Welcome to the Prehospital and Emergency Research Centre (PERC)!
Singapore has been experiencing a steady yearly increase in demand for emergency services, with both pre-hospital emergency medical services (“EMS”) and emergency departments seeing growth of 3 to 10% annually. This rising demand is set against the backdrop of a rapidly ageing population, the increasing complexity of chronic conditions, and rising expectations for acute care. Against this challenging landscape, there is an urgent need to understand the drivers of emergency care, to develop strategies for better integration of pre-hospital, hospital and community care, and to evolve new emergency care pathways for the population we serve.
PERC was established to meet this need through a strong, multi-institutional collaboration. It brings together the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medicine Centre, the National Healthcare Group, the National University Health System, the Unit for Prehospital Emergency Care of the Ministry of Health (“MOH”), and the Singapore Civil Defence Force of the Ministry of Home Affairs’ (“MHA”). By converging experts, robust research techniques, and access to real-world data within an academic setting, PERC is uniquely positioned to advance the field.
Our research focuses on the organisation and delivery of pre-hospital emergency care (PEC) in the context of an ageing and increasingly complex population. It is undertaken to investigate how emergency services can be made more effective, appropriate, scalable and economically sustainable — spanning the full continuum from the community, to pre-hospital response, to the emergency department, and back into the community.
We work closely with multiple stakeholders including government agencies, regional health systems, emergency medical services, and community care partners to facilitate and advance a holistic research agenda. The policy-driven and data-driven research we implement provides critical insights that guide improvements across Singapore's emergency care system, and offers lessons that can benefit the wider region. In Singapore, we collaborate closely with the Ministry of Health, the Ministry of Home Affairs and the Singapore Civil Defence Force, our partner healthcare clusters, and other national agencies to strengthen the pre-hospital emergency care ecosystem.We work closely with partner organisations such as the Pan Asian Resuscitation Outcomes Study (PAROS), the Pan Asian Trauma Outcomes Study (PATOS), the Global Resuscitation Alliance (GRA), the Global Out of Hospital Cardiac Arrest Registries (GOHCAR), the International Liason Committee on Resuscitation (ILCOR) and the World Health Organisation (WHO).
Ultimately, these resources and partnerships are directed towards a single shared purpose: elevating pre-hospital and emergency care for the betterment of the professionals who work within it and the patients they serve