Abstract
Rapid urbanization, extreme climates, and changing lifestyles in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) countries have produced high levels of sedentary behavior and a rising burden of non-communicable diseases (NCDs). This paper reports a scoping review, conducted following the Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses extension for Scoping Reviews (PRISMA-ScR), of PubMed, ScienceDirect, EBSCOhost, and the MDPI platform (searches run on 27 October 2026 for publications from 2019 to 2025; gray literature in force on that date), which we use to synthesize evidence on built-environment drivers of sedentarism. The scoping review synthesizes published evidence, whereas the “Preventive Home” presented afterwards is a hypothesis-oriented conceptual output, not a finding of the review, and requires empirical validation. On this evidentiary basis, we then propose a multidisciplinary conceptual framework that integrates smart residential architecture, green building standards, and preventive medicine to hypothesize that prolonged sitting could be reduced and family stability supported across Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the UAE. We evaluate privacy-preserving Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) interventions (e.g., Wi-Fi Channel State Information, passive infrared sensors, smart furniture) that could technically be exchanged using the Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR) standard (which standardizes data-exchange formats only and does not resolve institutional or legal interoperability), while noting that most supporting evidence for these sensing modalities originates from non-GCC and controlled settings and therefore requires local validation. Findings indicate an annual regional economic burden of roughly $50 billion from all NCDs combined (not from sedentary behavior alone, and not a loss that housing could be assumed to recover); a separately reported estimate of a nearly $5 return per $1 invested refers to broader national-level preventive NCD programs in the region and should not be interpreted as an evaluated return on the residential intervention proposed here. We propose a “Preventive Home” conceptual framework combining culturally adapted active design, ambient sensing, and a proposed pathway for electronic health record integration, together with an explicit discussion of the data-governance and consent questions this raises. To illustrate this conceptually, the paper presents an illustrative architectural design application of a three-story villa-type residential unit, which has not been constructed, simulated, or empirically tested, showing the vertical integration of a basement wellness and data hub, a culturally responsive active-living ground floor, and visually connected private suites; adaptation of the concept to apartments, social housing, and existing building stock is identified as a priority for future work. Policy recommendations are framed as pilot-first research and policy options (e.g., voluntary, evaluated pilots of IoMT-ready infrastructure in selected social-housing projects, and exploring behavioral health metrics in green building systems) rather than mandates, with equitable procurement considered to avoid a digital divide. The framework is offered as a hypothesis-generating, evidence-informed agenda rather than a validated intervention, intended to reposition housing as a potentially important preventive health asset in the GCC, pending empirical evaluation.