SingHealth Boosts AI Digital Pathology & Population Health with Landmark Donation

SingHealth, one of Singapore's public healthcare clusters, has recently received a huge donation to accelerate its population health research, enhance community initiatives, and hasten the integration of AI in digital pathology. The estate of legendary banker Khoo Teck Puat, who founded Maybank and held a major stake in Standard Chartered, gifted SingHealth SG$135 million ($105 million), which the cluster said is its largest donation to date. WHAT IT'S FOR In a statement, SingHealth said the philanthropic gift will support population health research, social prescribing programmes, community health initiatives, and digital pathology, among key areas. It will also support biodiversity research, discovery of plant-based therapeutics, and leadership development for allied health professionals. The investment will also go to research in various clinical specialties, including mental health and wellness, maternal and child health, transplant, cardiovascular sciences, and oncology. WHY IT MATTERS As part of its shift from providing episodic treatments to sustained, community-based wellness, SingHealth aims to advance predictive analytics and population health research "to better stratify high-risk groups and enable targeted interventions for preventive care." To support this, the cluster is establishing the Healthy Longevity Panel, which aims to help researchers understand how different patient characteristics and life circumstances influence the development of major chronic diseases, cognitive decline, and overall ageing. SingHealth deputy CEO and professor Lee Chien Earn told Healthcare IT News that the panel dataset consolidates existing longitudinal cohorts within the cluster, from traditional health records to diverse data sources, including biomarkers, immune system profiles, continuous monitoring from wearable devices, and detailed functional assessments measuring frailty and physical performance. This dataset will be leveraged together with the EMPOWER+ platform to develop AI-powered tools that can predict individual risk of developing chronic diseases and cognitive conditions as people age. According to Prof Lee, these tools will enable providers to "identify high-risk patients earlier and design personalised prevention strategies tailored to specific population groups based on their unique risk profiles." Alongside this project, SingHealth is further building the capacity of SingHealth Community Hospitals (Sengkang Community Hospital and Outram Community Hospital) by partnering with stakeholders to create "micro-environments" within health campuses for promoting the psychosocial wellbeing of patients. Another community hospital, the Eastern Community Hospital, is expected to be completed around 2029 to 2030. The cluster is also expanding its community care model, the Healthy, Empowered Active Living (HEAL) Labs, which function as living laboratories for testing, refining, and scaling population health interventions in real-world settings. These labs capture residents' behaviours, environmental factors, health-seeking patterns, and programme participation via a dedicated population health data platform. Teams are embedded in neighbourhoods, working alongside residents and community partners to co-design solutions. They have, for example, collaborated with Active Ageing Centres and Youth Corp Singapore to develop structured care programmes for detecting early signs of cognitive decline and delaying its progression among seniors. "Early insights from HEAL Labs are already pointing to scalable models in healthy ageing and transforming dementia care," Prof Lee noted. Moreover, SingHealth is transitioning from conventional pathology workflows to AI-enabled digital pathology. With the philanthropic gift, it seeks to integrate more AI across pathology services, which it claims would benefit over 20,000 cancer patients annually and improve outcomes for approximately 1,000 patients with neurological, cardiovascular, and thyroid conditions. SingHealth is already using several AI-powered pathologist assistance tools, such as for quantifying fatty liver conditions and analysing breast fibroepithelial tumours, while also piloting new ones, Professor Tony Lim, chairman of the Division of Pathology at Singapore General Hospital, told this publication. "As these tools scale across the cluster, SingHealth is developing clinical outcome parameters and treatment metrics to assess broader impacts on clinical decision-making, workforce productivity, and downstream treatment outcomes," he added. THE LARGER TREND SingHealth has focused heavily on AI integration over the years. Last year, it agreed to work with Philips on three digital health projects over the next three years: a project automating and streamlining digital image workflows with embedded AI, "next-generation" data analytics, and a smart ICU. In March, it unveiled the Artificial Intelligence in Medicine Institute, a new joint centre with Duke–NUS Medical School, which focuses on research, education, and commercialisation of AI in healthcare.