Photo courtesy of Singapore General Hospital
Singapore General Hospital is set to co-develop healthcare startups under a new partnership with a venture capital firm.
Under a three-year memorandum of understanding with New York-based Redesign Health, signed in December, startups and projects will gain access to capital and support to build the right team and enter global markets. These include startups and projects working on the following:
- value-based and outcome-driven care models
- ageing-in-place and chronic care management
- workforce productivity, retention, and automation
- distributed care models (e.g., IoT, remote monitoring, ambulatory care)
- financial protection and health system sustainability
- precision medicine and data-driven innovation
- ventures leveraging SGH's intellectual property and patents
On its end, SGH will provide clinical expertise, including access to clinicians, research, and innovation teams, as well as inputs on product design, safety, and clinical relevance.
Alongside access to institutional capital and its AI-enabled platform, Redesign Health will further help equip startups with market analysis, product-fit validation, financial planning, regulatory analysis, talent strategy, and go-to-market preparation.
WHY IT MATTERS
According to Bernard Ng, director of the Research and Innovation Office at SGH, many spin-offs in Singapore fail to progress because they lack access to capital, the right founding team, and entry into international markets.
"This prompted us at SGH to take a more active role to give our projects/spin-offs the best chance of success," he told Healthcare IT News.
"We will then work closely to allow these teams to test-bed or validate their solutions within our clinical environment before commercialisation, providing them with real-world insights and operational understanding," he added.
Ng mentioned that "several programmes" up for regional and worldwide expansion are now being finalised within SGH and SingHealth.
THE LARGER TREND
In November, Synapxe, Singapore's national health tech agency, introduced two interoperability standards to help health IT startups manage and transmit health information as part of their development of new medical devices and digital health solutions.
Earlier that year, in May, Synapxe launched HX-IS 2.0, which allows startups to demonstrate, test, and validate their solutions in a safe environment.
ON THE RECORD
"Collaboration is key if we want to accelerate innovation and achieve transformative outcomes for Singaporean patients, healthcare professionals, and hospitals," SGH CEO and associate professor Tan Hiang Khoon was quoted as saying in a statement.
"Singapore represents a unique opportunity to build transformative, scalable solutions to address pressing healthcare challenges in Southeast Asia. SGH's clinical expertise and deep understanding of healthcare delivery, combined with our role as an institutional investor and applied technology capabilities, create an ideal environment for founders to build companies that solve real problems," Brett Shaheen, founder and CEO of Redesign Health, also said.
