SPEECH BY MR ONG YE KUNG, MINISTER FOR HEALTH AND COORDINATING MINISTER FOR SOCIAL POLICIES, AT THE NATIONAL MEDICAL RESEARCH COUNCIL AWARDS CEREMONY AND RESEARCH SYMPOSIUM 2026, 22 MAY 2026

Professor Sir John Savill, Chairman of the National Medical Research Council (NMRC)

Award winners, distinguished guests, ladies and gentlemen

1.               I am pleased to join you today at the NMRC's annual Awards Ceremony and Research Symposium. This year, we mark the 20th year of translational and clinical research becoming a core part of the Ministry of Health’s (MOH) mandate.

Two Decades of Foundation Building and Progress

2.               In the year 2000, Singapore identified biomedical and life sciences as a new pillar for our economic growth. We built strong basic science capabilities, by attracting and nurturing strong, top talent and developing our research infrastructure.

3.               We soon realised that basic sciences alone was not enough. Other than growing the economy, biomedical research was also critical to improving clinical outcomes and the health of our population. So there is both an economic, and also a social and health objective. To achieve this, promising discoveries must find their way from the laboratories into clinical practice or markets – that means from bench to bedside.

4.               Hence, in 2006, MOH made a significant shift to recognise translational and clinical research as part of the ministry's mandate. Through our research funding arm, NMRC, we began to build new capabilities, establish partnerships, invest in people and work across clinical disciplines. Twenty years later, we can look back on our achievements with satisfaction and pride.

5.               One key achievement, in fact, maybe that is the key achievement, is the growth of a strong pool of clinician-scientists. Today, we have 185 nationally supported clinician-scientists, and a number of them have become world leaders in research fields from cancer, cardiovascular health, to infectious diseases, and ophthalmology.

6.               We established important national programmes, one of which is in precision medicine. To realise the potential of genomics in transforming healthcare, we set up Precision Health Research, Singapore (PRECISE) in 2020 to drive the National Precision Medicine programme.

7.               PRECISE and its partners led the PRECISE-SG100K project to build one of the world's largest multi-ethnic Asian databases comprising the genomes of 100,000 Singaporean residents. It supported five clinical implementation pilots, including in familial hypercholesterolaemia (FH), which has since been launched as a national genetic testing programme to enhance preventive care, complementing Healthier SG, a national population health initiative.

8.               We developed enabling platforms, such as TRUST (Trusted Research and Real World-Data Utilisation and Sharing Tech). It is a national analytics platform that facilitates access to nearly 50 anonymised health and health-related datasets for research use today.

9.               This year, TRUST has extended to serve Singapore's wider research ecosystem beyond health, starting with the Urban Solutions and Sustainability Domain. This will allow more public sector researchers and selected industry partners to access and use this database and datasets in a timely, secure manner for public benefit, with safeguards to ensure data security and privacy. The availability of comprehensive, anonymised, and secured data is actually a very unique advantage for Singapore. Around the world when I meet researchers, tech companies will constantly raise this and say there is so much Singapore can do in research because of the availability of quality, secured data. And I will talk more about it later.

Sustaining Momentum for Healthcare Transformation

10.           Today, the conditions are right for us to embark on the next phase of translational and clinical research.

11.           To do so, MOH will commit $2.5 billion over the next five years as part of the RIE2030 Plan to strengthen translational and clinical research. Let me highlight a few priority areas.

12.           First, the National Precision Medicine Programme. Last November, I announced the launch of Phase III of the Programme. In Phase III, PRECISE and all three public healthcare clusters will work together to sequence the genomes of 400,000 to 450,000 participants. It works out to about 10% of Singapore's resident population. This will generate robust, localised evidence on how genomics can be integrated into the delivery of healthcare responsibly and effectively, both in clinical and economic terms.

13.           Second area, is we are leveraging Artificial Intelligence (AI) for Healthier SG. We will build tools and AI models that are trained on our own clinical practice guidelines and local clinical data – health records, medical images, and more. This will help ensure that the models are contextualised to local clinical practice and Singapore's population. The initial focus will be on cardiometabolic and ophthalmic diseases, before application to a broader range of conditions.

14.           These AI models will be able to flag out patients at risk, and suggest care pathways for clinicians to consider, in a way that is integrated into regular clinical workflows. Research will also ensure that the outputs from these models are validated and explainable so that patients and healthcare professionals have confidence in the models and their benefits for patient and clinical outcomes. And I should add that because of the implementation of Healthier SG, we have a real opportunity to also integrate these models and their suggested or proposed care pathways into outpatient and primary care services, and I think that is a very unique model that we are adopting.

15.           Both national programmes, working in concert, will transform Healthier SG and bring it to a whole new level. This is personalised, predictive, preventive care.

The Longevity Grand Challenge

16.           Third, we will further invest in research that focuses on the ageing population. Longevity is something to celebrate, especially in Asia. But it also brings new challenges such as cognitive decline and loss of physical function. We want to live long, but we also want to live well.

17.           We have rolled out Age Well SG, a significant national programme to help seniors age actively and stay socially connected in the community.

18.           In areas where the senior population is denser, we concentrate our resources and create what we call Age Well Neighbourhoods – almost like virtual retirement villages – to fulfil the wishes of seniors to age in place in the environment that they are familiar with. This initiative will bring both social and healthcare services closer and more seamlessly to seniors, through Active Ageing Centres, Community Health Posts, and age-friendly homes and facilities. Like Healthier SG, Age Well SG is a work-in-progress, to progressively transform and anchor care in the community.

19.           Today, our research and healthcare ecosystem has matured. Advances in AI and other technologies present new opportunities and offer new solutions. Many relevant capabilities, technologies and talent reside in the private sector. But what private industry and companies do not have is the high quality and comprehensive data that the Government has. If we can combine the strengths of both public and private sectors, we can make meaningful and transformative improvements riding on the policies that we have set out in Healthier SG and Age Well SG.

20.           In recent years, a growing number of technology companies have come forward with ideas and proposals in preventive care, ageing and longevity, underscoring the ability and readiness of the private sector to contribute to public health.

21.           Recognising this opportunity, the National Research Foundation (NRF), in partnership with MOH, will be launching the RIE Grand Challenge on Maximising Healthy and Successful Longevity. To support these efforts, the Government has committed $350 million under RIE2030 for this Grand Challenge. Through the Grand Challenge, we will open up the playing field for public-private collaborative proposals. We encourage industry to participate – many are already in Singapore, and working on promising innovations in both preventive and acute care. They can partner with local researchers and institutions to first develop strong, concrete use cases, before testing, validating and implementing in Singapore's real care settings.

22.           In the coming calls for proposals, Brain Health is a key priority. For example, we need to better understand the development and progression of vascular dementia, which accounts for nearly half of all dementia cases in Singapore and is roughly twice the proportion seen in Western populations. By addressing our knowledge gaps, we can develop new tests for vascular dementia or devise novel interventions that may delay its onset, progression or clinical impact.

23.           We will also focus on Physical Function, taking the same approach for conditions like sarcopenic obesity which significantly adds to the risk of frailty in older adults. This condition, characterised by simultaneous muscle loss and fat accumulation, affects Asians differently, occurring at lower BMIs and earlier in life than in Western populations.

24.           Going beyond medicine, we want to look at Socio-Environmental Innovations – how we can optimise our built environment, social systems, and digital health technologies to support healthy longevity. This includes research into housing design, neighbourhood walkability, volunteer networks, and community spaces.

25.           Selected public-private research collaborations will be able to leverage TRUST, which has well-established processes, expertise and safeguards to provide the required access to anonymised datasets within a secure and trusted environment. Intellectual property will be co-owned by the public and private sector players.

26.           Professor Chong Yap Seng, who is the Dean of NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and an esteemed clinician-scientist, will be leading and coordinating the Grand Challenge as its Executive Director.

Celebrating Our Award Winners

27.           Like Professor Chong, many clinician-scientists, researchers and partners across institutions have built this ecosystem together over the last 20 years. Patients and participants have also played a critical role, contributing their time and effort and placing their trust in us.

28.           Today, we celebrate many of these contributions. This is a special year, and we have a bumper crop of NMRC Talent Award recipients, with 138 awardees in total. 77 of them will be receiving the Human Capital Awards, and 61 will be receiving the Talent Development Awards. The latter group represents our pipeline of young, budding clinician scientists whom we are committed to grow and nurture.

29.           I would like to give special recognition to this year's NMRC Distinguished Contributor Award recipient, which is Professor Ivy Ng.

30.           Ivy has made many contributions to the development of clinician scientists and shaped Singapore's translational and clinical research landscape. She served on numerous NMRC review panels and was an active Council member for more than 15 years. She also played a role in developing key research infrastructure and continues to advance Singapore's precision health research ecosystem as a key member of the PRECISE Board Oversight Committee. Congratulations, Ivy and all our award recipients this morning.

31.           In conclusion, over the past 20 years, we have established strong foundations in translational and clinical research. We are now well known for our integrated healthcare system, comprehensive data infrastructure, and strong coordination between the different parts of government. This enables rapid translation of research into real-world implementation, delivering meaningful impact on the health of our nation. The next phase of translational and clinical research is designed with this in mind, to make Singapore a leading global testbed to generate solutions for rapidly ageing populations.

32.           Healthcare will transform Singapore for the better, because of science, but more importantly, because of passionate people collaborating and working together. Thank you.