Singapore touts AI-powered medical system that can flag health risks to doctors

Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said on Thursday general practitioners in Singapore would leverage artificial intelligence-driven diagnostic methods to warn patients of future health risks, prescribe relevant medicine and encourage them to make lifestyle changes, as the city state sought to reshape its medical sector.

“Within the overlap of precision medicine, or genomics, AI, preventive care is an overlap and a convergence that is very powerful, that will enable data to really transform healthcare,” Ong told the Milken Institute Asia Summit 2024.

He noted that the system, built using a vast trove of data, would have to be guided by general practitioners (GPs).

“We have medical records, we have genome data, we have lifestyle data, we have socio-economic data and the technology is already available. We can train very sophisticated, high parameters, AI models [to] identify risk factors and do predictive preventive care,” the minister said.

For example, when a patient visits a GP, the doctor would be able to get an alert from the health ministry that the individual is highly prone to getting a stroke in 10 years.

The notification would help the doctor place the patient on medication and encourage lifestyle changes to prevent the risk, Ong explained, adding the arrangement could become a reality in Singapore in the next one or two years.