Addressing National Challenges with Multi-Disciplinary R&D Capabilities
Transforming the Future of Healthcare: Singhealth and A*STAR Partner to Foster Healthcare Innovations
13 Apr 2023
SingHealth-A*STAR Healthcare Translation Partnership signing ceremony
From left: Prof Thomas Coffman, Dean, Duke-NUS Medical School; Prof Ivy Ng, Group CEO,
SingHealth; Mr Cheng Wai Keung, Chairman, SingHealth; Mr Frederick Chew, CEO, A*STAR; Ms Chan
Lai Fung, Chairman, A*STAR
SingHealth and A*STAR have announced a Healthcare Translation Partnership (HTP) on 11 April 2023
to accelerate the translation, deployment and commercialisation of healthcare research and
innovation projects for better patient care. Jointly funded by both parties, the partnership will
provide S$8 million in support for projects, and focuses on three healthcare innovation areas,
namely Medical Technology; Data Science, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Digital Health; as well as
Health Services Innovation.
It can be challenging to translate upstream scientific discoveries into downstream, practical solutions
that can be applied in clinical settings.
The HTP aims to address this by establishing a framework and consolidating resources and support
systems to facilitate joint projects between the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre
(AMC) and A*STAR. For example, there will be a dedicated partnership office which will coordinate
and address the translation challenges holistically. The HTP will also build important bridges
between experts in the three healthcare innovation focus areas, enabling clinicians, healthcare
innovators, researchers and industry partners to collaborate and accelerate the research translation
process.
The first project to be supported under the partnership is THEA (Terahertz High Definition Eye
Analysis), which addresses Ocular Surface Disease (OSD), a priority eye condition highlighted by the
World Health Organization in 2019.
Additionally, building upon the longstanding partnership between both SingHealth and A*STAR in
the digital health space, the Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI) under SingHealth and A*STAR’s
Institute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) have also partnered to establish the SERI-IHPC Joint
Lab to drive AI research and adoption of digital technologies in eye care. Announced alongside the
HTP, the joint lab will support the development of digital infrastructure that supports and promotes
enterprise AI in healthcare, including a clinical and technical AI sandbox to enable AI model training
and testing between SingHealth, A*STAR and other industry partners.
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