Dr. Rida Khadra
Rida Khadra, M.D., MBA, is the Founder and CEO of the SHIELD Longevity program, a hybrid digital wellness and health management clinic serving the MENA and GCC regions, and Senior International Business Development Director at Apex Health, the healthcare arm of Qatar’s Estithmar Holding.
A consultant ophthalmologist with more than 30 years in medicine, he bridges clinical practice, business strategy, and digital innovation to build sustainable, future-ready healthcare systems across the Middle East.
Rida launched SHIELD Longevity in March 2024 around a simple conviction: “Aging is a systems failure, not a collection of lab abnormalities.” Under the tagline “Grow Young Again”, the AI-driven program delivers evidence-based interventions designed to increase healthspan and quality of life — biological age assessment and reversal, hormonal optimization, inflammaging control, microbiome normalization, stress and sleep management, personalized exercise and nutrition planning, and advanced modalities including peptide, exosome, and IV therapies. SHIELD operates as a hybrid digital clinic across MENA and the GCC, with a physical SHIELD Longevity Clinic now underway.
Since September 2025, Rida has led the international expansion at Apex Health from Doha, Qatar. Rebranded from Elegancia Healthcare in September 2024, Apex Health operates eight hospitals with more than 2,800 beds and over 15,000 managed staff across Qatar, Iraq, Libya, and Algeria, and is part of Estithmar Holding — a publicly listed Qatari group of 117 companies across 10 countries — itself part of Power International Holding, Qatar’s diversified business conglomerate.
Rida drives the company’s entry into new markets across India, Africa, the GCC, and Central Asia through Public-Private Partnership (PPP) and Build-Operate-Transfer (BOT) structures. He builds alliances with ministries of health, investment authorities, hospitals, and academic institutions; and introduces AI-driven health technologies, longevity medicine, genomic testing, and advanced diagnostics into new geographies. Read Estithmar Holding announces rebranding of subsidiary Elegancia Healthcare to Apex Health.
Alongside his executive roles, Rida has practiced since July 2022 as a Consultant Ophthalmologist at Beirut Eye & ENT Specialist Hospital, a dedicated eye and ear, nose, and throat specialty hospital, and at Sahel General Hospital, both in Beirut, Lebanon.
His executive record spans Saudi Arabia’s private healthcare sector. From June 2021 to May 2022, Rida served as Chief Strategy Officer — and concurrently as consultant ophthalmologist — at Almoosa Specialist Hospital in Al Ahsa, Saudi Arabia. From October 2019 to June 2021, he was Chief Executive Business Development Officer and consultant ophthalmologist at Dr. Samir Abbas Hospital in Jeddah.
Before that, he spent nearly 13 years with the International Medical Center, joining as a Consultant Ophthalmologist in 2006, directing its Eye Centre from February 2008 to December 2018, and serving concurrently as its Strategic Marketing Director from May 2017 to December 2018. He entered practice with United Medical Group, where he worked as an ophthalmologist from January 2002 to February 2006.
Rida earned his M.D. from the Lebanese University School of Medical Sciences in 1994 and completed the Jordanian Board of Ophthalmology in 2001. He earned an MBA in Healthcare from Spain’s UCAM Universidad Católica San Antonio de Murcia in 2021 and a certificate from Harvard Medical School’s Leading Digital Transformation in Healthcare executive program in 2022.
Between 2023 and 2025, he trained at the Functional Medicine Coaching Academy, and since June 2025, he has been pursuing the Fellowship in Anti-Aging and Regenerative Medicine of The American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M) — the FAARM credential carried in his professional title.
He pairs his medical training with formal commercial credentials, earning the Certified Brand Manager qualification from AIPMM (the Association of International Product Marketing and Management) in 2018 and the Certified ROI Marketer® designation from The Fournaise Marketing Institute the same year.
Rida is also a Social Media Medical Ambassador, producing Arabic-language educational content on biological aging, longevity, fasting, chronic disease prevention, and eye health across his TikTok and YouTube channels, which aim to raise public health awareness in the region. Read his post From Normal to Optimal for Longevity.
Rida lives in Beirut, Lebanon, and is based on-site in Doha, Qatar, for his work with Apex Health.
Visit his LinkedIn profile and his physician profile at Dr. Samir Abbas Hospital. Follow him on Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, X, and YouTube.