Partners

Through its International Collaboration Office, SDGHI provides regional support to health system capacity development for outbreak preparedness and response in over a dozen countries during the pandemic. This includes facilitating cross-country learning in the areas of health care leadership and governance, staff and facility management, and the maintenance of essential services.

EID has played key roles in supporting the national response to the COVID-19 pandemic which includes early isolation and swift characterization of SARS-CoV-2, the development of the world’s first surrogate viral neutralization test, surveillance, diagnostics, vaccines and cutting-edge efforts to investigate potential treatments. EID also houses the Satellite Centre for Global Health Discovery, which is a J&J and Duke-NUS joint effort to discover therapeutics against flaviviruses. Additional research stretching back decades has focused on better understanding risk factors for pandemic emergence including diagnostics and disease surveillance in humans and animals at key interfaces (bat, rats and pigs with humans) to assess the regional prevalence and distribution of pathogens in Cambodia, India, Lao, Malaysia, Philippines, Thailand, Vietnam

HSSR brings together faculty from quantitative and qualitative domains to address policy and health issues relevant to health services. The faculty have developed tools and systems for epidemiologic and predictive modelling of outbreak effects on health system capacity. These efforts have underpinned Singapore’s national response. They have developed a model to describe COVID-19 infection that demonstrates the value of swift and effective contact tracing and quarantine. They also have a simulation model for the hospital level that enables evaluation of elective surgery cancellation strategies and resumption scenarios. Work of the economic costs to health of managing the COVID-19 pandemic is also available. There is also ongoing work on preparedness capacity building among prehospital and emergency care providers across Asia.

The IDRI under the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre (AMC) is a joint institute that brings together infectious disease physicians and scientists from SingHealth and Duke-NUS Medical School to stimulate collaboration and translational research. Viral Research and Experimental Medicine Centre (ViREMiCS) is a programme that sits under the IDRI umbrella, with the primary role of using molecular correlates to accelerate the clinical development of therapeutics and vaccines.

CoRE was established in 2014 as a specialised think-tank and professional capacity development centre with the mission of establishing regional platforms and networks to grow competencies, enhance collaboration and promote thought leadership in innovative regulatory science and health policy in Asia and beyond. It has developed regional regulatory system strengthening roadmaps for the Asian Development Bank; currently supports the Coalition for Epidemic Preparedness Innovation (CEPI) in efforts to foster convergence of regulatory requirements for vaccines within South and Southeast Asia; and is synthesising agile regulatory and health policy responses to COVID-19 across the Asia-Pacific in support of the APEC Life Sciences Innovation Forum.

BII is one of A*STAR’s research entities and is dedicated to computational biology/bioinformatics driven life science research aimed at the discovery of biomolecular mechanisms guiding biological phenomena. BII plays a significant role in global SARS-CoV-2 data sharing and analysis via a long-term collaboration with the Global Initiative on Sharing All Influenza Data (GISAID) data science platform, which has enabled sharing and analysis of SARS-CoV-2 genomes at an unprecedented scale. BII continues to develop novel tools to facilitate rapid analysis of the large datasets on GISAID. BII also partners closely with several public health laboratories within ASEAN to provide timely assistance in genome analyses and has co-organized training workshops to build capacity within the region. BII currently co-leads the Real-time Epidemic Genomic Surveillance for ASEAN project which is funded by ASEAN Committee on Science, Technology and Innovation (COSTI) Cooperation.

SSHSPH is the first and only full-fledged public health tertiary education institution in Singapore. It has a strong track record in education and people development, as well as capacity building in the region in countries such as Cambodia, East Malaysia, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam. Moving beyond traditional domains of chronic disease etiology and risk factors, SSHSPH emphasizes new technologies and methods for surveillance, measurement and monitoring of exposures and diseases, as well as new approaches to analysing public health programmes, health systems and policies. The school has world-class expertise in mathematical modelling of disease which was extensively tapped upon by Singapore’s Ministry of Health during the COVID-19 pandemic. It also has experienced faculty specializing in health systems research who provided support for the work of the Independent Panel for Pandemic Preparedness and Response, as well as a strong team for health technology and policy assessments (Health Intervention and Policy Evaluation Research – HIPER). SSHSPH also anchors the Wellcome Trust-funded support hub for the ADVANcing Clinical Evidence in Infectious Diseases (ADVANCE ID) regional clinical research network, which is a multi-country collaborative programme established for clinical trials in infectious diseases.

The Global Health Law and Governance program at the NUS Centre for International Law focuses on research, teaching and capacity building in this field. Global health is governed by diverse international organizations and actors, such as the World Health Organization (WHO), national regulatory agencies, philanthropic foundations and the pharmaceutical industry. Global health is regulated by binding and non-binding international rules such the International Health Regulations (IHR) or the Global Strategy for the Prevention and Control of Communicable Diseases, respectively. Access to medicines is also affected by international trade and intellectual property rules such as the TRIPS Agreement and other Free Trade Agreements. Matters such as One Health and the prevention of zoonotic spill-over interconnects health, environmental and animal laws. The Covid-19 pandemic has revealed shortcomings in many of these fields, and the global health law program seeks to contribute to the current debate on desired legal and governance reforms.