Transforming the Future of Healthcare: Singhealth and A*STAR Partnership

Transforming the Future of Healthcare
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 ChanLai Fung, Chairman, A*STAR

SingHealth and A*STAR have announced a Healthcare Translation Partnership (HTP) on 11 April 2023to accelerate the translation, deployment and commercialisation of healthcare research andinnovation projects for better patient care. Jointly funded by both parties, the partnership willprovide 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 asHealth Services Innovation.

It can be challenging to translate upstream scientific discoveries into downstream, practical solutionsthat can be applied in clinical settings.

The HTP aims to address this by establishing a framework and consolidating resources and supportsystems 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 coordinateand address the translation challenges holistically. The HTP will also build important bridgesbetween experts in the three healthcare innovation focus areas, enabling clinicians, healthcareinnovators, researchers and industry partners to collaborate and accelerate the research translationprocess.

The first project to be supported under the partnership is THEA (Terahertz High Definition EyeAnalysis), which addresses Ocular Surface Disease (OSD), a priority eye condition highlighted by theWorld Health Organization in 2019.

Additionally, building upon the longstanding partnership between both SingHealth and A*STAR inthe digital health space, the Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI) under SingHealth and A*STAR’sInstitute of High Performance Computing (IHPC) have also partnered to establish the SERI-IHPC JointLab to drive AI research and adoption of digital technologies in eye care. Announced alongside theHTP, the joint lab will support the development of digital infrastructure that supports and promotesenterprise AI in healthcare, including a clinical and technical AI sandbox to enable AI model trainingand testing between SingHealth, A*STAR and other industry partners.

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Transforming the Future of Healthcare: Singhealth and A*STAR Partner to Foster Healthcare Innovations