical-travel model shows how a focused health platform can address a genuine patient need. The gap it set out to close was real: the difficulty patients in the Gulf face in reaching specialist care and coordinating treatment across borders. By pairing online consultations with curated hospital partnerships and a guided, doctor-led, case manager-led treatment journey, Saleem built a single point of access for that care. Bahrain's combination of an accessible regulator, a supportive startup competition and ecosystem, and a compact market for building partnerships provided the conditions for the platform to launch, validate its approach, and begin to scale across the region.