Abu Dhabi, in the United Arab Emirates, is the one place Healthspan Economy has found that licenses longevity medicine clinics as their own category. Its Department of Health’s Healthy Longevity Medicine Clinic Standard has been in effect since April 2025, and of the 18 national markets whose regulation Healthspan Economy has read from primary sources, it is the only dedicated longevity clinic license found in effect.

As of September 29, 2026. The market reads ran between July and September 2026.

In the other markets the atlas has read, a longevity clinic is licensed, where it is licensed at all, under a general category. Abu Dhabi is where the license and the label are the same document.

What Abu Dhabi’s standard requires

The standard sets the minimum requirements for healthy longevity medicine clinic services in the Emirate and applies to every facility the Department licenses to provide them. It does three things a buyer can use.

First, it fixes the assessment. The Mandatory tier is conventional medicine done thoroughly: history taking, psychosocial and neurological assessment, a lifestyle assessment, validated risk questionnaires, vital signs and a physical examination, bioelectrical impedance analysis and blood and urine tests covering metabolic, renal, liver, hormonal and inflammatory markers.

Second, it sorts the famous tests by evidence. Whole body MRI and DNA methylation, two of the category’s best-known products, appear under the standard’s own heading Optional AND needs further validation. Telomere length and liquid biopsies appear under Not Recommended outside of research protocol.

Third, it sets who does the work. The service is delivered by a multidisciplinary team that includes, at a minimum, physicians with at least five years of experience in a related field or formal training in healthy longevity medicine, registered nurses and allied health professionals. Adults aged 18 and above who meet its eligibility criteria can walk in without a referral.

The whole document, tier by tier, is read end to end in What Abu Dhabi’s Longevity Clinic Standard Actually Requires.

Put together, those three give anyone a checklist that travels. Ask a clinic in any city whether it takes a full history and examines you, who reads your results and what their training is, and which of its tests the evidence supports today.

Where Dubai stands

Dubai has moved, but it has not licensed a longevity clinic yet on the sources checked. Law No. 17 of 2026, issued June 10, 2026, established the Dubai Longevity Authority with a mandate to license the value chain from research to patient clinics. As of July 2026 the authority was standing up its licensing regime rather than issuing longevity clinic licenses. Healthspan Economy has not re-checked it since.

Dubai does already regulate one slice of the menu. The Dubai Health Authority’s Standards for Stem Cells and Regenerative Medicine, effective April 20, 2025, bind stem cell and regenerative services in the facilities it licenses.

What everywhere else does

The other markets reach a longevity clinic through a general instrument. Two examples from the atlas’s assertion layer:

  • Singapore: the Healthcare Services Act lists sixteen licensable services, none of them longevity, so a longevity clinic holds an Outpatient Medical Service license.
  • Hong Kong SAR: clinics offering longevity and preventive services are regulated as one of four private healthcare facility types under the Private Healthcare Facilities Ordinance (Cap. 633), with no longevity-specific category.

The full comparison, with the product and laboratory rules that govern cell therapies and tests, is in Longevity Clinic Regulation, Market by Market.

What this page does not say

It does not say which facilities hold an Abu Dhabi license. Healthspan Economy records the licensing act, its issuer, its date and its source, and does not publish a license status for any operator. The United Arab Emirates page records 36 organizations under the atlas’s own scope rule, which is a different test from the Department’s. For how the atlas counts the field worldwide, see How many longevity clinics are there, and where are they?

If a scan is what you are weighing, the standard’s view of whole body MRI sits alongside a practical question about who explains the result: Does a full-body scan include a doctor?

This is a record, not legal or medical advice.

Sources