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Straits Times
2 days ago
- Health
- Straits Times
Slew of AI tools for Singapore's public healthcare in the works
Alexandra Hospital's reasearch team have come up with CareScribe, an AI tool that helps to shorten handover processes between nurses. ST PHOTO: NG SOR LUAN Slew of AI tools for Singapore's public healthcare in the works SINGAPORE - A chatbot that breaks down the jargon in medical reports and an app that assesses one's health by analysing the photo of one's tongue are among a slew of artificial intelligence (AI) tools that the public sector is developing here. Showcased at the inaugural AI Accelerate conference organised by national healthcare tech provider Synapxe on June 16 , these innovations are poised to help patients and boost the productivity of healthcare workers. Synapxe provides tech solutions to all three public sector healthcare clusters - SingHealth, National Healthcare Group, and National University Health System - in Singapore. Here are some of the key projects. 1. HealthHub AI This AI assistant will be rolled out on national healthcare portal HealthHub 's website later in 2025 . The feature might be introduced on the app in the future, depending on feedback gathered from users. It will be able to answer healthcare-related and administrative questions from users in English, Chinese, Malay and Tamil. Users can also enter their gender, age, and any pre-existing condition to receive a more tailored response. 'It serves as a convenient tool to enhance health literacy by improving access to credible, evidence-based information that is curated for Singapore's unique context,' said Mr Andy Ta, chief data officer and director of data analytics and AI at Synapxe. Information given to users are sourced from HealthHub's website, which contains content contributed by public healthcare agencies and workgroups such as the Health Promotion Board and National Medication Information Workgroup. 'It supports our public health goals by guiding users to relevant content quickly, helping them make informed decisions and ultimately encouraging better health outcomes,' said Mr Ta. A beta version has been available for use on HealthHub's website since April , and members of the public can give their feedback until the end of August . So far, frequently asked questions include subsidies on health screenings and vaccinations, and lifestyle tips. There are also plans to expand the range of supported languages, with Synapxe exploring the feasibility and stability of open-source and proprietary large-language models such as Sea-Lion developed by AI Singapore and Meralion developed by A*Star Institute for Infocomm Research. Meralion, developed using the national speech corpus , is able to understand at least eight regional languages including Singlish, and can understand multiple languages when spoken in the same sentence. Sealion supports 13 languages such as Thai and Vietnamese, and reflects the native characteristics of South-east Asia. Synapxe is also exploring a feature that lets users manage their appointment bookings via the AI assistant. Along with the new AI boost, there are also plans to unify HealthHub with cluster-specific apps - Health Buddy, NHG Cares and NUHS app - by 2027 into one platform to improve online accessibility of public healthcare services. 2. Lab Report Buddy Developed by Synapxe, this chatbot analyses medical lab reports uploaded by users and breaks down medical jargon, providing a comprehensible summary and explanation of the results. Lab Report Buddy aims to reduce the struggle that patients often face in understanding reports due to the limited consultation time to go over the details. For instance, a blood work report that contains results on haemoglobin and platelet levels might be displayed in numbers that are not interpreted. The chatbot would be able to summarise the results and inform the patient if the levels are considered low or high, and if a follow-up review with a doctor is necessary. The bot is also trained to avoid phrases that might cause panic, lead the patient to self-diagnose, or make assumptions about the patient's health status or medical history. The bot is being tested and validated in real-world settings at present . 3. Synseh An app is being developed to allow users to take a photo of their tongue and answer a few questions to receive wellness recommendations. Synseh will base its recommendations on the teachings of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). For instance, a tongue's colour, shape, coating and moisture level can provide insights into the condition of a patient's internal organs, the presence of pathogenic factors, and the flow of blood and Qi (life force). The app uses advanced computer vision techniques to detect subtle changes in tongue features. 'A pale tongue may indicate a deficiency in Qi or blood, while a red tongue might point to an excess of heat in the body,' said a Synapxe spokesperson. A physician would then be able to give advice on how to combat excess body heat, such as incorporating cooling fruits and vegetables into one's diet. The app is trained based on tongue photos that are openly sourced data, which are then labelled by physicians and lecturers from the Singapore College of TCM. The app is currently a proof-of-concept, and Synapxe said it is closely monitoring the outcome before making plans for further deployment. 'Tongue diagnosis is just a starting for us to venture into the TCM domain,' said the spokesperson. 'Through this, we hope to evaluate and gather feedback on the application of AI in TCM in Singapore.' 4. CareScribe It often takes up to one hour to hand over information about patients between nurses during shift changes. An AI tool called CareScribe , developed by Alexandra Hospital's Research Office team with the help of IT services and consulting firm Avanade , aims to make this process shorter and neater. 'Most handovers are currently conducted through verbal communication with handwritten documentation, which can present challenges in maintaining consistency and completeness,' said Dr Ravi Shankar, principal investigator and research fellow at Alexandra Hospital's medical affairs research office . CareScribe, which currently can be accessed via a webpage, allows nurses to upload photos or voice notes, which would then be transcribed and summarised in a structured format. Handover notes usually include information such as a patient's medical background, current condition, prescribed medication, acuity levels, fall risks, and clinical observations in unstructured paragraphs. The tool is able to organise information in an ABCDEFG template, which stands for acuity assessment, background history and behaviour, conditions and care plans, drugs, equipment, family and goals. Critical clinical information such as patient safety alerts, medication-related updates, and scheduled procedures would also be highlighted by the system. After having received approval by the ethics board recently, the tool is currently undergoing preliminary evaluation at Alexandra Hospital with a group of nursing staff. Any plans to integrate it with existing hospital systems will depend on research outcomes, security assessments, and institutional requirements, said Dr Shankar. 5. Healix (Health Empowerment thru Advanced Learning and Intelligent Exchange) Launched in May 2024, Healix is a cloud-based platform that all public healthcare professionals can use to accelerate the development of their AI projects. It consolidates data from across healthcare systems in Singapore, which are de-identified and encrypted. A range of tools and frameworks - such as pre-built algorithms and libraries and custom development options - are available for use to develop AI models. For example, the National University Health System (NUHS) used Healix to analyse de-identified medical data and trained an AI model to predict the near-term risk of diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidaemia. 6. Aspire (AI-enabled Short Performance Physical Battery Evaluation) By getting patients to do a series of physical tests on camera, this AI-powered tool allows clinicians to screen for the prevalence and severity of frailty and sarcopenia. To assess for such conditions, patients are usually asked to do the Short Physical Performance Battery (SPPB) evaluation, which would involve actions such as walking a set distance, sitting down and standing up five consecutive times, and balancing while standing. Aspire digitalises and semi-automates this test, which aims to make screening faster, less reliant on manpower, and more accessible. 'At this point, Aspire is still a research project and is undergoing clinical trials in Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) and NHG polyclinics, and is used by clinicians within the healthcare facilities,' said associate professor Karen Chua, who is also a senior consultant at TTSH's rehabilitation centre. 'Future iterations could see this being scaled to community hospitals and partners, as well as caregivers to conduct the test remotely.' Join ST's Telegram channel and get the latest breaking news delivered to you.
Straits Times
2 days ago
- Health
- Straits Times
AI to help doctors predict disease risk in next bound of Healthier SG: Ong Ye Kung
Mr Ong Ye Kung also outlined major national healthcare AI projects that the public can expect in the months to come. PHOTO: ST FILE AI to help doctors predict disease risk in next bound of Healthier SG: Ong Ye Kung SINGAPORE - National health records, socio-economic and genetic data may be used to support preventive care and social prescribing as the next bound of Singapore's Healthier SG programme. Announcing this at the inaugural AI Accelerate conference on June 16 , Mr Ong said that predictive artificial intelligence (AI), dubbed the next frontier in healthcare transformation, can help doctors predict if someone is likely to develop serious conditions many years in advance. 'This will be in the next bound of Healthier SG, leveraging health records, evidence-based clinical risk scoring and AI's predictive powers to support preventive care and social prescribing,' said Mr Ong at the conference organised by national healthcare tech provider Synapxe held at Punggol Digital District. But Mr Ong added that humans are still irreplaceable. 'We will continue to maintain the human touch through our family doctors, guiding and empowering residents to take charge of health outcomes before illness strikes,' he said, likening using AI with no doctors to flying a plane without a pilot. 'Likewise, while there is literature suggesting that AI provides better medical diagnosis and treatment plan than a doctor equipped with AI, I think most of us will still prefer the latter because we trust the human doctor who can empathise with our worries and concerns,' he said, noting that AI does not think, feel, hope, fear or empathise. Mr Ong also outlined major national healthcare AI projects that the public can expect in the months to come. By 2027, the national HealthHub app that holds citizens health records will be consolidated with apps from Singapore's three healthcare clusters - Health Buddy, NHG Cares App and NUHS App - to improve online accessibility of public healthcare services. 'We can enhance this new consolidated HealthHub with AI, so that the app can do more than manage health records, appointments, and bill payments,' he added. For instance, HealthHub AI can offer personalised health information, such as how to manage common health conditions, including through lifestyle changes. The advice will be conveyed through speech and text in four languages and in a conversational style. 'It is currently in beta and users' feedback has been promising,' said Mr Ong, adding Synapxe aims to launch this later this year. The public healthcare sector also plans to expand its use of AI for chest X-rays. It was used into NHG's Geylang Polyclinic to help prioritise cases so that patients with normal results can be managed more quickly. This month, the National Centre for Infectious Diseases will start to use chest X-ray AI to screen for tuberculosis. Similarly, Woodlands Health will start to use imaging AI in its emergency department to detect bone fractures, said Mr Ong. The capability will be rolled out progressively across the public healthcare system by end 2026, said Mr Ong. AI can expand human skills and ability to get more things done and better, but also subtracts the human experience of discovery and trial and error. It is important to fully leverage AI, but not become subservient to it, he added. Whether by coincidence or divine intervention, he said that AI is bursting into the scene just when human societies are experiencing an unprecedented process of ageing. 'Patient numbers are rising, with more complex and multiple conditions; healthcare systems are stressed; care is shifting to the community and patients' homes; prevention of diseases is taking centre stage,' he said. 'AI is a scientific gift to us to tackle the biggest social challenge of our time.' Join ST's WhatsApp Channel and get the latest news and must-reads.
Business Times
2 days ago
- Health
- Business Times
Synapxe signs agreements with OpenAI, Databricks and Google Cloud to boost AI skills and solutions
[SINGAPORE] Healthtech agency Synapxe announced on Monday (Jun 16) that it has inked a number of agreements with tech players to boost its artificial intelligence (AI) talent and solutions. The agreements were inked at AI Accelerate, a conference organised by Synapxe on AI and healthcare. At the conference, Minister of Health Ong Ye Kung said: 'There must therefore be a sharp focus on practical use cases in transforming healthcare that will deliver measurable outcomes either in enhancing accuracy and speed of diagnosis, improving treatment or prevention, or increasing productivity for healthcare professionals.' A collaboration agreement was signed with OpenAI to work on skills and to apply its technology in the healthcare setting. A prototype has been developed to facilitate transactional services such as booking appointments and answering general healthcare questions. The interactions are excluded from training OpenAI's model by default. Oliver Jay, managing director of OpenAI's international strategy and openrations, said: 'This collaboration will help us to understand how our technology can meet real needs in the public system. It also offers a chance to test and refine our systems in ways that could scale globally.' BT in your inbox Start and end each day with the latest news stories and analyses delivered straight to your inbox. Sign Up Sign Up Synapse also signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) with data, analytics and AI platform company Databricks to promote adoption of AI in the public healthcare sector. The partnership is targeting to train and certify 50 to 100 public healthcare professionals via Health Empowerment through Advanced Learning & Intelligent eXchange (Healix) Data and AI Academy. The partnerships will also include experimentation and adoption of AI use cases and co-developing predictive care use cases. Databrick's AI capabilities will also be integrated into Healix's platform. Cecily Ng, vice-president and general manager for Asean and greater China, Databricks, said: 'This partnership comes at a pivotal time as Singapore faces increasing pressure on its public healthcare system and an unprecedented surge in data complexity.' Another MOU was also inked with Google Cloud to enhance Synapxe's AI platforms Healix and Tandem. This partnership will train and certify at least 300 healthcare professionals in Google Cloud's AI technologies. Biannual workshops on GenAI and data analytics will also be organised as part of the partnership. Synapxe has also signed a MOU with Aidx Tech to identify AI risks and ensure compliance with healthcare standards. Aidx's platform will be used to test AI models, with the healthtech agency aiming to establish an AI safety and compliance joint testing lab with Aidx. There is no timeline for when the centre will be set up. Aidx's AI testing tools will be customised for Synapxe's operational needs and both will collaborate on aligning with frameworks such as ISO 42001 and the EU AI Act. Ngiam Siew Ying, chief executive officer of Synapxe said: 'AI holds immense promise for transforming healthcare through innovation. By harnessing its capabilities, we are developing solutions that enhance predictive and personalised care and improve health outcomes for everyone.'
