Education Minister Chan Chun Sing said that as the healthcare landscape becomes more complex, it is key to embrace technology and integrate data with medical practice. “This is an ongoing challenge that we must keep working on, combining the best of medicine in its traditional form with the best and latest frontier technologies that we can harness in service of medicine”, he said.
Mr. Chan, serving as the guest of honor, spoke at a homecoming event for the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine (LKCMedicine) at Nanyang Technological University. He addressed around 300 attendees, including LKCMedicine faculty, alumni, students, and industry partners. The event celebrated the inaugural cohort of students who will earn medical degrees exclusively from NTU and introduced the new curriculum under the updated degree program.
He noted that the joint NTU-Imperial degree program and the new NTU medical degree program will operate concurrently for the next four years. Professor Joseph Sung, Dean of LKCMedicine, highlighted that the new Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery programs will incorporate three key elements: digital health technologies, medical humanities, and professional development. He explained that students will learn to apply data science, artificial intelligence, and machine learning to accelerate diagnoses and improve treatment recommendations while also gaining skills to enhance their understanding of patients.
Prof Sung added that the new curriculum will also train students to become more resilient doctors who can overcome new challenges in the healthcare landscape in the future. However, it will also retain the best of the current degree programme, which includes aspects like team-based learning, an interdisciplinary approach to medicine, and early patient interaction.
LKCMedicine was set up jointly with Imperial College in 2010 to meet Singapore’s growing healthcare needs and welcomed its first batch of students in 2013, who graduated in 2018. Both schools will continue their partnership beyond the medical school, including establishing a research hub that focuses on topics like artificial intelligence and robotics for healthcare, as well as infectious diseases.
In January 2024, Imperial College, in partnership with NTU, announced a new $20 million medical research program focused on the security of medical devices and health data. As the school embarks on this new phase, Mr. Chan emphasized the importance for graduates to embrace a lifelong commitment to inquiry, uphold patient trust in healthcare professionals, and adhere to medical ethics. Professor Sung acknowledged that while LKCMedicine has made significant progress, there is still much work to be done to achieve top-tier status, and fostering closer collaboration with other institutions remains a priority.
