‘Diseases, unfortunately, do not sleep’: How CDA is using AI to lead S’pore’s infectious diseases fight

SINGAPORE – With the risk of another pandemic ever present, the Communicable Diseases Agency (CDA) is exploring the use of artificial intelligence in disease surveillance, said CDA chief executive officer Vernon Lee.

The technology can complement existing surveillance strategies by going through international disease reports to assist in detecting and assessing potential outbreaks, he said.

It can also recommend possible responses to these outbreaks, said Lee, who is also an adjunct professor with the National University of Singapore’s Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.

CDA’s adoption of AI capabilities will complement its existing surveillance technologies, including genomic sequencing and wastewater surveillance.

The agency is also exploring other applications of AI, such as natural language processing and agentic AI frameworks, to strengthen its data analytics and infectious disease modelling capabilities.

It aims to harness these technologies to enhance monitoring and prediction of disease trends, ultimately providing more timely and evidence-based policy decision support.

Lee noted that CDA has also been employing technology in other areas, such as its new platform with the Ministry of Health (MOH) to improve the data notification process; and its National Public Health Laboratory with cutting-edge diagnostic technologies, whole genome sequencing and systems to integrate data-sharing between laboratories.

He stressed, however, that humans remain essential to CDA’s work, and that AI could help free up staff for more analytical and policy-making activities, tapping data provided by the technology.

“So we see that using this technology can actually help us to move our capabilities forward a lot quicker,” said Lee, adding that this would mean training the agency’s staff in its use.

Lee’s comments come after healthcare was identified as one of the Republic’s four national AI missions in February.

He was speaking to The Straits Times at the CDA office at Novena Square, in an interview marking the first year of the agency’s operations.

First mooted by Health Minister Ong Ye Kung in 2023 during the parliamentary debate on the Covid-19 White Paper, the CDA was set up in April 2025 to consolidate public health efforts to detect, prevent and control infectious diseases.

Chaired by director-general of health Kenneth Mak, the agency is headed by Lee, who was previously executive director of the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID) and has been involved in Singapore’s responses to various diseases, including the Zika outbreak in 2016 and the Covid-19 pandemic.

CDA is Singapore’s first new statutory board since the Home Team Science and Technology Agency was launched in December 2019.

The agency brought together functions previously spread between MOH, the Health Promotion Board and NCID.

It has more than 400 staff across areas such as surveillance, epidemiology, case investigations and contact tracing as well as policy formulation.

Pandemic preparedness

Lee noted that the agency has undertaken several initiatives over the past year, pointing to efforts such as the introduction of the pandemic preparedness and response framework in July 2025.

CDA has also made moves to enhance the Republic’s vaccination efforts, adding new vaccines for shingles and pneumococcal disease to the national immunisation schedule, he added.

It also launched the One Health masterplan, an inter-agency effort which acknowledges the links between human, animal and environmental health.

In recent months, several infectious diseases have made headlines, both in Singapore and internationally.

An outbreak of hantavirus infection was detected in April on the Dutch cruise ship MV Hondius, with two Singapore residents among those on board.

And in May, the World Health Organization declared an outbreak of the Bundibugyo strain of Ebola in the Democratic Republic of the Congo – where more than 200 people have died from the disease – as a public health emergency of international concern.

Closer to home, a total of 36 cases of measles have been reported here in 2026 as at end-May, exceeding the 27 recorded for the whole of 2025, while mass screening for tuberculosis was conducted in Bedok after three clusters were reported in the area.

When such incidents occur, the CDA tries to get as much information about the outbreak as possible to make an assessment on the risk to Singapore, Lee said.

“Based on that assessment, we will then put out necessary measures to protect Singapore and Singaporeans, and also let everyone know what is the risk posed by these diseases,” he said.

“I think it is a balance between not panicking unnecessarily, and also being alert,” he added, noting that such assessments can change as the situation changes or new information becomes apparent.

Such flexibility – built into the Republic’s pandemic preparedness framework – helped Singapore handle the Covid-19 pandemic, and will help it cope should another pandemic emerge, he added.

The best form of protection is being connected to global surveillance systems that allow for early warnings when such infectious diseases emerge, he said.

He added that CDA also partners with international organisations to learn how to better detect signals as well as having a greater understanding of how such diseases emerge and the risks they pose.

Lee, who has more than 20 years in the field, said the 2003 outbreak of severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, which resulted in 33 deaths here, cemented his decision to dedicate his career to tackling infectious diseases.

Then a junior doctor, Lee noted that he knew people who had died from the disease, including vascular surgeon Alexandre Chao, whom he considered a mentor.

In 2003, Chao returned home from a holiday in the United States to help deal with SARS, only to succumb to the disease.

“It really hit me that infectious diseases, that people thought were a thing of the past, can hit home on a very real basis, both at a population level and also a personal level,” he said.

Over the past two decades, he has been busier than he could imagine, said Lee.

“Diseases, unfortunately, do not sleep. They’re always looking for ways to infect and spread among people, so we have to always also keep abreast and be one step ahead of the diseases that we’re faced with,” he said.