8 Opening its doors in 1981, Samel Hospital has grown into one of the most respected and comprehensive healthcare institutions in Brazil’s North Region. Comprising three hospitals and six medical centres, with two additional hospitals currently under construction, Samel’s distinction lies in its multidisciplinary team of more than 1,500 employees and 900 physicians. Samel’s delivery of care is also aided by the SAMIA platform, for which it has received recognition in this programme. For more on Samel Hospital and its digital health innovation, we caught up with Zaira Nicolau. For 45 years, Samel Hospital has stood as a reference in healthcare across Brazil, with its seamless blending of tradition, innovation, and a genuine commitment to life having guided both the institution itself and its patients to a brighter, healthier present. The work Samel carries out revolves around 24/7 medical assistance delivered across multiple specialties and levels of complexity, with hospital services, emergency care, and diagnostic support being just some of the areas covered by the institution. There is an emphasis across all of these areas on improving patient outcomes, enhancing operational efficiency, and democratising access to advanced healthcare. As Zaira Nicolau told us: “Our focus is the integration of clinical excellence, technological innovation, and a strong people-centred culture to deliver high-quality, humanised care. We are particularly engaged in developing and implementing solutions that improve real-world care delivery.” Samel Hospital has a dedicated innovation environment where emerging technologies are transformed into tools that are useful, safe, and scalable, all within routine clinical practice. They can then be used to better serve the patients, clinicians, and healthcare teams across its diverse and dynamic care network. A great example of the high-calibre solutions this environment produces is SAMIA (Samel Artificial Intelligence), a platform integrated into Samel’s electronic health record and clinic workflows. Explaining this hospital artificial intelligence platform in more detail, Zaira Nicolau commented: “Acting as a clinical copilot, SAMIA supports healthcare professionals throughout the patient journey by assisting with digital pre-triage, structured history-taking, clinical documentation, diagnostic reasoning, exam recommendations, medication interaction alerts, and discharge guidance.” The recommendations it provides are sourced from a combination of the latest scientific evidence, international clinical guidelines, and institutional protocol. “Samel Hospital elevates clinical excellence and humanised care with SAMIA. Real-time AI support helps clinicians focus on patient-centred care, boosts productivity, and enables safer, standardised, evidence-based decisions across the care journey.” One of the defining features of SAMIA is its ability to deliver specialist AI agents, with these providing immediate, science-backed support to physicians during care delivery. The impact of this has been significant, with its implementation in Samel’s emergency department seeing time to first evaluation down by 34% and average length of stay in the department reduced by 24%. This is not all, as a 98% reliability rate was achieved across AI-generated histories, as well as an approximately 90% alignment with the physician’s final diagnosis. Lastly, as seen through SAMIA making medication interaction analysis 68% faster, both clinical efficiency and patient safety have seen demonstrable enhancements through the platform, which streamlines everything from electronic health record integration to clinical decision support. It therefore stands as a marker of digital health innovation in this space, and is something Samel is rightfully very proud of. Both SAMIA and Samel Health Tech more broadly benefit from the in-house development team Samel have in this area, as it these professionals who accelerate the creation and implementation of its digital health solutions. As Zaira Nicolau herself put it: “Through our in-house development team, we turn real frontline needs into scalable digital solutions.” AI may be aiding massively in this, but it is not replacing the institution’s fundamentals. For instance, Samel is, on an institutional level, guided by the core values of clinical excellence, integrity, innovation, humanised care, and accountability. Its overarching goal is to deliver high-quality healthcare, all whilst simultaneously improving outcomes, access, and efficiency through the responsible advancements it stands for concerning this technology development. Zaira Nicolau believes strict adherence to these values has a direct link with the high levels of satisfaction patients continue to report. “Our patients report high satisfaction throughout their care journey, while our technology helps make processes faster, more organized, and more secure.” Against this backdrop, Samel’s team have strongly embraced innovation and are actively contributing to the growth of the institution, focusing first and foremost on what makes it unique in Brazil’s healthcare landscape. This ultimately boils down to clinical excellence, humanised care, and practical innovation, all of which it offers within real-world healthcare environments. The value this brings is what makes it such a key sector player. Leading AI Clinical Copilot Transforming Care Delivery 2026 – Brazil
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