MedIQ, an Islamabad healthtech company, raised a $6 million Series A to scale in Saudi Arabia

MedIQ is an Islamabad healthtech company that sells digital care, claims processing and AI tools to insurers, employers and clinics in Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. It began in a hospital bed. In 2019, according to Profit, its founder, Dr Saira Siddique, was paralysed in a car crash that killed the driver, and she spent about a year in hospital. She has said she did not need to be there that long. What she lacked, as Profit tells it, was rehabilitation and monitoring rather than a bed.

Siddique is not an outsider to the health system. Profit reports that she worked on the policy side of healthcare, including at the World Bank and at the Punjab Healthcare Commission, before MedIQ. In its 2022 profile of her, it adds that she was the founding chief executive of the Punjab Health Initiative Management Company, which ran the Sehat Sahulat health insurance programme in the province. She holds a PhD in health economics, and TechJuice calls her a physician turned health economist. The company's model, in other words, was designed by someone who had spent years studying who pays for care.

From a hospital bed to a healthtech company in Islamabad

MedIQ was founded in mid 2020 in Islamabad. Profit described Siddique then as one of the few solo female founders in the region, and in April 2022 it reported a $1.8 million pre seed round. NRD Capital of the United States and Cordoba Ventures, a Karachi based fund, co led it. Seraph Group, TAJDEED, a physicians' syndicate linked to APPNA, House of Habib and Silicon Valley health tech angels also took part.

The first version of the business did not chase patients with an app. Profit said the consumer end of Pakistani digital health was crowded, with Oladoc, Healthwire and Ailaaj all in it, so MedIQ chose a business to business model and built a backend system for companies.

A B2B healthtech model that charged doctors, not clients

The pitch in 2022 was simple. A company would sign MedIQ up, and its staff would reach doctors, pharmacies and labs through one vendor.

“We become their virtual healthcare arm which becomes a part of the company systems once it is integrated”

The money flowed in an unusual direction. According to Profit, the service was free for the client. MedIQ earned its revenue from the providers on its platform, meaning doctors, pharmacies and labs. It then had about 7,000 doctors across 32 specialties, by its own count, and said exclusive agreements with clients protected it from new entrants for a period. It named Ailaaj, Sehat Kahani and DoctHERs as competitors.

The business has widened since. MedIQ's website now lists cashless outpatient and inpatient fund management, claims processing as a health third party administrator, white label technology for insurers and tailored health and life insurance plans. It lists offices in Islamabad, Singapore and Riyadh and says it holds ISO, DRAP and HIPAA certificates. A news item on the site mentions a signing ceremony for cashless outpatient cover with Jubilee General Insurance, though it carries no date. Wamda, in May 2025, described the platform as telehealth, an e pharmacy, AI powered facility digitisation and back office automation for insurers. MedIQ has not published revenue.

The Saudi Arabia bet and the $6 million Series A

In 2023 MedIQ entered Saudi Arabia, and the kingdom has become the centre of its story. In April 2025 it announced a $6 million Series A led by Rasmal Ventures and Joa Capital, with existing investors following on. ProPakistani and Wamda place Rasmal in Qatar, while Arab News describes both lead investors as Saudi. The company said it had earlier raised $3.8 million across seed and bridge rounds, which takes its total to $9.8 million. It said it employed 180 people between Islamabad and Riyadh.

The money is meant to strengthen the technology, scale in Saudi Arabia, and open Qatar and other Gulf markets. Arab News reported that MedIQ also operates in the UAE and Canada. Wamda and the company's release put the Saudi health technology market at SAR 7.2 billion. Yousef AlYousefi of Joa Capital said in that release that MedIQ had become the "undisputed market leader" in the kingdom, which is an investor's claim and not an audited ranking.

One of the more revealing numbers came from a 2023 interview that Arab News later cited. Siddique said women make up most of the users, and Arab News paraphrased her as saying they often find it hard to visit a hospital without a male companion in Pakistan and the Middle East.

“about 74 percent of our users are women”

On profit, the sources disagree. ProPakistani's account of the 2025 release lists the goals of serving more than 10 million customers and becoming EBITDA positive. A TechJuice article on the same round says the company serves over 10 million users and has already reached EBITDA positive status. A second TechJuice piece refers to its current profitability in Saudi Arabia. Without accounts, treat each as the company's own statement.

MedIQ's clinical AI for consultations in Urdu, Pashto and Punjabi

The latest move is the least obvious one for a company that began as a health plan vendor. In November 2025, Profit reported that MedIQ had made a multimillion dollar investment in in house AI, with the amount undisclosed, and described a shift from telemedicine towards a data driven provider of healthcare systems. TechJuice describes the product as an ambient clinical system. It listens to a consultation, transcribes it and drafts a structured clinical note, and it works in Urdu, Pashto and Punjabi. MedIQ claims that this cuts documentation time by 60 per cent, and TechJuice reports that the models were trained on 4 million local records, without naming a source. The first figure is the company's own, and neither has been independently tested.

The logic is sound. Profit points out that clinicians in Pakistan often see dozens of patients per shift. If a tool gives doctors back even part of their time, an insurer or hospital group has a reason to pay for it. If the notes come out wrong, it has a reason to stop.

What MedIQ still has to prove

Three things stand out. First, the evidence of scale is company reported: users, doctors, profitability and the market leader label all come from MedIQ or its investors. Second, the most recent funding is about 17 months old, and we found no public report of a Qatar launch or a new round by mid October 2026. Third, a business that depends on insurers and employers paying promptly inherits their payment cycles and, in Saudi Arabia, a regulatory regime it does not control.

Still, the path from a founder's own year in hospital to a company with offices in Islamabad, Singapore and Riyadh is unusual enough to watch. The next test is whether the clinical AI becomes a product that insurers will pay for, and whether the Gulf expansion can be seen in numbers rather than press releases.

Reported from the company's website and statements and coverage in Profit, ProPakistani, Wamda, TechJuice and Arab News.