A fragmented health system — and your data lost between its cracks.
The Arab care recipient moves between pharmacy, clinic, and lab with no single connected record. And the existing options each fail, in their own way.
Paper and WhatsApp
Free and familiar — but no continuity, no security, no record that lasts. Data is lost with the first prescription.
Legacy local systems
Arabic, but closed, expensive, and unable to work offline. They trap you without giving you ownership of your data.
Foreign cloud platforms
Powerful, but built abroad, blind to your context, and placing Arab health data on distant servers.
Poor-quality products
Apps shipped in a hurry — buggy and badly designed, losing the trust of anyone who tries them.
Data lock-in
Moving from one system to another is near impossible — closed formats and limited export keep your data hostage with a single vendor.
Weak support
When something breaks, nobody answers — no support line, no response, no fix until you have lost time and trust.
One system. Two apps, and an optional cloud.
From Balsm Pro to the care recipient app to Balsm Cloud — each works on its own, and grows stronger together.
Care recipient app
Your entire health journey in one place — every prescription, visit, and test. On your device, by a design that never leaves it.
Balsm Pro app
For your clinic, hospital, pharmacy, or medical store: dispensing, inventory, care recipient files, and management — fully offline, and compliant with controlled-drugs regulations.
Balsm Cloud
The optional cloud layer — cross-branch sync, backup, and lab integration. You subscribe only when you choose.
Your health, finally in its rightful place.
Carry your complete health record in your pocket — in Arabic, on your device, going nowhere you didn't choose.
Openness
The code is open. The roadmap is open. The decisions are open.
Ownership
Your data. Your infrastructure. Your rules. No lock-in.
Community
The ecosystem outlasts any single product.
Arabness
Arabic isn't a translation — it's the original.
Resilience
Works in the village as well as it works in the city.
Craft
Healthcare deserves more than just good enough.
Balsm is built for you — whatever your role.
Join Balsm Cloud.
Be among the first to build, run, or support the first community-driven healthcare OS for the Arab world. We'll email you when your region launches.
What people ask about Balsm
What is Balsm?
Balsm is a community-owned healthcare operating system for the Arab world — Arabic-first, offline-ready, and fully open source. It connects the parts of care that usually cannot talk to each other: clinics, pharmacies, and labs. It is being built in Egypt, for the whole Arab region.
Is Balsm open source?
Yes. The code is public for inspection and contribution, and the project is developed in the open on GitHub. The specific licence will be announced before launch.
Who owns Balsm?
The community that uses it. Balsm is built to be governed by its users rather than owned by a vendor — that is the point of the project, and open source is the mechanism that makes it enforceable rather than a promise.
Does Balsm work without an internet connection?
Yes. Balsm is designed offline-first, so a pharmacy on an unreliable connection works the same as one in a capital city. Care does not stop when connectivity does, and data syncs once the connection returns.
Which countries does Balsm serve?
Egypt is the launch market. The Gulf states — Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Qatar, Kuwait, Bahrain and Oman — are the Phase 2 vision, with the rest of the Arab world in the long-term vision.
What is Balsm Cloud, and is it required?
Balsm Cloud is an optional hosted layer that adds branch sync, encrypted backups, lab integration over FHIR, and analytics. It is optional by design: Balsm runs without it, and you can export your data and leave at any time.
How is care recipient data protected?
Data is encrypted, access is controlled and audited, and the system is built so a practice keeps custody of its own records. Because the code is open, these claims can be inspected rather than taken on trust. No compliance certifications have been announced yet.
Has Balsm launched, and what does it cost?
Not yet — Balsm is pre-launch and is being built in the open. No pricing has been announced. The clearest way to follow progress, or influence it, is the GitHub organisation.
How can I contribute?
Engineering is only one of eight contributor roles. Clinical review, design, translation, legal, project management, advocacy and QA all move the project forward. The Contributors page lists the roles and the currently open issues.