Sharjah NEXT: Healthcare
Completed
October 2025
Contributors
Vivek Aggarwal (ACE - Dataset curation)
Pankaj Arvikar (ACE - Dataset curation)
Jack England (ACE - Report writing & consultation)
Inês Pote (ACE - Report writing & consultation)
Katia Dallafior (Commercial Operations - Senior Publishing Manager)
Chris Gilloch (Nature Reseearch Custom Media - Head of Publishing )
Mariam Chahid (Central Team-Content Services - Strategic Partnerships Manager )
Marian Karam (Community and Partnership Editorial - Graphic Designer )
Amany Shawkey (Community and Partnership Editorial - Media Editor )
Aliaa Hamed (Community and Partnership Editorial - Executive Editor, Nature Research Middle East )
Rachel Nowak ( Editor )
Nature Research Intelligence (NRI) were commissioned by the Sharjah Research Technology and Innovation Park to produce a visually compelling report, in collaboration with Nature Custom Media (NCM), for distribution at Sharjah Next Healthcare – a premier forum dedicated to exploring cutting-edge technologies and research in the healthcare sector. The event provides an opportunity for academia, startups, and corporate stakeholders to engage in discussions on emerging healthcare challenges and technological advancements.
The report examined the current landscape across the following key themes (with particular emphasis on healthcare innovation and drug discovery):
- 'Unlocking the Brain’: Research & Development in Neuroscience and Cognitive Disorders
- 'The Powerhouse’: Research & Development in Cardiovascular and Metabolic Diseases
- 'Systems of Life’: Research & Development in Revolutionary Diagnostics and Therapies
In framing Sharjah’s role in the healthcare innovation landscape, NRI examined research and innovation data for each theme across three geographic scales of analysis:
Sharjah, focusing on the University of Sharjah (UOS) and the American University of Sharjah (AUS), the UAE, encompassing all UAE-based institutions, and the world, highlighting global innovation trends and hotspots For each theme, NRI’s analysis showcases the high-level publication and citation trends for Sharjah and the UAE, while uncovering the ‘hot’ topics driving research productivity. Next, it examines the collaboration networks for Sharjah and the UAE, followed by a global view of the leading institutions and innovation hubs shaping the future of research translation. The goal is to assess Sharjah and the UAE’s current position, highlight strengths in collaboration and innovation, and identify strategic opportunities where alignment with global frontiers could unlock the greatest impact.
Discussions with colleagues who had authored the full technical report also highlighted five additional requirements the visualisations should achieve, namely:
- interesting, engaging while simple to understand.
- helpful readers to quickly digest a breadth of data points and gain insights into the publishing trends.
- bespoke visuals (that are not available in commercial packages, e.g., Flourish, DataWrapper).
- using harmonised design and corporate-branded colourimetry used throughout
- able to be repurposed on other outlets (e.g., emails, slide decks)
To allow rapid production and relatively quick turn around of this report, ensuring it was delivered on time to the client, we decided to replicate the same set of [the types of] figures for each theme outlined in 'Background to Project', and only changing the underlying data to each figure. The figures selected are towards the more traditonal end of the data visualisation charting spectrum. The complete set of figures - within each theme - aimed to illustrate the trends in healthcare publication eminating from Sharjah with repsect to:
- time
- top international country collaborations
- top international institute collaborations
- global hotspots for innovation with respect to the theme being considered
- leading organizations with respect to patent publishing within the theme being considered
Grouped bar and column charts, scaled-symbol maps, circle packing charts and simpler bar charts are selected to hold interest of readers without getting too overly technical to hinder readability and undersanding, while at the same time stepping slightly away from using the most traditional, basic charting forms available.
A primary three-way colour palette of dark blue, light blue and green - for element highlighting - was adopted to enhance the styling of the entire report, using branding colours of the Sharjah Research Technology and Innovation Park. Where necessary, an additional two colours were added to allow further categorical and contextual highlighting in figures contained in the report.
See our data in a new light
Nature Research Intelligence
Data & Analytics Solutions
© 2024 Springer Nature Limited