The Saudi Gastroenterology Association has signed a partnership agreement with AbbVie to bring Rafeeq (رفيق) — a free, bilingual, non-medical companion app for people living with Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis — to patients across Saudi Arabia.
The Rafeeq × AbbVie Partnership Agreement announcement, September 2026.
The Saudi Gastroenterology Association (SGA) has signed a partnership agreement with AbbVie to launch Rafeeq (رفيق) — a free, bilingual companion app for people living with inflammatory bowel disease (IBD), covering both Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis. The agreement was marked with a signing ceremony this September, and the app is now live at rafeeq.saudigastro.com.
Rafeeq is built around daily self-tracking: symptoms, bowel movements, meals and FODMAP notes, sleep, mood and activity can all be logged in seconds. It also includes the IBD-DISC self-check, medication and lab logs, and descriptive weekly and monthly reports that show patients what they have logged over time. A "share with my doctor" feature turns those logs into a clinician-ready summary a patient can bring to their next appointment.
"A new chapter in IBD support is coming to Saudi Arabia."
The app is explicit about what it is not. Its onboarding screens state plainly that Rafeeq "is a non-medical health companion designed to help you record and reflect on your daily wellbeing," that it "does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, predictions, or treatment recommendations" and "is not a medical device," and that every chart and summary it generates is descriptive only — showing patients what they logged, never telling them what they should do. Health logs are stored on the patient's own device, and use of the app is entirely free, with no account required to get started.
Rafeeq is fully bilingual, with complete Arabic and English content and native right-to-left support for Arabic users, alongside broader IBD education content designed for life in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf. It is installable as a web app on iOS, Android, and desktop directly from rafeeq.saudigastro.com.
Rafeeq was developed in partnership with AbbVie. Per the terms of that partnership, the Saudi Gastroenterology Association states that the industry partner played no role in developing, reviewing, or determining the app's clinical content — the app's features and educational material remain solely the Association's own.
