Singapore Advances AI in Medicine with New Institute and Global Partnerships
Senior Minister of State Tan Kiat How delivered the opening address at the AI Health World Summit 2025, emphasizing the transformative role of artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare. Now in its third edition, the Summit brings together global experts from various disciplines to explore AI’s impact on medical innovation, patient care, and healthcare sustainability.
In his speech, SMS Tan highlighted Singapore’s longstanding commitment to leveraging technology to overcome challenges such as limited land, workforce constraints, and market size. AI has played a critical role in this effort, allowing the healthcare sector to enhance efficiency, accuracy, and accessibility. One of the earliest examples of AI adoption in Singapore was in radiology, where it helped detect anomalies in medical scans. More recently, generative AI has introduced new possibilities, such as SingHealth’s Note Buddy tool, launched in August 2024, which transcribes and summarizes consultations in real-time across multiple languages. This innovation has reduced doctors’ administrative workload, allowing them to spend more time with patients.
AI is also driving advancements in personalized medicine, tailoring treatments to individual patient needs. The Singapore General Hospital’s AI2D (Augmented Intelligence in Infectious Diseases) model personalizes antibiotic prescriptions to reduce the risk of antibiotic resistance. Meanwhile, AI Singapore’s CURATE.AI optimizes chemotherapy doses for cancer patients by analyzing individual biomarkers, lifestyle factors, and medical history. These innovations move beyond traditional population-based clinical trials, making medical interventions more precise and effective.
Beyond treatment, AI is transforming predictive healthcare, enabling early intervention and preventive care. The aiTriage system, developed by Singapore General Hospital, Duke-NUS Medical School, and DxD Hub, assesses a patient’s risk of a major cardiac event in the next three to 30 days using ECG data. By providing risk assessments in under seven minutes via a mobile app, the tool enables healthcare workers to make quick, life-saving triaging decisions. Another AI-powered tool, CARES 2, developed by Singapore General Hospital and the National University of Singapore (NUS), predicts post-operative complications, guiding decisions on ICU admissions and early interventions.
Singapore is also pioneering AI-driven behavioral interventions to reduce disease risks before symptoms emerge. A partnership between NUS and Carnegie Mellon University is launching a Centre of Excellence for AI in Precision Prevention to develop digital vaccines—AI-powered neurocognitive tools that use immersive gaming and implicit learning to encourage healthier behaviors in children. These digital vaccines aim to shape neurodevelopment and gut biome health, potentially reducing the long-term risk of chronic diseases by instilling positive health habits during early childhood.
AI’s potential extends beyond healthcare delivery to drug discovery and medical interventions. Google DeepMind’s AlphaProteo system is developing molecule binders for proteins linked to cancer and diabetes, unlocking treatments for conditions previously considered untreatable. AI is accelerating the development of targeted therapies, bringing new hope for curing more cancers within our lifetime. These breakthroughs highlight the power of interdisciplinary collaboration between computer science, molecular biology, and clinical medicine.
To support AI-driven healthcare innovation, Singapore is investing in robust data infrastructure and applied research. The country’s national healthtech agency, Synapxe, launched HEALIX, an analytics platform that consolidates secure, anonymized data across public hospitals to facilitate AI research and development. Additionally, the government has committed S$120 million to the AI for Science programme, supporting research at the intersection of AI and biomedical sciences.
During his speech, SMS Tan announced the launch of the SingHealth Duke-NUS AI in Medicine Institute (AIMI). This new institute will spearhead AI research in foundation models and agentic AI, enhance AI literacy among healthcare professionals and the public, bridge the gap between research and commercialization, and develop ethical guidelines to ensure responsible and patient-centered AI use. He emphasized that these initiatives would help Singapore navigate the evolving AI landscape while maintaining high standards of safety, transparency, and ethical considerations in medical AI applications.
As AI becomes more deeply integrated into healthcare, SMS Tan stressed that trust and governance must remain a priority. While AI has the potential to revolutionize medicine, challenges such as algorithmic transparency, biased training data, and ethical AI use must be addressed. “Trust must be our North Star,” he said. “AI in healthcare must always prioritize patient safety, ethical considerations, and transparency to maintain public confidence.”
To reinforce Singapore’s commitment to responsible AI in healthcare, SingHealth signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with the Coalition for Health AI (CHAI), a US-based non-profit dedicated to setting global standards for safe, effective, and equitable AI in medicine. CHAI’s members include leading institutions such as Google, Johns Hopkins University, Mayo Clinic, Microsoft, and Stanford Medicine. Under the MoU, SingHealth and CHAI will co-develop AI guidelines, research publications, and policy recommendations to ensure AI remains ethical, transparent, and focused on improving patient care.
Source – MDDI
