Healthcare group partners NTU to better integrate healthcare, education and research

SINGAPORE - To better address challenges such as an ageing population and an increase in chronic diseases, the National Healthcare Group (NHG) is partnering with Nanyang Technological University’s (NTU) Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine).

The collaboration aims to achieve greater integration of healthcare, education and research, LKCMedicine and NHG said.

LKCMedicine was established in 2010 as Singapore’s third medical school, while NHG is the public healthcare cluster for central and northern Singapore.

The two will sign a memorandum of understanding at the 22nd Singapore Health & Biomedical Congress, which will be held at the Singapore Expo on Oct 10.

The agreement with LKCMedicine serves as a bridge to other disciplines across NTU, said Professor Benjamin Seet, group chairman of the medical board for research at NHG.

This is important because healthcare is no longer just a matter of providing medicine and understanding diseases but rather requires an interdisciplinary approach, said Prof Seet, who is also co-chair of NHG’s academic partnership office.

“It’s also about how you actually apply engineering, how you apply data, how you apply AI (artificial intelligence) in the workspace,” he told reporters during a briefing on Oct 2.

Professor Joseph Sung, dean of LKCMedicine, said: “We need to change our way of teaching students, as well as training allied health people, so that we can harness the capability of technology in the delivery of healthcare.”

Prof Seet noted that the partnership between the two will also allow research activities to take on a more concerted, strategic approach.

As part of the partnership, NHG and LKCMedicine will establish an initiative dubbed the NHG-LKCMedicine-NTU Singapore Academic Health System (AHS), which aims to “provide a comprehensive and interdisciplinary framework to advance medical knowledge and education for better patient outcomes and population health impact”.

Such an approach has been shown to lead to better clinical outcomes, greater adoption of new technologies and a richer learning environment for future healthcare leaders, said NHG and LKCMedicine, describing the AHS as the “next step” after working together for the past decade.

Between 2024 and 2028, academic clinical programmes under the system will bring together healthcare professionals, scientists and engineers with the aim of better integrating research and clinical care.

The programmes will be rolled out progressively over five years, starting with rehabilitation medicine and skin health.

The rehabilitation medicine programme will draw on NTU’s expertise in areas such as engineering, AI and data analytics to enhance patient recovery and reduce hospital stay durations.

It will also include clinical research and better understanding of the healing process, Prof Seet said.

The skin health programme will tap the university’s experience in continuing education and training for general practitioners to better manage skin conditions in the community, allowing NHG’s National Skin Centre and hospitals to focus on more complex cases.

Expected to draw more than 3,600 people, the 2024 edition of the Singapore Health & Biomedical Congress is themed Adding 15 Million Years Of Healthy Life.

This is based on NHG’s goal of enabling the 1.5 million residents of central and north Singapore to spend the last 10 years of life – typically spent in poor health – in good physical, mental and social health, through the collective effort of residents, general practitioners and other community partners.

The event will also see NHG partner with the National Parks Board in an initiative to expand therapeutic horticulture programmes, targeting those with cognitive impairment or mental disability, among others.

The healthcare cluster is also collaborating with retail pharmacies Guardian, Watsons and Unity in the areas of preventive health counselling and medication therapy management services.

The two-year partnership, which will be extended if successful, will initially focus on smoking cessation counselling, with the aim of reducing smoking prevalence from 8.8 per cent to 8 per cent by 2030.