Singapore’s Ministry of Health will invest S$200 million ($150 million) over the next five years to further deploy modern artificial intelligence technologies in the island nation’s healthcare system.
This modern contribution to the MOH Health Innovation Fund supports the development and testing of technological innovations, including artificial intelligence, through a “centralized focus on scaling them into system-wide national projects,” the ministry said in a statement.
It includes a generative artificial intelligence project that automates data updating and will be implemented in the public healthcare system by the end of 2025. The Ministry of Health said it is committed to promoting the operate of genAI tools to “automate repetitive and time-consuming tasks such as documentation and summarization medical records.
The ministry will also approve medical imaging artificial intelligence to aid detect breast cancer, to be phased in as part of a nationally subsidized screening program from the end of 2025.
A BIGGER TREND
Government-backed initiatives are underway across Singapore’s healthcare system to build and integrate genAI models and applications. Last year, the national health technology agency Synapxe expanded its collaboration with Microsoft to, among other things, develop secure GPT for healthcare professionals, a common platform for building huge language models and genAI applications. The National University Health System has also developed its own LLM-based chatbot called NUHS RUSSELL-GPT that can summarize patient case notes and quickly write letters of recommendation. Meanwhile, Singapore General Hospital has also shown interest in using genAI as part of pre-operative assessment.
The Ministry of Health is also promoting the operate of artificial intelligence in medical imaging through the national artificial intelligence platform in radiology CelSG. Introduced last year, the vendor-neutral platform enables public hospitals to integrate validated AI into their workflows. As a result, two hospitals covered by SingHealth have implemented artificial intelligence for chest X-ray analysis. National Healthcare Group is currently piloting the same AI in its cluster.
In addition to announcing modern investments in artificial intelligence, the Ministry of Health also shared its plan to launch a national genetic testing program by mid-next year, initially focused on familial hypercholesterolemia.
Additionally, the Ministry of Health said it would improve national management of the operate of artificial intelligence in healthcare “to enable the development and implementation of more artificial intelligence solutions, while ensuring the safe delivery of care to patients.”