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Know what you could pass on together.

For couples after UAE premarital screening: see only the genes you both carry, in plain Arabic or English, with a counsellor one tap away.

first cousinsHer keyHis key
CYP21A2 · both carry · 1 in 4 per pregnancyEverything else each of them carries stays on their own phone.

The two phones compare results privately. Neither partner learns any other gene the other carries, and nothing reaches either family unless you choose to share it. If you wish, relatives can be told that a test may help them, through your counsellor if you’d rather not be named.

1 in 13

couples in Dubai’s first 1,000 screened carried the same gene (79, or 7.9%, including alpha-thalassaemia)

Nature Medicine 2026

565

of 11,748 Abu Dhabi couples screened 2022 to July 2026 had an increased chance (4.8%)

DoH, via Gulf News

0.1

genetic counsellors per million people in the Arab region (US: 12)

J Genet Couns 2021

The UAE screens every Emirati couple before marriage. What happens after the result is the hard part.

A result reaches the family before it reaches understanding

Today one partner’s carrier status can travel to the other, and to both families, before anyone has explained that being a carrier is not a disease. The challenge asks for the opposite: no exposure of one family member’s information without permission.

Too few people to explain it

Abu Dhabi has trained hundreds of physicians to counsel because specialists are scarce. Every couple still needs the same careful explanation, in their language, at their reading level.

Relatives rarely hear about it

In consanguineous families relatives share variants, yet in one US study only 6% of first-degree relatives went on to be tested. People hesitate to name themselves.

Two keys open one answer. Neither key opens anything else.

  1. 1

    The lab issues one-time tokens

    For this pairing only, the lab turns each gene a person carries into a token only it can make. Nobody can invent a gene they don’t carry or reuse someone else’s.

  2. 2

    Each phone locks its list

    Each phone scrambles its tokens with a secret it never shares, pads the list so its length reveals nothing, and sends it through the relay, encrypted.

  3. 3

    Only the shared genes match

    Each phone adds its own lock to the other’s list, with a proof that it locked honestly. Items both carry end up identical; everything else stays random noise. The lab then confirms the match from its own records and names only the shared genes.

This is authorised private set intersection (De Cristofaro and Tsudik), with the lab as the trusted issuer: a partner can’t probe by pretending to carry extra genes, the problem Baldi et al. (2011) raised. Abu Dhabi’s Responsible AI Standard names secure multi-party computation as a privacy technique; this is one.

Who learns what

A result people can understand on their own

Chances are drawn the way a counsellor sketches them: four pregnancies, one affected, two carriers, one neither. Every explanation comes in simple, standard and detailed versions, in Arabic and English, and says plainly what is risk and what is diagnosis. The words avoid “incompatible”; the couple is “a couple with an increased chance”.

  • Couple-level by default, as Dubai’s own programme reports it. Couples who prefer full openness can choose it together: the lab shows each partner’s full results only once both have asked.
  • Your own full results whenever you ask: your right under Decree-Law 49/2023.
  • X-linked results go to each person first, privately, before any pairing. Only when hers and his match does the couple see it together, after each has read their own.

SharedCongenital adrenal hyperplasia · CYP21A2

3 in 4 children will not have CAH.

  • no changed copy
  • healthy carrier
  • healthy carrier
  • has the condition

In each pregnancy: 1 in 4 that the child has the condition, 2 in 4 a healthy carrier, 1 in 4 neither.

Treatable with daily medicine and found by newborn screening. If you know of the chance, tell the birth team: a salt-wasting crisis can come before the screening result is back.

From result to care, with a person at every decision

Options, unranked

Go ahead, test in pregnancy, IVF with embryo testing, reconsider plans together, kafala or no children, or talk first. Equal weight, no advice, and one plain line on costs and cover under them all.

Questions, answered from sources

An AI explainer answers only from vetted facts, has its numbers checked against them, refuses to probe a partner or decide for anyone, and hands distress to a person the same day. Anyone can ask a person instead.

A counsellor, on the clock

Booking shares only what you tick. The desk tracks time to first contact, referral and documented closure, with a tamper-evident audit trail.

Relatives, without names

Sealed notes tell a cousin or sibling their own chance of carrying the same change. The service can’t read them or tell who sent them, and a counsellor can pass one on so no name is attached.

What we count, and what we never will

  • Understanding, by a validated 8-item knowledge measure (its Arabic version validated first); the in-app teach-back is a process check
  • Counselling uptake and time to first contact
  • Time from result to referral
  • Relatives who book a test after a note
  • Equity across Arabic and English, and reading levels
  • Privacy: nothing shared without a logged consent

We never count marriages called off. The challenge says success must not rest on any single personal choice, and a couple’s decision is theirs.

Built to sit inside the programme Abu Dhabi already runs

Inputs it reuses

The DoH premarital panel results already flowing through Malaffi; UAE Pass sign-in; the 22 screening centres and their trained physicians.

Where it runs

Demo: Vercel and Amazon Bedrock in Sydney, synthetic data only. Production: hosted in the UAE, as Decree-Law 49/2023 and the health data law require. Amazon Nova Pro is offered in AWS’s UAE region (not yet tested there), and the safety layer works with any model.

A gated path to a pilot

First the DoH sandbox, ethics approval, a DPIA and an independent crypto audit. Then a randomised pilot of the explainer and family notes with couples newly found at increased chance, against usual care. Months 18–30: lab tokens and Malaffi at three or four centres. A licensed provider operates it; DoH sees only counts.

We are looking for a genetic counsellor in the UAE to work with us, starting with the phase-0 sign-off of every condition card, fact and Arabic string before any real use.

Four couples are waiting in the demo

First cousins who share a gene, an unrelated couple who share none, double first cousins who share one full and one milder match, and second cousins whose two milder changes are shown as a low-concern match. All synthetic, all running the real protocol.

Try it with two phones