A cloud-based analytics platform for Singapore’s public healthcare sector was recently launched.
In June, Synapxe, the country’s national health technology agency, began bringing hospitals and medical facilities onto a platform called HEALIX (Health Empowerment through Advanced Learning and Intelligent Exchange).
WHAT IT’S ABOUT
As the first such project in Singapore, HEALIX is designed to be a “standardized, secure and scalable environment” for executing analytics projects.
In a statement to Healthcare IT NewsSynapxe says the technology is “a shared platform that consolidates existing data infrastructure from public hospitals and individual healthcare facilities in Singapore.”
It also provides access to cloud-native tools for developing AI models, including pre-built algorithms and libraries, as well as custom development options. More tools and capabilities are expected to be added to the platform over time.
“This forward-looking initiative demonstrates Synapxe’s commitment to enabling healthcare users across the healthcare sector to leverage data and insights in a secure, transformative, collaborative and cost-effective manner, ultimately delivering a positive impact on health in Singapore,” said CEO Ngiam Siew Ying in an official statement.
HEALIX is hosted on both the public government Commercial Cloud and the private healthcare Commercial Cloud.
To ensure HEALIX’s seamless interoperability and connectivity, Synapxe partnered with Amazon Web Services on a unified data infrastructure to streamline its operations.
In May, the agency signed a memorandum of understanding to join the AWS AI Spring program, which aims to accelerate AI adoption in Singapore. Through this, Synapxe has early access to the latest AWS tools and services, including generative AI, machine learning best practices, technical workshops, and cost optimization consulting.
Finally, when asked about the privacy and security aspects of the shared analytics platform, Synapxe shared that a robust set of data security measures and encryption techniques in line with Singapore government and industry frameworks have been implemented into HEALIX to ensure the safe and responsible use of data. The agency further explained that both data in transit and data at rest are anonymized and encrypted using industry-standard encryption protocols, with multi-level access controls to prevent data misuse or unethical applications.
WHY IT MATTERS
Synapxe emphasizes that consolidating existing data infrastructure across the entire public healthcare industry through a common platform will save significant costs and resources.
“This cost-effective approach reduces the need for different entities to manage and maintain multiple analytics platforms across Singapore’s entire public healthcare system, giving users faster access to quality data and services,” the report explains.
Meanwhile, having a platform also allows stakeholders to collaborate and potentially accelerate their pace of innovation by providing faster access to anonymized data for analytics projects.
“With HEALIX, users will have access to the latest and most consistent data, helping to accelerate their AI/ML project initiatives and deliver better treatment outcomes for patients.”
THE BIGGER TREND
In recent years, public hospitals and healthcare facilities in Singapore have increasingly adopted AI technologies to enhance operations and clinical care.
To support this effort, the National Supercomputing Centre Singapore has helped provide supercomputing facilities at two community healthcare clusters, National University Health System and SingHealth. Their supercomputers are currently supporting the development of AI models to predict patient risk and disease outcomes, as well as developing healthcare GPT.
Other types of AI tools and systems have been developed and deployed over the years in each public health cluster.For example, SingHealth also has AI for automated spine landmark detection, AI solutions for data analytics and clinical workflows supporting cancer care, and the 3D Outbreak Surveillance System, which is currently being upgraded to 4D DOSS. SingHealth, together with Synapxe and NTT Data, is also developing AimSG, a vendor-neutral platform where organisations can access a market of validated and trusted AI imaging solutions.
At NUHS, there are AI solutions for Real-time detection of hypercalcemia and prediction of hospital bed availability. A new gastroenterology center at a leading hospital, National University Hospital, will apply AI to create three systems to detect, diagnose and monitor gastrointestinal diseases.
Meanwhile, the National Health Care Corporation is testing an AI imaging solution to predict falls and AI analyzing echocardiogram images to detect heart failure.
