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

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.

Find out more:

• The Straits Times: SingHealth, A*STAR to collaborate, fund innovative projects to advancemedical technology
• CNA: SingHealth and A*STAR partner to provide $8m in funding support for healthcareresearch projects [VIDEO]
• 8world.com: SingHealth and A*STAR collaborate to support projects in three key areas of healthcare innovation