What Abu Dhabi's Longevity Clinic Standard Actually Requires

2026 ·9 minute read · By Sumesh Peringeth

In short

Abu Dhabi's Department of Health published a Healthy Longevity Medicine Clinic Standard, reference DOH/SD/HLMCS/HCF/ V1/2024, with a publication date of October 2024 and an effective date of April 2025. It sets minimum requirements for healthy longevity medicine clinic services in the Emirate. Appendix 1 makes a list of conventional assessments mandatory: history, cognition and mood, vital signs and physical examination, bioelectrical impedance analysis, metabolic, renal, liver and hormone panels, inflammatory markers and urinalysis. DNA methylation and whole body MRI are not on that list; they appear under Optional AND needs further validation. Telomere length, liquid biopsies, senescent cell counts and non-FDA-approved wearables appear under Not Recommended outside of research protocol. In Appendix 2, off-label repurposed drugs and oral supplements are coded Per discretion/ guidelines of clinic policy, while IV infusions including NAD, IV stem cell infusions, gene therapy, exosome treatment, plasmapheresis and hyperbaric oxygen treatment are all coded Not Currently Applicable / Needs further data. The document's stated revision date is September 2025 and the copy served by the Department today is still V1.

Most of the argument about longevity clinics is an argument about what one is. The word is a marketing category everywhere, and almost nowhere a licensing category, so the answer is usually whatever the operator says.

Abu Dhabi wrote it down. The Department of Health there published a Healthy Longevity Medicine Clinic Standard, document reference DOH/SD/HLMCS/HCF/ V1/2024, with a publication date of October 2024 and an effective date of April 2025.¹ Its own scope clause is blunt about what it is for: it sets the minimum requirements for the provision of healthy longevity medicine clinic services in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi, and applies to every healthcare facility the Department licenses to provide them.¹ The Department announced the framework in October 2024 and described it as the first of its kind globally.² On the sources the Atlas has checked, it is still the only dedicated longevity clinic licensing standard in effect anywhere.

That makes the document worth reading rather than citing. Because the interesting thing about it is not that it exists. It is what a regulator decided a longevity clinic has to do, once a regulator had to decide.

The mandatory list is conventional medicine

Appendix 1 sorts diagnostics into tiers, and the top tier is labeled Mandatory. Here is what is in it.¹

Medical history, family history and environmental history. Psychosocial health assessment. Neurological health, covering cognitive tests, mood assessment and sleep assessment. History of screening tests and vaccination history. Medication and supplement use and history. Lifestyle assessment, preferably using objective measures or validated questionnaires. Validated risk prediction questionnaires for major age-related diseases, with QRISK, Test2Prevent and the Framingham Risk Score named. Vital signs and physical examination, including major organ systems. Bioelectrical impedance analysis. Metabolic function assessment, meaning complete blood count, lipid profile, fasting blood sugar, HbA1c and insulin. Renal function tests. Liver function tests. A hormonal profile covering thyroid function, cortisol and sex hormones. Inflammatory markers, meaning CRP and ESR. Urinalysis.

Read that as a shopping list and it is a good annual physical with a body composition measurement and a mood questionnaire attached. There is no epigenetic clock on it. There is no whole-body scan. There is no proteomic panel and no microbiome test. A clinic could satisfy the mandatory diagnostic requirement of this standard using a blood draw, a set of scales, a blood pressure cuff and an hour of a doctor’s attention.

The things people picture when they picture a longevity clinic are in the document. They are just not here.

Where the famous tests actually sit

Below Mandatory, Appendix 1 has a tier called Optional AND recommended if resources allow. That is where guideline-based cancer screening lives, along with bone mineral density, advanced cardiovascular imaging, cardiopulmonary exercise testing with VO2 max, genetic screening for actionable high-risk genes in people with known family or personal risk, stool analysis with gut microbiome testing, micronutrient analysis and heavy metal screening.¹

Below that is Optional AND needs further validation. This is the tier worth knowing about, because it is where two of the signature products of the category sit. DNA methylation is here. So is advanced imaging, given in the standard as whole body MRI. They are joined by whole genome and whole exome testing for people without known family or personal risk, other microbiome testing covering oral, skin and vaginal, immunophenotyping, glycan testing, advanced biomarker panels described as proteomic and metabolomic profiling, advanced cardiovascular biomarkers and cancer markers for early detection.¹

And at the bottom, Not Recommended outside of research protocol, which the standard fills with five entries: non-FDA approved or unvalidated wearable devices for sleep or other physiological assessments, senescent cells count and senescence-associated secretory phenotype markers, liquid biopsies, telomere length, and body scanning technology, for which the document’s own example is thermography.¹

Telomere length is a foundational longevity test in the popular understanding of the field. In the only standard written for these clinics, it is in the bottom tier with a research protocol attached.

Appendix 2 uses a traffic light, and the reds are the interventions people buy

The interventions table classifies each item green, orange or red against a legend the document prints in full. Green is Applicable. Orange is Per discretion/ guidelines of clinic policy. Red is Not Currently Applicable / Needs further data.¹

Those are the standard’s words and they are worth using exactly, because the obvious paraphrase overstates them. Red does not say a clinic may not do these things, and the document does not present it that way. It is a statement about the state of the evidence, written by a regulator who left each item in the table rather than leaving it out.

Green covers nutrition, exercise, sleep, a cognitive and emotional group given as mindfulness, meditation, breathing practices and religious practices and prayers as per client preference, avoiding toxins, education on sustainable lifestyle habits, and one clinical entry: Drugs: Approved use.¹

Orange has two entries. Repurposed drugs: Off-Label Use and Dietary supplements and nutraceuticals (Oral). Both carry a footnote in the document saying recommended drugs should have randomized controlled trial data in humans with positive results, and that for drugs with a high level of current safety data, shared decision-making with the provider and client should be applied.¹

Red has six. IV infusions, which the table gives as NAD and precursors or derivatives, vitamins and other supplements. IV stem cell infusions. Gene therapy. Exosome treatment. Plasmapheresis. Hyperbaric oxygen treatment.¹

Put the two appendices side by side and a picture appears. The tests a longevity clinic must run are the ones a good internist would run. The tests it is famous for are optional or unvalidated. The treatments that fill its price list and its Instagram feed are the ones the standard codes Not Currently Applicable / Needs further data. The regulator built the category around the assessment and left the intervention menu almost entirely uncoded as applicable.

The rest of the requirements are not about the science at all

Read past the appendices and most of the standard is about running a clinic properly.

Eligibility starts at eighteen. Adults are included regardless of existing health conditions, unless they are receiving palliative care or have a severe cognitive impairment that stops them following safety protocols, and the standard excludes situations that compromise safety, naming pregnancy, severe cardiovascular disease, ongoing oncology treatment and other severe illness in the past three months or less. Someone with an acute illness needing immediate attention is outside the program.¹

On licensure, a facility must comply with the Department’s licensure requirements, be AAMEN certified for ADHICS, and be fully integrated with Malaffi, the Emirate’s unified electronic medical record. International accreditation is expected within three years of the standard’s publication.¹

Staffing is where the document gets specific. The service should be provided by a multidisciplinary team including, at a minimum, physicians who have finished specialty training and worked as senior physicians before joining, with at least five years of experience in a related field or formal training in healthy longevity medicine, lifestyle medicine and disease prevention. Then registered nurses, and allied health professionals: a clinical dietitian, physiotherapists and exercise physiologists, pharmacists to assess drug interactions, a psychologist and a health coach. Healthcare professionals should obtain ten continuing medical education credits in healthy longevity medicine each year, on top of the credits their primary license renewal already requires.¹

The facility itself has to have, or have an agreement for, laboratory services and radiology covering DEXA, MRI, ultrasound and CT.¹ Note where that lands: a clinic must be able to reach a whole-body MRI scanner, and is not required to point one at anybody.

Access runs both ways. Referrals may come from primary care physicians, medical specialists and licensed allied health professionals, and individuals seeking to optimize their health may also access a licensed facility directly without a referral.¹ After the assessment, clients are given personalized action plans covering lifestyle changes, potential interventions and suggestions for re-testing.¹

And on enforcement the document is short. The Department may impose sanctions in relation to any breach of requirements under the standard, in accordance with the disciplinary regulation of the healthcare sector.¹

One thing about the document itself

The copy the Department serves at its own URL carries a document control block with a publication date of October 2024, an effective date of April 2025, a revision period of one year and a revision date of September 2025. It is marked Version: V1 and New / Revised: New.

The file served from that URL on 14 September 2026 is byte for byte the same file that was retrieved from it on 1 September 2026, and it is still V1.

That is a fact about the document and it is recorded as one. What it means about the Department’s revision process is not something this piece knows, and guessing would be worse than leaving the gap visible.

Why this matters outside Abu Dhabi

A clinic anywhere can describe itself as practicing longevity medicine, and in most markets nothing in the licensing paperwork agrees or disagrees. The other markets the Atlas has read regulate a longevity clinic through whatever general instrument reaches it first: the premises, the billing, the advertisement or the practitioner. That comparison is set out market by market in Longevity Clinic Regulation, Market by Market, and the scope line the Atlas itself draws, which lands close to this standard’s, is in What Counts as a Longevity Clinic.

So this document is the only place to look for an answer to a question the whole category keeps being asked. When somebody with the authority to license these clinics sat down and wrote what one has to deliver, they wrote down history taking, a physical examination, standard panels and a risk questionnaire, and they put the signature technologies in a tier that says the evidence is not there yet.

That is not a verdict on whether those technologies work. It is a regulator’s reading of the evidence in October 2024, written to be revised. It is worth knowing that the reading exists, because a clinic selling an epigenetic age report and an NAD drip in a market with no standard is not doing anything unusual, and in the one market with a standard, neither of those is in the required set.

What this piece did not check

It read one document and the Department’s own announcement of it. It did not read the Department’s general healthcare facility licensure standards, its professional qualification requirements, its advertising rules or the disciplinary regulation the enforcement clause points at, each of which reaches a clinic in the Emirate independently of this standard.

It covers Abu Dhabi and not the rest of the United Arab Emirates. Dubai regulates through its own instruments and its own authority, and those are recorded separately on the United Arab Emirates page.

It says nothing about which facilities hold a license under this standard, whether any particular clinic has applied for one, or how many exist. The Atlas records a licensing act with its issuer, its date and its source, and does not publish a current status for any operator.

And it is not legal advice, not clinical advice, and not a view on any treatment named above.

The Atlas of the Healthspan Economy is a neutral record of organizations working on healthspan. It does not recommend any provider and it does not give legal or medical advice. The regulatory record for this market, with issuers, instruments, dates and primary links, sits on the United Arab Emirates page. Read the methodology.

A note on sourcing. Every requirement above is read from the standard itself, served by the Department of Health at the link below. The document is marked confidential on its cover page, so it is cited and linked at the regulator’s own URL and is not republished here. Where a tier name or a classification is given, the standard’s own printed wording is used exactly, including its spacing and its punctuation.

Department of Health Abu Dhabi, Healthy Longevity Medicine Clinic Standard. Document reference DOH/SD/HLMCS/HCF/ V1/2024, Version: V1, New / Revised: New, Publication Date: October 2024, Effective Date: April 2025, Revision Date: September 2025, Revision Period: 1 year, Document Control DoH Strategy Sector, Owner Healthcare Facility Sector. Scope, eligibility, licensure, accreditation, staffing, facility design, clinical care model and enforcement read from sections 1 to 6. Diagnostic tiers read from Appendix 1 and intervention classifications from Appendix 2. Read from the Department’s own copy, checked 14 September 2026. https://www.doh.gov.ae/-/media/DOH/StanddardOfLogeivity.ashx ↩ ↩² ↩³ ↩⁴ ↩⁵ ↩⁶ ↩⁷ ↩⁸ ↩⁹ ↩¹⁰ ↩¹¹ ↩¹² ↩¹³ ↩¹⁴ ↩¹⁵ ↩¹⁶ ↩¹⁷
Department of Health Abu Dhabi, “Abu Dhabi sets standards for the world’s first Healthy Longevity Medicine Centres”, dated 31 October 2024. Announces the licensing framework for Healthy Longevity Medicine Centres and states that the Department is also developing licensing and qualification requirements for health coaches, lifestyle medicine and exercise physiologists. Checked 14 September 2026. https://www.doh.gov.ae/en/news/abu-dhabi-sets-standards-for-the-world-first-healthy-longevity-medicine-centres ↩

Related insights

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Italy Has No Longevity Clinic Category, and the Reason Is Structural
Two Italian instruments explain the shape of the country's private longevity market better than any commercial account of it. Article 8-ter types healthcare structures by delivery mode, so a longevity category has nowhere to sit. A 2015 ministerial decree confines non-routine advanced therapy medicinal products to research institutes, university hospital trusts and public hospitals, so a private clinic cannot lawfully supply them. Both are structural, and neither was written with longevity in mind.
Four Countries, Four Regulators, and No Longevity Clinic Category
The longevity clinic category exists commercially and, in these four markets, not legally. Hong Kong regulates the premises under Cap. 633. Canada regulates whether a service may be billed to a patient. Thailand regulates what a facility may say about itself. Vietnam regulates the practitioner, on a five year cycle with a competency assessment phasing in. Compliance in one predicts nothing about the next.
What a Clinic Listing Is Worth Seventeen Days Later
A directory entry is a claim about a business on a particular day. Read seventeen of them twice, seventeen days apart, and three come out somewhere other than where they went in, while a fourth cannot be read on either day. The useful thing a record can publish is not the listing. It is the date it last looked.

Questions

Frequently asked questions

Does any health regulator define what a longevity clinic must provide?

Abu Dhabi's Department of Health does. Its Healthy Longevity Medicine Clinic Standard, reference DOH/SD/HLMCS/HCF/ V1/2024, publication date October 2024 and effective date April 2025, sets the minimum requirements for the provision of healthy longevity medicine clinic services in the Emirate of Abu Dhabi and applies to all healthcare facilities the Department licenses to provide them. On the sources the Atlas has checked it is the only dedicated longevity clinic licensing standard in effect anywhere.

What diagnostics does the Abu Dhabi standard make mandatory?

Appendix 1 lists them as Mandatory: medical, family and environmental history; psychosocial health assessment; neurological health covering cognitive tests, mood assessment and sleep assessment; screening and vaccination history; medication and supplement history; lifestyle assessment; validated risk prediction questionnaires such as QRISK, Test2Prevent and the Framingham Risk Score; vital signs and physical examination; bioelectrical impedance analysis; metabolic function assessment; renal function tests; liver function tests; a hormonal profile; inflammatory markers; and urinalysis.

Is an epigenetic clock or a whole-body MRI required?

Neither is in the Mandatory tier. DNA methylation and advanced imaging described as whole body MRI both appear in Appendix 1 under Optional AND needs further validation, alongside whole genome and whole exome testing for people without known family or personal risk, other microbiome testing, immunophenotyping, glycan testing and advanced proteomic and metabolomic panels.

What does the standard say about NAD drips, stem cells and hyperbaric oxygen?

Appendix 2 codes interventions green, orange or red against a printed legend. Green is Applicable. Orange is Per discretion/ guidelines of clinic policy. Red is Not Currently Applicable / Needs further data. IV infusions, given in the table as NAD and precursors or derivatives, vitamins and other supplements, are red. So are IV stem cell infusions, gene therapy, exosome treatment, plasmapheresis and hyperbaric oxygen treatment. Repurposed drugs in off-label use and oral dietary supplements and nutraceuticals are orange.

Who has to work in a licensed healthy longevity medicine clinic?

The standard requires a multidisciplinary team including, at a minimum, physicians who have completed specialty training and worked as senior physicians beforehand, with at least five years of experience in a related field or formal training in healthy longevity medicine, lifestyle medicine and disease prevention; registered nurses; and allied health professionals including a clinical dietitian, physiotherapists and exercise physiologists, pharmacists, a psychologist and a health coach. Healthcare professionals should obtain ten continuing medical education credits in healthy longevity medicine annually, in addition to the credits required for primary license renewal.