Vitalls, an Abu Dhabi-based company that makes a digital health record app for people who live and work across borders, has secured a $1.5 million investment commitment from Singapore-based EST Growmore as part of its seed round. The agreement, which includes an option for EST Growmore to invest a further $1 million, was announced on October 21, 2026, at the Abu Dhabi Future Health Summit, according to a company statement.
EST Growmore, the investment arm of EST Group, joins the round as anchor investor. Vitalls said the money will go toward developing and rolling out its health passport. Neither company disclosed the valuation or the total size the seed round is expected to reach.
What the company does
Vitalls describes its product as an AI-powered digital health passport. Users upload their medical files, and the app digitizes them, extracts the information and organizes it into a single record that the user controls. Patients can then share that record, with their consent, with any clinic or doctor they choose. The app is available on Android and Apple devices.
The company is aimed at internationally mobile individuals, families and employers, a group it says often ends up with medical histories scattered across clinics, laboratories and countries, in different languages and formats. Vitalls said in its statement that this leads to repeated tests, delayed care and incomplete information for doctors.
Vitalls says each user’s record is encrypted at rest with a unique key controlled by the user. In November 2025 the company said it had achieved ISO/IEC 27001:2022 certification along with SOC 2 Type 1, HIPAA and GDPR attestations, following audits by Sensiba.
The founders
Vitalls was founded in 2023 by Mehdi Bouchenak, its founder and chief executive, according to Wamda. The company’s website describes Bouchenak as a serial entrepreneur with more than 18 years of business and leadership experience. Leighton Bingham, whose profile on the site cites more than 20 years in IT and systems architecture and service in the US Army, is chief technology officer.
Bouchenak first unveiled the platform as Vitalls.AI at the LEAP 2024 conference in Riyadh, developed by his company Synexty, according to a March 2024 statement. That statement said a $500,000 partnership deal had been signed with DeepMinds to build and launch the product, and that the idea came from Bouchenak’s own experience of trying to maintain continuity of care while traveling.
Funding and investors
EST Growmore is a Singapore-registered variable capital company fund that makes cross-border investments in technology, healthcare, agriculture and sustainable development, according to the statement. Beyond the capital, the two companies said they will explore distribution, product development and partnerships across EST Group’s telecommunications and healthcare holdings.
“More than the capital, it confirms that the problem we set out to solve is real and urgent,” Bouchenak said in the statement published by Wamda. “Patient-owned health records are no longer a niche idea. They are where healthcare is going.”
Traction and market
Vitalls released a beta version at GITEX Expand North Star in October 2024 and launched on Apple’s iOS during Arab Health in Dubai in January 2025. In October 2025 it signed a memorandum of understanding with MSH MENA, part of international health insurance administrator MSH International, to explore combining health records with insurance administration for expatriates and multinational employers. The company has not published user numbers or revenue.
It has also built a board of advisors drawn from the UAE health sector. Marwan Abdulaziz Janahi, a board member of Aster GCC Holdings, joined in October 2025, and on October 19, 2026, the company appointed Dr. Dirk Richter, who led health sector innovation at the Department of Health in Abu Dhabi for a decade, as board advisor for health systems strategy. The company is based in ADGM in Abu Dhabi.
What’s next
Vitalls said the new funding is meant to speed up the rollout of its passport in the region and internationally, with EST Group’s network helping on distribution. Bouchenak said Richter’s appointment would support the company “as we accelerate our international expansion.”
This series earlier profiled Nabta Health, the UAE-based preventive women’s health company, and CapQuest, the Dubai-based equity management software maker that closed a $1 million pre-seed round.
