A cloud-based analytics platform for public healthcare in Singapore was recently unveiled.
In June, Synapxe, the country’s national health technology agency, began integrating hospitals and healthcare institutions into its HEALIX (Health Empowerment through Advanced Learning & Intelligent eXchange) platform.
WHAT MATTERS
HEALIX is the first in Singapore and is designed as a “standardized, secure and scalable environment” for conducting analysis projects.
In a statement to Healthcare IT NewsAccording to Synapxe, the technology is “a shared platform that consolidates the existing data infrastructure of individual public hospitals and 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-thinking initiative demonstrates Synapxe’s commitment to empowering public healthcare users to leverage data and insights from across the sector in a secure, transformative, collaborative and cost-effective manner, ultimately driving a positive impact on health in Singapore,” CEO Ngiam Siew Ying said in an official statement.
HEALIX is hosted on both the public Government Commercial Cloud and the private Healthcare Commercial Cloud.
To ensure seamless interoperability and interconnectivity of HEALIX, Synapxe partnered with Amazon Web Services to create a consolidated data infrastructure to streamline operations.
In May, the agency signed a memorandum of understanding to participate in the AWS AI Spring program, which aims to accelerate AI adoption in Singapore. This gave Synapxe 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 aspect of the collaborative analytics platform, Synapxe shared that a robust set of data security measures and encryption techniques aligned with Singapore government and industry frameworks have been implemented in 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 application.
WHY IT MATTERS
Synapxe emphasized that consolidating the existing data infrastructure in the public healthcare sector through a single common platform will deliver significant cost and resource savings.
“This cost-efficient method minimises the need for different entities to manage and maintain multiple analytics platforms in Singapore’s public healthcare system, giving users faster access to quality data and services,” the report said.
At the same time, a single platform enables collaboration among stakeholders and can accelerate their pace of innovation by providing faster access to anonymized data for analytics projects.
“With HEALIX, users gain access to timely and consistent data to accelerate their AI/ML project initiatives and deliver better patient outcomes.”
THE BIGGER TREND
Public hospitals and healthcare facilities in Singapore have increasingly implemented AI technologies in recent years to improve clinical care and operations.
To support this effort, the National Supercomputing Centre Singapore has helped provide supercomputing facilities in two public healthcare clusters, the National University Health System and SingHealth. Their supercomputers are now supporting the development of AI models for predicting risks and outcomes of patient diseases, and developing a GPT for healthcare.
Over the years, different types of AI tools and systems have been developed and deployed in each public health clusterFor example, SingHealth also has AI for automatic detection of spinal landmarks, AI solutions for data analytics and clinical workflows to support cancer care, and the 3D Disease Outbreak Surveillance System, now being upgraded to 4D DOSS. SingHealth is also developing AimSG, a vendor-neutral platform with Synapxe and NTT Data, where institutions can access a marketplace of validated and credible AI imaging solutions.
At NUHS there are AI solutions for Real-time hypercalcemia detection and hospital bed availability prediction. A new digestive center at the flagship hospital, the National University Hospital, will use AI to create three systems for detecting, diagnosing and monitoring digestive diseases.
Meanwhile, the National Healthcare Group testing an AI imaging solution to predict falls and an AI that analyzes cardiac ultrasounds to detect heart failure.