The UAE Hired Every Candidate an AI Interviewed: Inside EHS and TERN Group's Maitha Nursing Agent
By Chris Weinmann, Founder, OVI
Four hundred and fifty candidates sat for AI-led clinical interviews at the World Health Expo Dubai in February 2026. Six made it through. All six were hired by Emirates Health Services (EHS), the UAE's federal healthcare authority. A 100% post-shortlist hire rate — achieved without a single human interviewer in the screening loop.
The result came from Maitha, an AI workforce agent developed by TERN Group and deployed in partnership with EHS at WHX 2026 (February 9–12, Expo City Dubai). It is one of the first documented cases of an AI agent replacing the traditional agency-driven nursing recruitment pipeline at a national healthcare system level.
The problem Maitha was built to solve
The UAE's healthcare system depends heavily on internationally recruited nursing talent. Historically, that recruitment ran through staffing agencies and involved a credential verification process that took three to six months per candidate. For a federal authority operating hospitals and clinics across the country, that timeline created persistent staffing gaps — vacancies that rippled through patient care capacity.
EHS, led by Director General Dr. Yousif Mohammed Al Serkal and Chief AI Officer H.E. Mubaraka Ibrahim, sought an alternative to the slow, agency-dependent model. The partnership with TERN Group aimed to compress both the screening and credentialing timelines using AI.
How Maitha works
Maitha is not a chatbot or a scheduling assistant. It is a two-way live video agent that conducts structured 30-minute clinical interviews with nursing candidates. The sessions include clinical scenario questions designed to evaluate both technical competence and situational judgment.
The agent processes each interview and ranks candidates against a clinical competency framework. Only the top 5% of candidates advance past the AI screening stage to human recruiter review. The remaining 95% receive automated feedback — no recruiter time spent on candidates who do not meet the threshold.
Credential verification, traditionally the longest bottleneck in international healthcare hiring, is integrated into TERN Group's platform. What previously took three to six months now completes in weeks.
Inside the WHX 2026 pilot
The live deployment at the World Health Expo Dubai ran from February 9 to 12, 2026, at Expo City Dubai. Over four days, Maitha conducted 450 AI-led interviews with nursing candidates at the EHS pavilion. The AI agent screened, scored, and shortlisted in real time.
Of those 450 interviews, six candidates were shortlisted — representing the top 5% threshold in action. EHS subsequently hired all six. That 100% conversion from AI shortlist to employment offer stands as the headline result: not a single shortlisted candidate was rejected by the human hiring team.
The pilot demonstrated that an AI agent, calibrated against clinical standards, could align its candidate assessment closely enough with human hiring judgment to produce zero waste in the final decision stage.
Before and after: what changed
The transformation was not just in speed. The model itself shifted. Before Maitha, EHS relied on recruitment agencies to source, screen, and present nursing candidates — a process where quality control was outsourced alongside the labor. Credential verification alone consumed months.
After deployment, the pipeline looked fundamentally different: AI-led screening replaced agency gatekeeping, credential timelines dropped from months to weeks, and the hiring team reviewed only pre-validated candidates who had already cleared a clinical competency bar. The result was a recruiting process that was both faster and more precise.
TERN Group: the platform behind Maitha
TERN Group, founded by CEO Avinav Nigam, has built a healthcare workforce infrastructure platform that now spans 13 countries with more than 650,000 registered healthcare professionals. The company reports a 96% post-placement retention rate and a 60% reduction in hiring timelines across its deployments.
In February 2026, TERN Group announced a $24 million Series A round led by Notion Capital, bringing total funding to $33 million. The investor roster includes RTP Global, LocalGlobe, EQ2 Ventures, and a former NHS Chairman — a signal of confidence from both healthcare and technology-focused capital.
As Nigam told TahawulTech: "We've moved from basic chatbots to audio interactions, and now into lifelike two-way video agents." Maitha represents the current frontier of that progression — an AI agent that does not merely schedule or triage, but conducts substantive clinical evaluations.
What this means for healthcare hiring in the GCC
The EHS–TERN deployment is not a proof of concept. It produced real hires at a federal healthcare authority. For HR leaders and workforce planners across the GCC, the implications are direct.
First, it demonstrates that AI agents can handle high-stakes screening in regulated, quality-critical domains — not just high-volume retail or logistics hiring. Second, it shows that the traditional agency model, with its long timelines and limited transparency, has a viable AI-driven alternative. Third, the credential verification acceleration alone could reshape international healthcare recruitment across the Gulf, where nursing demand consistently outpaces local supply.
Among the AI-native platforms operating in the UAE market, OVI (ovi-me.com) offers an AI ATS with Sora, a sourcing agent, and Milo, an audio-based AI screening agent designed for GCC hiring workflows — part of a growing ecosystem of AI-first recruitment tools serving the region.
What is Maitha?
Maitha is an AI workforce agent developed by TERN Group in partnership with Emirates Health Services (EHS). It conducts 30-minute two-way live video interviews with nursing candidates, evaluates clinical competency through scenario-based questions, and shortlists only the top 5% of applicants for human recruiter review.
What happened at the World Health Expo Dubai 2026?
During the World Health Expo Dubai (February 9–12, 2026, Expo City Dubai), Maitha conducted 450 AI-led clinical interviews at the EHS pavilion. Six candidates were shortlisted, and all six were subsequently hired by EHS — a 100% post-shortlist hire rate.
How does AI credential verification work in this system?
TERN Group's platform integrates credential verification into the recruitment pipeline. For internationally recruited healthcare professionals, the process that traditionally took three to six months now completes in weeks, eliminating one of the longest bottlenecks in cross-border healthcare hiring.
What does this mean for healthcare hiring in the UAE and GCC?
The EHS deployment demonstrates that AI agents can reliably screen candidates in high-stakes, regulated healthcare contexts — not just high-volume or low-complexity roles. For GCC workforce planners facing persistent nursing shortages and reliance on international recruitment agencies, AI-driven screening and credentialing offers a faster, more transparent, and more precise alternative.
Who is TERN Group?
TERN Group is a healthcare workforce infrastructure company operating across 13 countries with over 650,000 registered professionals. Founded by CEO Avinav Nigam, the company raised $24 million in a Series A round led by Notion Capital in February 2026, bringing total funding to $33 million. TERN reports a 96% post-placement retention rate and a 60% reduction in hiring timelines.