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Agenda

8:00 am -9:00 SGT

Private roundtable - Personalised healthcare at scale: technology lessons for equity post-pandemic

This roundtable will convene healthcare leaders to discuss how to maximise and extend the novel use of health technology and communication strategies that was accelerated by the pandemic to push for more digital transformation and foster access to healthcare.

 

Apply to attend as a participant here.

Moderated by
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    Emily Tiemann

    Manager, health practice, Economist Impact

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    Emily Tiemann

    Manager, health practice, Economist Impact

    November 15th 2022 November 16th 2022

    Emily Tiemann is a Health Practice Manager in the Policy and Insights team at Economist Impact in Singapore, where she is involved in projects ranging from Breast Cancer, Fertility and Digital Health. Prior to this, she worked in policy at the HFEA, the UK’s fertility regulator, leading projects related to consent, the Code of Practice and clinic inspections. She also worked closely with the Department of Health to outline the new upcoming legislation related to extending the storage periods of gametes and embryos beyond 10 years. Emily started her career as an embryologist at fertility clinics carrying out diagnostic and micromanipulation procedures. Emily has a degree in Biology from McGill University in Canada and a Master’s degree in Women’s Health from University College London.

8:00 am -9:00 SGT

Registration and coffee

9:00 am -9:10 SGT

Welcome and opening remarks

9:10 am -9:35 SGT

Ministry keynote interview: a view from Indonesia

  • Setiaji
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    Setiaji

    Expert adviser of healthtech to the minister and chief of digital transformation office, Ministry of Health, Indonesia

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    Setiaji

    Setiaji

    Expert adviser of healthtech to the minister and chief of digital transformation office, Ministry of Health, Indonesia

    November 15th 2022

    Setiaji is an expert adviser of health technology to the minister of health in Indonesia. He is a digital leader and a civil servant with more than ten years of experience in digital transformation, smart-city development and digital transformation in the line ministries and government agencies in Indonesia.

     

    Mr Setiaji’s experience leading the West Java Digital Services, Jakarta Smart City, grows his expertise in information technology, as he was a graduate of information technology engineering. He has won various national and international awards in digital transformation, including Top CIO on Digital Implementation, IT Works 2021, the World CIO 200 Awards–SEA Edition and Global CIO Forum 2021.

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9:40 am -9:55 SGT

Spotlight interview

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    Clair Deevy

    Global director of social impact, WhatsApp

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    Clair Deevy

    Global director of social impact, WhatsApp

    November 15th 2022

    Clair Deevy was appointed global director of the newly formed WhatsApp social impact team in early 2022. In this role she leads strategy development and execution for programmes and partnerships across areas such as health, crisis response, digital literacy and charitable giving.

     

    Working in policy, communications and community partnerships for more than 20 years, Ms Deevy’s professional and volunteer experience includes government, NGOs, private sector and corporate foundations, and experience across digital and financial literacy, community engagement, women’s empowerment, and creating partnerships for positive social impact.

     

    With Meta since 2015, Ms Deevy has held roles as WhatsApp director of public policy APAC and Facebook director of community affairs for APAC and LATAM. Previously, she led Microsoft’s corporate social responsibility programmes in APAC.

     

    Ms Deevy holds a bachelor of applied science in environmental management and a master of management, and she is a qualified partnership broker. From 2014 to 2017 she was appointed an ambassador for women in technology for the Singapore committee of UN Women.

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10:05 am -10:20 SGT

Exclusive keynote: Future of healthcare outlook

A learning from the recent global crisis is that good health and healthcare are the foundation of a productive society, which is only as strong as its weakest link. Exclusively for in-person attendees only, hear from the global practice lead for health policy at Economist Impact as he reflects on where we are today in global health. There is much to be hopeful about, from a greater level of cross-sectoral collaboration, promising innovations and a more nuanced definition of individual wellbeing. Join us in-person to learn what challenges and opportunities lie ahead in the future of healthcare.

 

Exclusively for in-person attendees

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10:25 am -11:10 SGT

Panel: Removing silos—collaborating for success in health

Healthcare as an industry has historically been siloed and fragmented, within and between organisations. Vaccine nationalism and political obstacles were barriers to optimal joint efforts during the covid-19 crisis. A more cohesive partnership and collaboration ecosystem needs to be developed that brings multiple stakeholders such as government, industry and the civil sector closer together along with other innovators such as technologists. For example, researchers and start-ups work to identify use cases and build sustainable tech solutions, while enablers such as policymakers and financiers help fund, promote, scale and encourage these tech innovators. However, there are numerous gaps between the needs of innovators driving technological progress and the priorities of enablers. This extends to other innovations in healthcare.

 

The pandemic did catalyse cross-sector collaboration in a substantial way—so how can momentum around sharing data and breaking down silos now be maintained? What should leaders be doing to encourage organisational de-siloing? Can the public, private and civil sectors across health and technology come together to create a unified system? How can organisations maximise the opportunities that public-private partnerships present? What are the major challenges in building new coalitions and reforming systems and policies that produce inequities in healthcare? What role does global health governance play here, and which key stakeholders should be held to account? Where are we in the negotiations towards a WHO pandemic treaty, which began in December 2021, seeking to codify the collaboration gains borne out of the pandemic?

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    Low Cheng Ooi

    Chief technology officer, Sheares Healthcare Management, and senior adviser, CMIO Office, Ministry of Health, Singapore

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    Low Cheng Ooi

    Chief technology officer, Sheares Healthcare Management, and senior adviser, CMIO Office, Ministry of Health, Singapore

    November 15th 2022

    Low Cheng Ooi is an orthopaedic surgeon by training. During his eight-year tenure as chief medical informatics officer at the Ministry of Health, he had the opportunity to use and develop analytics to help gain insights in order to improve care clinically and nationally. He joined Sheares Healthcare Group as chief technology officer in September 2020 and continues to serve as senior adviser in the CMIO’s office at the Ministry of Health, Singapore.

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    John Eyres

    Director, Office of Public Health and Education, USAID Cambodia

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    John Eyres

    Director, Office of Public Health and Education, USAID Cambodia

    November 15th 2022

    John Eyres serves as the director for the Office of Public Health and Education (OPHE) at the USAID mission in Cambodia. The OPHE portfolio comprises approximately $40m  annually in malaria, TB, HIV, maternal and child health, family planning and nutrition programmes in addition to early childhood education. A career USAID foreign service officer, Mr Eyres served in Tanzania, Pakistan, Vietnam and Afghanistan prior to arriving in Cambodia. He holds a bachelor’s degree from the University of Iowa and a doctorate from the Arizona State University School of Justice Studies. He was a Fulbright student in Vietnam from 1998 to 1999.

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    Sania Nishtar

    Cardiologist and member of the Senate, Pakistan

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    Sania Nishtar

    Cardiologist and member of the Senate, Pakistan

    November 15th 2022

    Sania Nishtar is a member of the Senate (upper house of parliament) of Pakistan. From 2019 to May 2022, she served as special assistant to the prime minister of Pakistan and federal minister and held the cabinet portfolio of poverty alleviation. Senator Nishtar founded Ehsaas, the government’s flagship social protection programme, and led its implementation. She also chaired the Benazir Income Support Programme during that time.

     

    Senator Nishtar is former chair of several multilateral initiatives: the World Health Organisation (WHO) High-Level Commission on Non-communicable diseases, World Economic Forum Global Agenda Council on the Future of Health Care, US National Academy of Sciences global study on the quality of health care in low- and middle-income countries, advisory committee of the UN International Institute for Global Health, UN secretary-general’s Independent Accountability Panel for Women’s and Children’s Health and WHO Commission on Ending Childhood Obesity.

     

    She is founder of the non-governmental organisation Heartfile and has received many international awards for her work. She is also widely published. In 2017, she was Pakistan’s nominee for director-general of the WHO and was in the final shortlist of three.

     

    Senator Nishtar graduated at the top of her class in 1986. She is a fellow of the Royal College of Physicians and took a PhD at King’s College London. She was honoured with a doctorate in science, honoris causa, in 2019.

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    Syaru Shirley Lin

    Chair, Centre for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation (CAPRI), and research professor, Miller Centre of Public Affairs, University of Virginia

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    Syaru Shirley Lin

    Chair, Centre for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation (CAPRI), and research professor, Miller Centre of Public Affairs, University of Virginia

    November 15th 2022

    Syaru Shirley Lin is a research professor at the Miller Centre of Public Affairs at the University of Virginia, a non-resident senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and an adjunct professor at the Chinese University of Hong Kong. She has founded a new international think-tank based in Taipei and Charlottesville, the Centre for Asia-Pacific Resilience and Innovation (CAPRI), which conducts interdisciplinary, comparative research on innovative policies that can strengthen resilience and improve governance in the Asia-Pacific. CAPRI currently focuses on enhancing resilience at the intersection of health, economic growth and environmental sustainability. 

     

    Professor Lin retired as a partner at Goldman Sachs, where she spearheaded the firm’s investments in many technology startups and was a founding board member of Alibaba Group and Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corporation. Prior to her work in private equity and venture capital, she specialised in the privatisation of state-owned enterprises in China, Taiwan and Singapore. Professor Lin’s present board service includes TE Connectivity, Goldman Sachs Asia Bank and Langham Hospitality Investments. She serves on the board of the Virginia-based Focused Ultrasound Foundation and is an adviser to the Taiwan-US Talent Circulation Alliance. She graduated cum laude from Harvard College and earned her master’s degree and PhD from the department of politics and public administration at the University of Hong Kong.

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11:10 am -11:40 SGT

Coffee break

11:45 am -12:30 SGT

Incentivising health: fostering value-based care

The Asia-Pacific region is diverse and complex, with approximately 60% of the world’s people. Ageing populations, falling fertility and growing morbidity rates, increasing urbanisation and significant migration flows create further complexity along with rising costs and a surging demand for healthcare. It has recently been announced that Singapore will move away from a fee-for-service model and towards capitation funding, to steer healthcare clusters towards care based on outcomes and value. In a system that historically incentivises curative over preventive care, where can value-based care realign incentives among key stakeholders? Which organisations are making inroads here? How can healthcare providers reduce the cost of care without surrendering quality? How can complex non-communicable diseases and chronic issues be covered sustainably?

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    Jeremy Lim

    Director, Leadership Institute for Global Health Transformation, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore

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    Jeremy Lim

    Director, Leadership Institute for Global Health Transformation, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore

    November 15th 2022

    Jeremy Lim is director for global health in the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, and leads the initiatives in health systems strengthening and universal health coverage. He brings diverse and unique perspectives, having spent substantial time in public and private health care across Asia as well as in policy advisory with Singapore’s Ministry of Health, the World Bank and the World Health Organisation. Outside academia, he serves on the boards of various for-profit and not-for-profit organisations in different aspects of health care, including migrant worker health, end-of-life care and digital health interventions. He trained in surgery and public health, attaining post-graduate qualifications in both the UK and the US.

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    Olivia Pantelidis

    Executive director, strategy and planning, Victorian Department of Health, and executive director, Australian Centre for Value-Based Healthcare

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    Olivia Pantelidis

    Executive director, strategy and planning, Victorian Department of Health, and executive director, Australian Centre for Value-Based Healthcare

    November 15th 2022

    Olivia Pantelidis has focused on roles in healthcare management and leadership throughout her career. She is a strategic leader, committed to improving healthcare by creating integrated systems that minimise fragmentation and focus on the delivery of safe and equitable care. In her previous roles, Ms Pantelidis has led healthcare and trauma partnerships for the Transport Accident Commission (TAC), ensuring clients have access to safe and equitable care, and mental health reforms for the North Coast Primary Health Network. In her most recent role at the TAC, she has led the strategic direction towards value-based healthcare, making it a strategic priority for the TAC’s 2025 strategy.

     

    Ms Pantelidis is also the executive director of the Australian Centre for Value-Based Healthcare and works collaboratively across the centre’s local and global network of thought leaders and creators to drive healthcare systems towards VBHC. She holds a master’s of public health.

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    Seemant Jauhari

    Managing partner, HealthXCapital

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    Seemant Jauhari

    Managing partner, HealthXCapital

    November 15th 2022

    Seemant Jauhari has 21 years of experience in healthcare innovation, venture investments and business consulting. Mr Jauhari leads HealthXCapital, the first dedicated early stage healthcare venture capital firm in South and South-east Asia. Until 2017, he was the chief executive of innovation and research at Apollo Hospitals. He spearheaded Apollo’s initiatives to scout, evaluate, invest in and commercialise innovations.

     

    Mr Jauhari has served as a director on the boards of multiple healthcare startups. In his previous assignments, he had diverse experience across business consulting at Ernst & Young, strategy and transformation at Nokia Solutions Networks and IT consulting at Tata Consultancy Services.

     

    He is a graduate of the Indian School of Business, with executive education from Berkeley Haas School of Business (US) and Recanati Business School, Tel Aviv. He has a bachelor’s degree in engineering from Birla Institute of Technology.

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    Andrew Staples

    Regional head (APAC), policy and insights, Economist Impact

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    Andrew Staples

    Regional head (APAC), policy and insights, Economist Impact

    November 15th 2022

    Based in Singapore, Andrew Staples is the Asia-Pacific head of policy and insights for Economist Impact. He leads a team across Asia, generating evidence-based insights to inform internal strategy and external engagement for governments, international institutions, corporations, foundations, and NGOs around the world.

     

    Andrew was previously global editorial director of The Economist Corporate Network (ECN), the Economist group’s briefing and advisory service designed to help senior business leaders understand and navigate the local and regional business environment. He regularly chairs and moderates major Economist events, delivers custom briefings to senior executives (including Fortune 500 C-suite) and public figures (including heads of state) in his areas of expertise which include international political economy, foreign direct investment, international trade, corporate strategy and comparative management. He also regularly appears in the international business media (BBC, CNN, CNBC, Channel News Asia). Prior to his move to Singapore in 2016, Andrew was the ECN director, North Asia, covering South Korea and Japan, where he was a long-term resident.

     

    Andrew has a PhD in International Political Economy and an MSc in East Asian Business, both from the University of Sheffield, UK. He was a Ministry of Education research scholar at Hitotsubashi University in Tokyo (2001-2003) and before joining The Economist Group, Andrew pursued an academic career holding both tenured and adjunct posts at leading universities and business schools in Japan and the UK. He has published widely in his areas of expertise and major publications include Responses to Regionalism in East Asia: Japanese Production Networks in the Automotive Sector published as part of the Palgrave Macmillan Asian Business Series and chapters in edited volumes including Asian Inward and Outward FDI: New Challenges in the Global Economy and popular textbooks including Asian Business and Management. Andrew was also previously a Senior Editor for the internationally peer reviewed journal Asian Business and Management.

12:00 pm -1:30 SGT

Private roundtable - Fostering resilient economies: prioritising pandemic preparedness

This roundtable seeks to convene healthcare leaders to determine the holistic economic implications of the pandemic as well as investigate current policies and reprioritise covid-19 as an ongoing concern that requires continuous preparedness.

 

Apply to attend as a participant here.

Moderated by
12:30 pm -1:45 SGT

Networking lunch

1:50 pm -2:35 SGT

Elevating access: financing health and universal healthcare

The plurality of Asia’s healthcare systems reflects the region’s diversity. Developing countries often lack sufficient infrastructure and face significant challenges in making healthcare accessible. Governments in Asia typically spend only 4.5% of GDP on healthcare, but are nevertheless the dominant payer in the region. Global healthcare spending growth will slow to 4.1% in 2022, despite rising costs, as governments seek to repair budget deficits after the pandemic. Outlays are trending upwards due to population ageing, rising demand for care, advances in treatments and the expansion of public healthcare systems. The pandemic has prodded governments to rethink their welfare provision. Against the backdrop of rising inflation, how could a looming recession affect healthcare and our priorities for spending? How will the future of healthcare be financed? What can healthcare leaders do to prepare for the next crisis? Who will pay for the future of healthcare? What are the implications for research and development and innovation? What innovative financing models are available?

 

In 2015, at the United Nations (UN) Sustainable Development Summit, world leaders committed to the goal of universal health coverage (UHC). But the future sustainability of UHC is precarious. Most countries face a significant increase in the burden of chronic and non-communicable diseases. Which regions are leading in fostering UHC? Will we need to boost health literacy in Asia to improve the accessibility of UHC and realise its full value? What policy changes are needed to shore up UHC? Where can private health insurance schemes supplement and complement publicly financed UHC initiatives?

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    Anil Argilla

    President, Emerging Markets Asia, Pfizer Inc

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    Anil Argilla

    President, Emerging Markets Asia, Pfizer Inc

    November 15th 2022

    Anil Argilla is the president, Emerging Markets Asia, for the global biopharmaceuticals business at Pfizer. He is responsible for the entire Pfizer business in Taiwan, Hong Kong, Thailand and Indochina (Laos, Cambodia, Myanmar), Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Brunei, Pakistan, Singapore and Vietnam. He has handled a diverse range of roles, including cluster lead Asia, regional commercial lead and country manager Indonesia. Prior to joining Pfizer, Mr Argilla was with a management consulting firm focused on organisational transformation and change. His consultancy experience provided him with exposure to different industries, including automobile, IT/ ITES, banking and petrochemicals.

     

    Mr Argilla is a well-respected corporate executive and thought leader in the pharmaceutical industry and a highly experienced professional whose career spans across multiple industries. He is passionate about solving for equity in health-care access and digital application in the life sciences industry. He has worked and lived in India, China, Hong Kong and Indonesia and is currently based in Singapore.

     

    Mr Argilla is currently a board member of the US ASEAN Business Council. He has a master’s degree in personnel management from Symbiosis Institute of Business Management and a bachelor’s degree in commerce from Osmania University.

  • Lily Jin
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    Lily Jin

    Emerging markets financing and Author, “Inclusive Healthcare Investments in Asia” report

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    Lily Jin

    Lily Jin

    Emerging markets financing and Author, “Inclusive Healthcare Investments in Asia” report

    November 15th 2022

    Lily Jin authored the first of its kind investment report on healthcare investments in Asia and organised an inaugural forum as a thought leader in this space. Ms Jin currently also focuses on emerging markets financing. Previously she was an international investment banker in New York City serving the infrastructure and transportation sector.

     

    Ms Jin also is the founder of HerValue, a women’s empowerment organisation for finance and investments in China. She was selected as a fellow of the Royal Society of Arts for driving social change in women’s empowerment in finance in China.

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    Sejal Mistry

    Regional director, South-east Asia, ACCESS Health International

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    Sejal Mistry

    Regional director, South-east Asia, ACCESS Health International

    November 15th 2022

    Sejal Mistry leads the South-east Asia regional office of ACCESS Health to lead and design initiatives and projects in innovative health financing, digital technology and ageing. Ms Mistry has more than ten years’ experience in international health policy, health financing and HIV/AIDS. Previously, she worked with the South Korean Health Insurance Review and Assessment Service and as a senior health policy and multilateral affairs adviser for the US government with several agencies including the US State Department, US Health and Human Services, and US National Institutes of Health.

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2:40 pm -3:05 SGT

Keynote interview: a view from Thailand

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    Manus Potaporn

    Deputy director-general, Department of Medical Services, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand

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    Manus Potaporn

    Deputy director-general, Department of Medical Services, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand

    November 15th 2022

    Manus Potaporn is an otolaryngologist with over 30 years of extensive experience in clinical, academic and managerial areas in both rural and urban settings. In 2019, he was appointed deputy director-general of the department of medical services of Rajavithi Hospital, one of the largest super tertiary healthcare facilities in Bangkok. He had served as director of the hospital since 2015, and from 2009 to 2015, he was assistant director.

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3:10 pm -3:40 SGT

Coffee break

3:40 pm -4:25 SGT

Supply chains: future-proofing for resilience in healthcare systems

Covid-19 upended global supply chains across all sectors, highlighting the vulnerabilities of centralised and highly integrated supply-chain networks. Lockdowns this year in Shanghai and Shenzhen, cities accounting for more than 16% of China’s exports, raised alarm about supply chains once again. Bolstering resilience is important because disruption is virtually guaranteed as a result of climate change and shifts in trade policy or regulation, not to mention cyber-attacks and the theft of intellectual property. Changing consumer spending patterns have converged with long-term trends of increasing geopolitical tension, digitisation and lean inventory strategies to put further pressure on supply chains. Governments are keen to push ahead with regulation designed to increase resilience and lower costs. Many countries are looking into reshoring pharmaceutical production. How can forward-leaning organisations build more resilient and nimble supply chains by shifting towards decentralisation? What are the implications of “glocalisation” and onshoring for the future? Will growing protectionism globally pose a threat to healthcare access in LMCs? As the trade agenda looks to reignite after the covid-19 crisis, how will regional integration affect healthcare supply chains? What are the limits and risks of localising manufacturing for highly technical medical equipment?

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    Alexander Maxwell

    Vice-president, healthcare supply chain operations, DKSH

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    Alexander Maxwell

    Vice-president, healthcare supply chain operations, DKSH

    November 15th 2022

    In his current role Alex Maxwell has responsibility for healthcare supply chain operations at DKSH. DKSH has upwards of 2,600 staff across 12 markets dedicated to healthcare operations in Asia. Together DKSH healthcare manages over 16m transactions per year operating out of 36 dedicated healthcare facilities.

     

    Prior to joining DKSH, Mr Maxwell worked for DHL Supply Chain Asia, where he led healthcare business development across Asia as vice-president of business development. During his time at DHL, he also managed regional distribution centre operations for a large medical device client.

     

    Mr Maxwell has also previously held various supply chain leadership roles in healthcare organisations such as Novartis and Fenwal Therapeutics as well as taking a general manager position for three years with JSI Logistics China.

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    Fidah Alsagoff

    Joint head of enterprise development group (Singapore) and head of life sciences, Temasek

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    Fidah Alsagoff

    Joint head of enterprise development group (Singapore) and head of life sciences, Temasek

    November 15th 2022

    Fidah Alsagoff is currently joint head of the enterprise development group (Singapore) and head of life sciences at Temasek International, where he has been since 2008.

     

    Mr Alsagoff was previously a partner at Innosight Ventures, and prior to that he was chief executive of MOH Holdings. His career also includes nearly a decade in social entrepreneurship. He has set up several programmes and enterprises catering to hitherto unmet healthcare needs of patients, with the latest enterprise being the establishment of the Singapore Cord Blood Bank.

     

    Mr Alsagoff graduated from the National University of Singapore with a bachelor of medicine and surgery, and later with a master of medicine in public health. He attended INSEAD on a Lee Kuan Yew scholarship for post-graduate studies, and subsequently graduated with an executive MBA (with distinction). As valedictorian of his EMBA class, he was awarded the Claude Janssen Prize.

     

    He currently serves on the board of trustees of the Singapore University of Technology and Design and on the governing board of the Duke-NUS Medical School.

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    Jiadi Yu

    Chief investment officer, International Finance Corporation

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    Jiadi Yu

    Chief investment officer, International Finance Corporation

    November 15th 2022

    Based in Hong Kong, Jiadi Yu leads IFC’s investments in health care and education across Asia. She has supported the sustainable development and widespread delivery of health care and education within the region since 2009. She previously engaged in equity investments and debt financing in manufacturing and consumer services for Latin America, eastern Europe and Africa from IFC’s headquarters in Washington, DC.

     

    Prior to IFC, Ms Yu worked in the capital markets department at the World Bank in Washington, DC, and at the Shanghai Asset and Equity Exchange. She holds a master’s degree in public policy from Harvard University and a bachelor of arts degree from Renmin University of China. IFC, a member of the World Bank Group, is the world’s largest multilateral investor in private health care and education.

     

    IFC works to increase access to high-quality health and education by making direct investments, sharing industry knowledge and expertise, funding smaller companies, raising medical and education standards, and helping clients expand services to lower-income groups.

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    Nuriesya Saleha

    Senior manager, health practice, Economist Impact

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    Nuriesya Saleha

    Senior manager, health practice, Economist Impact

    November 15th 2022 November 16th 2022

    Nuriesya Saleha is the senior manager of the health practice team for Asia-Pacific at Economist Impact. She is a part of the policy and insights team based in Singapore, working with multi-disciplinary teams across the globe on projects spanning a range of disease focus areas. Ms Saleha has been in the healthcare sector for nearly ten years. She previously worked at Woodlands Health, an upcoming public healthcare campus in Singapore, developing new clinical models and processes by engaging with various clinical stakeholders. Prior to that, she was involved in managed-care-related projects in Singapore and Malaysia at Fullerton Health, and did health system operations and research at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. She has a master’s degree in health administration from Johns Hopkins University and undergraduate degree in economics and biochemistry.

4:30 pm -5:10 SGT

Enabling the patient voice

Patient empowerment is important to ensure that patient voices are valued and treatment plans are adhered to. Increased health literacy helps patients become more aware of decisions regarding their health, driving care continuity. The benefits extend beyond the clinical setting into the patient’s community. In some low- and middle-income countries (LMCs), though, governments see patient groups as activists. Can patient empowerment drive more equitable healthcare systems in the region? How can we move from confrontation to collaboration in these countries? How can we value individual needs and preferences in the patient journey?

 

Empowerment also means that patients should be comfortable sharing their concerns with physicians. Europe and the United States have formalised measures to increase patient engagement in their regulation and reimbursement systems. Patient-specific guidelines that support learning already exist such as courses from the Global Allergy & Airways Patient Platform (GAAPP). Further effort is needed to translate guidelines from scientific into non-technical language so they are more accessible to patients. How can patient flows and health systems be structured to allow enough time for healthcare professionals (HCPs) to connect with their patients? In Asia and beyond, where can key stakeholders build patients’ capacity to contribute to processes around regulation and reimbursement decision-making in a meaningful and informed way? What part does fostering health literacy play in all this? What cultural sensitivities need to be considered in the region in this context?

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    Ai Ling Sim-Devadas

    Mentor, SingHealth Patient Advocacy Network

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    Ai Ling Sim-Devadas

    Mentor, SingHealth Patient Advocacy Network

    November 15th 2022

    Ai Ling Sim-Devadas is the mentor and former co-chair of the SingHealth Patient Advocacy Network (SPAN) and is a cancer survivor. She is passionate about what patients and families can do to make health care better, safer, and more patient and family centred.

     

    Ms Sim-Devadas has been shaping the role of SPAN in the health-care system by bringing the voices of patients and families to the heart of health care to improve patient experience. To enable patient engagement in health-care improvement projects, she has worked with health-care teams to drive training programmes for patient advocates as well as develop a patient engagement guide for health-care professionals.

     

    With a strong professional background in health-care communications, patient experience and volunteer management, Ms Sim-Devadas brings valuable perspectives from both ends of the care spectrum—that of a health-care provider and a patient. She is a certified patient experience professional (CPXP).

     

    Ms Sim-Devadas also serves on the Beryl Institute Global Patient and Family Advisory Board. Besides patient advocacy she also volunteers with palliative care charities. She is a board member for Ambulance Wish Singapore, a charity for fulfilling last wishes for terminally ill patients.

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    Ann Single

    Advisory committee member, Patient Voice Initiative

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    Ann Single

    Advisory committee member, Patient Voice Initiative

    November 15th 2022

    Ann Single is the co-ordinator and an advisory committee member of the Patient Voice Initiative (Australia) and internationally chairs the Health Technology Assessment international (HTAi) Patient and Citizen Involvement Interest Group, whose 300 multi-stakeholder members in 43 countries are committed to improving patient involvement in access and reimbursement decisions. Her experience includes leading the development of patient involvement processes in Scotland’s HTA and co-ordinating the development of tools to support patient involvement in HTA internationally. She is co-editor of the first book in the field, Patient Involvement in Health Technology Assessment (2017), and has most recently published stories of impact in this area. Her current wider work includes co-developing and trialling a mentoring programme for consumer members on Australian committees. She was the co-chair of the International Scientific Programme Committee for HTAi’s 2022 annual meeting (Utrecht) and recently accepted an invitation to serve as a patient representative on the reference committee for the Australian government’s HTA Policy and Methods Review.

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    Einstein Rojas

    Board member, Philippine Alliance of Patient Organisations

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    Einstein Rojas

    Board member, Philippine Alliance of Patient Organisations

    November 15th 2022

    Einstein Rojas is a board member of the Philippine Alliance of Patient Organisations. Mr Rojas is also an innovation consultant and an engagement manager of Embiggen Group, based in the US and the Philippines.

     

    He is a certified innovation professional by the Global Innovation Management Institute, Cambridge, Massachusetts. He holds a master of science in innovation and business from the Asian Institute of Management and is a recognised innovation coach for college students at the Far Eastern University Institute of Technology Innovation Centre.

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    Emily Tiemann

    Manager, health practice, Economist Impact

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    Emily Tiemann

    Manager, health practice, Economist Impact

    November 15th 2022 November 16th 2022

    Emily Tiemann is a Health Practice Manager in the Policy and Insights team at Economist Impact in Singapore, where she is involved in projects ranging from Breast Cancer, Fertility and Digital Health. Prior to this, she worked in policy at the HFEA, the UK’s fertility regulator, leading projects related to consent, the Code of Practice and clinic inspections. She also worked closely with the Department of Health to outline the new upcoming legislation related to extending the storage periods of gametes and embryos beyond 10 years. Emily started her career as an embryologist at fertility clinics carrying out diagnostic and micromanipulation procedures. Emily has a degree in Biology from McGill University in Canada and a Master’s degree in Women’s Health from University College London.

5:15 pm -6:00 SGT

DEI in the DNA: improving diversity, equity and inclusion in healthcare

As the covid-19 crisis recedes, governments across the world are emphasising the need to “build back better” with a renewed focus on addressing existing inequalities. This post-pandemic recovery will take positive action in all domains of environmental, social and corporate governance (ESG). Certain communities and groups face barriers to accessing healthcare, whether due to ethnicity, disability, gender or income. Many devices and treatments work less well for non-white people and women. Pulse oximeters, for example, overestimate blood-oxygen saturation more frequently in black people than white. Medical technology should be designed from the outset to be free from such bias. Generally speaking, it is designed by white men and tested on white men. This fact has potentially lethal consequences for many in society. Stakeholders today expect businesses to deliver positive social outcomes alongside financial returns, demanding more diversity and inclusion. Employee variety has been linked to innovation, productivity and, for example in diverse teams of surgeons, fewer mistakes. Where are we on diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) in healthcare? To what extent is DEI a de-risking strategy? How can healthcare leaders build DEI into their DNA? How can we ensure patient data is representative and build that representation at every point in the healthcare value chain? How can we engage underserved and indigenous populations to increase their participation in clinical trials, regular health screenings and beyond? Where are problems of insufficient diversity and inclusion most acute?

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    Deborah Seifert

    Country manager, Thailand and Indochina, Pfizer Inc, and Chairperson, Pfizer Emerging Markets Asia Regional Council on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

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    Deborah Seifert

    Country manager, Thailand and Indochina, Pfizer Inc, and Chairperson, Pfizer Emerging Markets Asia Regional Council on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion

    November 15th 2022

    Deborah Seifert was appointed country manager of Pfizer Thailand and Indochina markets (Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos) in April 2020 to oversee Pfizer Biopharmaceutical Group operations in Thailand and Indochina. In her role, she leads Pfizer in its purpose of bringing breakthroughs that change patients’ lives. Her focus is on driving access to innovative medicines by both exercising internal co-ordination and engaging external top-level representatives to lead the conversation and drive positive change for public health in the country. She also serves as the chairperson of the Emerging Markets Asia Regional Council on Diversity, Equity and Inclusion.

     

    Ms Seifert joined Wyeth in 1993 as part of its in-house advertising agency for Pfizer, where she worked on multiple products and ultimately joined the marketing team in the women’s health-care business unit in the US in 2001. Following the acquisition of Wyeth by Pfizer in 2009, she was transferred to Pfizer. During her more than 25 years with Wyeth and Pfizer, she has held various management positions, including commercial operations, marketing and commercial development. Prior to leading the Thailand and Indochina market, Ms Seifert was Pfizer Emerging Markets group lead of inflammation and immunology, based in New York.

     

    Ms Seifert serves on the board of governors of the American Chamber of Commerce in Thailand. She holds a bachelor’s degree in economics from Bucknell University.

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    Jennifer Buckley

    Founder and managing director, Sweef Capital

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    Jennifer Buckley

    Founder and managing director, Sweef Capital

    November 15th 2022

    Jennifer Buckley founded and leads Sweef Capital, a Singapore-headquartered independent impact investment firm dedicated to improving the lives of women, men, their families and communities in underserved markets by focusing on investing in high-growth entrepreneurs building inclusive businesses. Sweef Capital’s investment practice is relationship centred and value creation oriented; this approach instils confidence in investee companies and leverages established channels to drive strong deal flow.

     

    Ms Buckley has more than 20 years’ experience in private equity leadership roles focused on growing mid-sized businesses across Europe and Asia as head of GE Capital’s EMEA private equity business and as CIO of its Asian operations.

     

    Ms Buckley was on the global investment committee and led the Asian and women’s economic empowerment investment programmes for a US-headquartered emerging market impact investment firm before spinning out the team to form Sweef Capital.

     

    During her career, she has worked at Goldman Sachs International and Private Advisors in London and at Fletcher Challenge in Auckland.

     

    Ms Buckley received her MSc in international accounting and finance from the London School of Economics. She also holds a LLM (honours) and LLB (honours) from the University of Canterbury.

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    Vivek Tomar

    Co-founder, Rise to Survive Cancer

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    Vivek Tomar

    Co-founder, Rise to Survive Cancer

    November 15th 2022

    Vivek Tomar is a patient advocate for cancer research, clinical trials, lung cancer and timely access to the latest treatments in India. He co-founded Rise to Survive Cancer, a patient advocacy initiative, and ALK Positive India, the country’s first oncogene-focused patient support group. Mr Tomar was appointed an adviser in his role of patient advocate for initiatives of the government of India, non-profit organisations, research centres and pharmaceutical companies on cancer, research and care. He has also been appointed as guest faculty for patient advocacy courses at leading management institutes, international patient support organisations and government of India education initiatives on cancer awareness. Mr Tomar received the International Patient Advocacy Award 2018 at the World Lung Cancer Conference in Canada.

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    Chee Hew

    Director, data analytics and consulting, Clearstate, EIU Healthcare

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    Chee Hew

    Director, data analytics and consulting, Clearstate, EIU Healthcare

    November 15th 2022 November 17th 2022

    Chee is an experienced consultant in the healthcare and life sciences sector in North America and Asia Pacific, with more than 18 years of experience in business and operational strategy consulting, leveraging strong market research capabilities. She has more than 12 years of healthcare experience specifically in China.

     

    Prior to joining EIU Healthcare, Chee was the Strategy & Change Pharmaceutical leader in IBM Global Business Services (previously PricewaterhouseCoopers) in China. Before that, she was with the North American R&D pharmaceutical industry practice based in Toronto.

     

    Chee has extensive experience working with senior executives of both healthcare and life sciences companies and government organizations to develop and implement strategic plans.

     

    Chee focuses on med tech globally, working with global IVD leaders such as Abbott Diagnostics, Roche Diagnostics, Danaher (i.e. Beckman Coulter, Leica, Radiometer), Bio-Rad and Sysmex. Chee has managed large scale projects to provide credible market insights to help clients achieve sustainable growth.

     

    In Asia Pacific, she has worked with other medical technology companies and research institutes. She has led numerous consulting projects to formulate winning go-to-market strategies in emerging markets in Asia Pacific and Latin America.

     

    She has published various white papers and presented at major conferences on current healthcare topics in Asia. She has covered topics such as “Future Outlook for Health in China”, “SE Asia: The New Emerging Healthcare Market Challenge”, “Digital Healthcare”, etc.

     

    Chee holds an MBA from Schulich School of Business, York University (Canada) and BSc (Hons) in Microbiology from University of Toronto.

9:00 am -10:00 SGT

Registration and coffee

10:00 am -10:45 SGT

Concurrent: Driving access and prevention: digital diagnostics and therapeutics

Rising wealth and healthcare demands are driving an appetite for medtech in the region. Digitisation spurred on by the covid-19 crisis has ushered in an acceptance of remote medical products and services, and alternative care models. Technological innovation can boost progress across the UN SDG agenda, if supported by regulation to facilitate access. In some countries, the hospital can even come to the patient. Hospitals as we know them might play an increasingly smaller role in the future driving a need to integrate digital devices and home care to make care available everywhere. Wearable devices could transform the future of health care. Soon, wearables could unobtrusively measure people’s blood sugar and alcohol concentration, hydration, markers of liver and kidney function and lots more. Where are we on digital diagnostics and therapeutics? Where are we on wearables? How can digital diagnostics open up access to experts for rural or remote patients? Is AI ready to make life-changing decisions in remote diagnostics? Will emerging technology replace workers in healthcare or simply augment the workflow of existing HCPs? Should money be spent on new technologies when resources are scarce? How do we mitigate biases in digital devices such as oximeters? How do we incentivise focus on preventive health when curative health has historically been more incentivised?

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    Benedict Tan

    Group chief digital strategy officer and chief data officer, Singapore Health Services (SingHealth)

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    Benedict Tan

    Group chief digital strategy officer and chief data officer, Singapore Health Services (SingHealth)

    November 16th 2022

    Benedict Tan is the group chief digital strategy officer (GCDSO) and chief data officer (CDO) for Singapore Health Services (SingHealth) cluster. As GCDSO for SingHealth, Mr Tan drives SingHealth’s digital strategy and roadmap to enrich the digital experience of patients and staff. His portfolio includes critical functions such as IT delivery and support, cybersecurity, analytics, data management and data governance. As CDO he is also responsible for promoting the sharing and effective use of data in a secured manner to support all the digitalisation efforts.

     

    Mr Tan has more than 30 years’ experience in the specialised healthcare-IT industry spanning both private and public institutions including the Ministry of Health, National Computer Board, SAP and SingHealth, encompassing many different roles and responsibilities such as project manager, business development, product manager and implementation consultant. He has played key leadership roles in the implementation of several large-scale IT and process reengineering projects such as the Civil Service Medical Claims Reengineering initiative, SGH Bed Management and SingHealth electronic medical records. He has also led IT enablement projects for many new SingHealth facilities such as in academia, the National Heart Centre Singapore and polyclinics.

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    Michael Ho

    Head of innovation and strategy, National Health Innovation Centre, Singapore

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    Michael Ho

    Head of innovation and strategy, National Health Innovation Centre, Singapore

    November 16th 2022

    Michael Ho is the head of innovation and strategy at NHIC, where he oversees the medical technology and biotechnology portfolio. He has over ten years of experience working with early stage medtech innovations, guiding innovations from conceptualisation stage through to commercialisation. He is an active member in several evaluation committees and has spearheaded multiple programmes that accelerate health tech innovations.

     

    Mr Ho is an engineer by training. His research focuses on medtech innovation, working closely with clinical partners in areas of miniaturised medical device innovation and development. In his previous role as a scientist with A*STAR, he led and developed close to ten implantable and wearable medical devices, in areas of diagnostic and interventional solutions.

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    Sidney Yee

    Founding chief executive, Diagnostics Development Hub (DxD Hub), and founding co-lead, ASEAN Diagnostics Initiative

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    Sidney Yee

    Founding chief executive, Diagnostics Development Hub (DxD Hub), and founding co-lead, ASEAN Diagnostics Initiative

    November 16th 2022

    Sidney Yee is an investor, mentor and board member of medtech and healthtech companies. After nine years as the founding chief executive of Diagnostics Development (DxD) Hub, she recently transitioned as an adviser at Singapore’s Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), innovation and enterprise division. DxD Hub is a national diagnostics platform hosted by A*STAR and equipped with expertise and capability to rapidly translate R&D output from public and private sectors into deployable medtech products.

     

    Ms Yee is founding co-lead of the ASEAN Diagnostics Development Initiative, as well as adjunct associate professor at the Centre of Regulatory Excellence, Duke-NUS Medical School, and adjunct associate professor, NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. 

     

    While at DxD Hub, she was inaugural lead of the diagnostics co-operative of the Programme for Research in Epidemic Preparedness and Response (PREPARE), Singapore. PREPARE is Singapore’s national platform focusing on strengthening mid- to long-term R&D capabilities to prevent, prepare for and respond to future epidemics. 

     

    A serial entrepreneur, Ms Yee has co-founded, invested in and mentored a number of startups in the areas of biotech, medtech and healthtech. During her tenure at EDB Investments, she led several investments in early stage companies in genomics, drug development and medical devices.

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    Swee Kheng Khor

    Chief executive, Angsana Health

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    Swee Kheng Khor

    Chief executive, Angsana Health

    November 16th 2022

    Khor Swee Kheng is chief executive of Angsana Health and a Malaysian physician specialising in health systems and global health. He has concurrent appointments at Chatham House, the National University of Singapore and the United Nations University. Previously, he held progressively senior practice roles in clinical medicine, refugee relief and Fortune 100 pharma, based in Malaysia, Singapore, Dubai, Shanghai and Paris and covering Asia, Africa, Europe and the Middle East. He holds three post-graduate degrees (internal medicine from the Royal College of Physicians, public health from Berkeley and public policy from Oxford) and has published nearly 200 articles (including for the Council on Foreign Relations, Foreign Affairs, The Lancet and Project Syndicate).

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    Sook Chen Lee

    Senior principal consultant, Clearstate, EIU Healthcare

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    Sook Chen Lee

    Senior principal consultant, Clearstate, EIU Healthcare

    November 16th 2022

    Sook Chen is a Senior Principal at Clearstate, the Economist’s healthcare consulting arm. She has over 12 years of experience in healthcare consulting, leveraging strong market intelligence and analytics capabilities to uncover market insights and provide actionable strategies. Her experience spans across the healthcare ecosystem, covering diagnostics, medical devices, life sciences, therapeutics & pharmaceuticals.

     

    Sook Chen has extensive experience working with prominent healthcare companies such as J&J, Abbott, Baxter, Roche, Danaher, Pfizer and Philips. Coupled with her strong background in Asia Pacific’s healthcare ecosystem and its unique challenges, Sook Chen is able to provide credible insights to both commercial and strategic leaders within these organisations.

     

    Prior to joining EIU Healthcare, Sook Chen was a seasoned strategy and business consultant at Deloitte Consulting (SEA) for over 6 years. Sook Chen holds a Bachelor of Science in Economics from University of York.

10:00 am -10:45 SGT

Balancing lives and livelihoods: preparedness for future pandemics in the aftermath of covid-19

Billions of doses of vaccine have been administered, new therapeutics are on their way and, in many countries, life seems to be opening up. But covid-19 is here to stay. Countries with solid public-health infrastructure and good access to healthcare and vaccines are likely to be more resilient in coming phases. In the most optimistic scenario, covid-19 infections will flare up periodically, especially during winter or when new variants emerge. America and Britain are examples of countries that have decided to learn to live with the virus. China has taken a different course, and over the past two years it has had a lower mortality rate from covid-19 and stronger economic growth than any other big country. But each new case is testing the government’s “zero-covid” strategy, which uses mass testing and lockdowns to crush any hint of an outbreak. A study published last year out of China found that during an early lockdown, deaths from chronic illnesses exceeded expected rates by 21%. Many people in China have little or no immunity to covid-19, and immunologically naive populations pose a huge risk for the rest of the world. New variants are likely to emerge from these groups. In the worst-case scenario, a deadly new vaccine-resistant variant could set the world’s pandemic clock back to zero.

 

How are we keeping solutions catalysed by covid-19, such as contact tracing, alive for the next pandemic? How can we maintain the infrastructure, and who will pay for it? How can continuity in preparedness be established? Hong Kong once boasted a very low case count. But Omicron overwhelmed the city in March. Most of the dead have been unvaccinated old folk. Despite having more cases at a similar time, South Korea’s stronger vaccine roll-out led to less deaths. How can healthcare leaders strike a balance between preventing resurgences of the virus and protecting the economy? What lessons has the world learned? What will normality look like in the next two years? Where will the next variant come from? How are we dealing with long covid? What is being done to ensure preparedness and resilience for the inevitable next pandemic? Who will pay for this future-proofing? What is the status of the WHO’s global treaty to codify the global response to pandemics?

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    Anita Suresh

    Deputy director of genomics and sequencing, FIND

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    Anita Suresh

    Deputy director of genomics and sequencing, FIND

    November 16th 2022

    Anita Suresh is deputy director at FIND, the global alliance for diagnostics, where she heads the genomics and sequencing unit. Ms Suresh leads a 12-member multidisciplinary team focused on enabling technologies and building capacity for next-generation sequencing for drug-resistant TB detection, and genomic surveillance across covid-19, antimicrobial resistance and pandemic preparedness. She is FIND’s technical lead on the Genomic Surveillance Working Group under the Access to Covid-19 Tools Accelerator (ACT-A) diagnostics pillar. Ms Suresh has 18 years of experience across the biomedical value chain, including upstream and downstream commercialisation of in vitro diagnostics, technology assessment, clinical and scientific programme management, grant development, R&D and public policy. She has an MBA from the Kellogg School of Management, Northwestern University, and an MSc in bioinformatics and a BSc (honours) in molecular biology, both from the National University of Singapore.

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    Cheong Wei Yang

    Deputy secretary (technology), Ministry of Health, Singapore

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    Cheong Wei Yang

    Deputy secretary (technology), Ministry of Health, Singapore

    November 16th 2022

    As deputy secretary (technology) at the Ministry of Health (MOH), Cheong Wei Yang deploys technology against covid-19 and is developing the health innovation ecosystem to achieve MOH’s 3 Beyonds: beyond healthcare to health; beyond hospital to community; and beyond quality to value and Healthier SG.

     

    Prior to MOH, he was deputy chief executive of the National Research Foundation of Singapore, where he implemented the S$19bn Research Innovation and Enterprise (RIE) 2020 plan and led an inter-agency effort to develop the S$25bn RIE 2025 plan.

     

    Mr Cheong was divisional director (planning) at the Ministry of Education. Beyond educational policies, he shaped educational research at the National Institute of Education and led international benchmarking and partnership efforts. As deputy director (manufacturing and services) at the Ministry of Trade and Industry overseeing the Economic Development Board, he led the secretariat for the economic strategies committee. As head of fiscal strategy at the Ministry of Finance, he shaped Singapore’s long-term fiscal sustainability.

     

    As a Rhodes Scholar and PSC Scholar, he obtained his DPhil/MPhil in economics from Oxford and his SB in chemical engineering and SB in economics from Massachusetts Institute of Technology.

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    Shawn Vasoo

    Clinical director, National Centre for Infectious Diseases, Singapore

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    Shawn Vasoo

    Clinical director, National Centre for Infectious Diseases, Singapore

    November 16th 2022

    Shawn Vasoo is clinical director and senior consultant at the National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID), Singapore. Dr Vasoo also leads the Infectious Disease Research Laboratory at NCID and serves as faculty in undergraduate and post-graduate medical education.

     

    As clinical director, he oversees clinical and outbreak preparedness activities at NCID, a 330-bed facility in Singapore purpose built for outbreaks, and chairs the covid-19 therapeutic workgroup in Singapore. Besides covid-19, he has overseen NCID’s responses to several outbreaks in recent years, including measles and monkeypox in 2019 and 2022, and works closely with the Ministry of Health and healthcare institutions across Singapore for pandemic preparedness.

     

    Dr Vasoo graduated from the National University of Singapore in 2001. He completed his residency training in internal medicine and his fellowship in infectious diseases at Rush University Medical Centre in Chicago, and following that, a clinical microbiology fellowship and an orthopaedic infectious diseases fellowship at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minnesota.

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    Aniruddha Patil

    Unit head, health and education investments, Asian Development Bank

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    Aniruddha Patil

    Unit head, health and education investments, Asian Development Bank

    November 16th 2022

    As the head of the social sectors team in private sector operations at the Asian Development Bank, Aniruddha Patil is responsible for ADB’s direct lending to and investments in private healthcare and education companies in Asia and the Pacific. Prior to joining ADB, Mr Patil worked for Macquarie Capital in Singapore, Boston Consulting Group in Munich and the World Bank in New Delhi. He has a master’s degree in public administration and international development from the Harvard Kennedy School, a master’s in management from the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad, and a bachelor’s in mechanical engineering from the Birla Institute of Technology and Science, Pilani.

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10:50 am -11:35 SGT

Jabs for the jab-nots: the future of open-source vaccines, mRNA and beyond

Ramping up local capacity to make vaccines should be the cornerstone of a more resilient public-health infrastructure. Over the past year many leaders in Africa and other developing regions have watched vast disparities open up in the share of populations that have been fully vaccinated against covid-19. A year of rampant vaccine nationalism left the 1.2 billion people in 54 African countries at the back of the queue. The plight of the “jab-nots” in the developing world has rallied some to embrace “open-source” pharma and vaccines, whose potential remains to be seen. The WHO has set up a technology transfer hub in South Africa, where it hopes scientists will learn how to make mRNA vaccines and spread that knowledge across the continent. Decades of research helped set the stage for humanity to maximise the potential and power of Ramping up local capacity to make vaccines should be the cornerstone of a more resilient public-health infrastructure. Over the past year many leaders in Africa and other developing regions have watched vast disparities open up in the share of populations that have been fully vaccinated against covid-19. A year of rampant vaccine nationalism left the 1.2 billion people in 54 African countries at the back of the queue. The plight of the “jab-nots” in the developing world has rallied some to embrace “open-source” pharma and vaccines, whose potential remains to be seen. The WHO has set up a technology transfer hub in South Africa, where it hopes scientists will learn how to make mRNA vaccines and spread that knowledge across the continent. Decades of research helped set the stage for humanity to maximise the potential and power of mRNA when we needed it to address covid-19. The goal is now to build nimble vaccine supply chains that are ready to start producing as soon as the genetic sequence of a virus or variant is mapped. This panel seeks to explore the future of vaccines, including mRNA and open-source vaccines, and how they can deliver access to better health for all. How can healthcare leaders close the gap between the jabs and jab-nots in the future?

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    Claudia Nannei

    Senior technical officer, World Health Organisation

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    Claudia Nannei

    Senior technical officer, World Health Organisation

    November 16th 2022

    Claudia Nannei is a health economist by education with a specialisation in management of health programmes. She is a public health manager by experience, having worked for more than ten years in university hospitals as a strategic planning and performance monitoring expert.

     

    Ms Nannei joined the World Health Organisation (WHO) in 2009 to lead the work on performance monitoring and evaluation (M&E) of the WHO Strategy on Public Health and Innovation and later became responsible for other M&E work, namely for the Global Action Plan for Influenza Vaccines and the R&D Blueprint.

     

    She spearheaded a new WHO programme focusing on sustainable local production of influenza vaccines for pandemic preparedness in a number of developing countries that had previously received seed funding and technical assistance from WHO to set up or expand their production capacity. She is now managing the mRNA technology-transfer hub programme for the expansion of local production in low- and middle-income countries to ensure equitable access to countermeasures in the event of a pandemic.

     

    She holds master’s degrees in management of public health organisations and health economics and management and is a 2024 doctorate candidate in public health.

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    Harish Iyer

    Deputy director, digital and health innovations, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

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    Harish Iyer

    Deputy director, digital and health innovations, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

    November 16th 2022

    Harish Iyer is deputy director of digital and health innovations at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, working out of the India country office. Mr Iyer is interested in the role of innovation, science and technology in improving public health and equitable economic development. He is a strategic partner between Indian researchers, global partners and the foundation teams in critical R&D work, including in vaccine-preventable diseases, new approaches to treating neglected diseases, life science partnerships for public health, digital health innovations for all and reducing the digital divide. Prior to his role at the foundation, he was the chief executive of Shantha Biotech from 2011 to 2015. He has also worked in various R&D roles in several biotech companies, including as head of R&D at Biocon, and in various technical roles at Biogen-IDEC and Genentech in the US.

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    Paul Pronyk

    Director, Duke-NUS Centre for Outbreak Preparedness

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    Paul Pronyk

    Director, Duke-NUS Centre for Outbreak Preparedness

    November 16th 2022

    Paul Pronyk is the director of the Duke-NUS Centre for Outbreak Preparedness and deputy director of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute. As an infectious disease and public health physician, he has supported communicable disease control programmes in low- and middle-income countries across Africa and Asia for over two decades with UNICEF, Columbia University and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.

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    Peter Hotez

    Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine

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    Peter Hotez

    Dean, National School of Tropical Medicine, Baylor College of Medicine

    November 16th 2022

    Peter J Hotez is an internationally recognised physician-scientist in neglected tropical diseases and vaccine development. He is dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine and professor of paediatrics and molecular virology and microbiology at Baylor College of Medicine, where he is also the co-director of the Texas Children’s Centre for Vaccine Development and endowed chair of tropical paediatrics at Texas Children’s Hospital. He is also university professor at Baylor University, fellow in disease and poverty at the James A Baker III Institute for Public Policy, senior fellow at the Scowcroft Institute of International Affairs at Texas A&M University, faculty fellow with the Hagler Institute for Advanced Study at Texas A&M University and health policy scholar in the Baylor Centre for Medical Ethics and Health Policy.

     

    Dr Hotez served previously as president of the American Society of Tropical Medicine and Hygiene and he is founding editor-in-chief of PLoS Neglected Tropical Diseases. He is an elected member of the National Academy of Medicine (public health section) and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences (public policy section). In 2014–16, he served in the Obama administration as US envoy, focusing on vaccine diplomacy initiatives between the US government and countries in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2022 Dr Hotez and his colleague Dr Maria Elena Bottazzi were nominated for the Nobel Peace Prize for their efforts to develop and distribute a low-cost covid-19 vaccine.

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10:50 am -11:35 SGT

Concurrent: Headhunting for health: alleviating the labour shortage

The ratio of doctors per thousand patients in Asia is less than the OECD average, and the world is short 9m nurses according to WHO estimates. Some of the countries worst affected by this labour shortage are in Asia. Covid-19 has also killed between 80,000 and 180,000 healthcare workers worldwide, according to the WHO. Clinics and hospitals around the globe are struggling to recruit and retain staff, and the pharmacy industry is facing a similar problem. Where did all the workers go? Falling birth rates, family care needs during the pandemic and record numbers of people leaving the workforce altogether make it harder to recruit staff in all sectors. Unfilled vacancies, at 30m across the rich world across multiple sectors, have never been so high. Countries like Australia, with borders shut in response to the global pandemic, are facing a massive skills shortage. Without proper workforce planning, efforts to catch up on a backlog of non-covid care will fail. Healthcare providers and professionals also struggle to stay up to date with the constant deluge of new medical studies and data. How can healthcare organisations mitigate the labour shortage to ensure continuity of care? What upskilling or knowledge infrastructure should healthcare leaders consider to retain talent and optimise their workforce? What role will the metaverse play in optimising tomorrow’s healthcare workforce?

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    Doreen Su-Yin Tan

    Associate professor, National University of Singapore, and cardiology specialist pharmacist, National University Heart Centre, Singapore

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    Doreen Su-Yin Tan

    Associate professor, National University of Singapore, and cardiology specialist pharmacist, National University Heart Centre, Singapore

    November 16th 2022

    Doreen Su-Yin Tan is a cardiology specialist pharmacist who has spent over 20 years in geriatrics and cardiology-related work. She previously headed the pharmacy department at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, then crossed to corporate development as assistant director of the value office before joining the National University of Singapore department of pharmacy full time. Dr Tan continues to lobby for rational use of cardiovascular pharmacotherapy and the value of CV team pharmacists in her role as board member of the International Society of Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy (ISCP) through the founding of the A to Z of CV Pharmacotherapy webinar series and the ISCP CLAPs (CataLysing ReAl-World Cardiovascular Pharmacotherapy).

     

    Dr Tan is a full-time associate professor with the NUS department of pharmacy and a cardiology specialist pharmacist practising at the National University Heart Centre, Singapore. She is active with practice and precision medicine research and is the pharmacist lead for AMI-HOPE (Acute Myocardial Infarction Allied Health-Oriented Patient-Centred Digitally Enabled Care). She is co-investigator for NUHS’ PRECISE Clinical Implementation Pilot and co-leads the national PERSUASION initiative, a programme designed to train practising pharmacists in person-centred communication and relationship-based care.

     

    She is an appointed member of the NUHS Steering Committee for Pharmacogenomics and serves as the NUS pharmacy department lead in the design of integrated modules for the undergraduate and post-graduate cardiology, haematology and shared decision-making subjects, while teaching post-graduate health technology as well. Dr Tan is an appointed faculty adviser for the undergraduate pre-employment clinical training programme and co-leads the new BPharm (honours) discovery project, Student-Led Collaborative Innovative Pharmacy Inquiry.

  • Lluis Vinals Torres
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    Lluis Vinals Torres

    Co-ordinator, health policy and services design, World Health Organisation, Western Pacific region

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    Lluis Vinals Torres

    Co-ordinator, health policy and services design, World Health Organisation, Western Pacific region

    November 16th 2022

    Lluis Vinals Torres leads the HPS team that supports World Health Organisation member states to develop and implement policies, strategies, plans and service delivery design, including primary healthcare, to strengthen governance, financing and the health workforce. He is a health financing expert with more than 25 years of experience at different levels of health systems, including facility, district, provincial and national, in both low- and middle-income countries as well as in post-conflict environments. Prior to his current position, he was the health policy adviser for the WHO country office in Myanmar.

  • Margareta Laminto
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    Margareta Laminto

    Group chief commercial officer and group chief sustainability officer, Fullerton Health

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    Margareta Laminto

    Margareta Laminto

    Group chief commercial officer and group chief sustainability officer, Fullerton Health

    November 16th 2022

    As the current group CCO at Fullerton Health, Margareta Laminto works closely with the chief executive and is responsible for developing commercial and business development strategies that are optimised for both short-term results and long-term strategy. Her responsibilities include building the commercialisation infrastructure needed and growing the organisation’s assets to drive market adoption of the Fullerton Health products and service offerings to serve more patients and corporate clients with affordable and accessible healthcare offerings. She drives and supports company results from both an operational and a financial perspective towards growth, performance and profitability. She also builds partnerships with business leaders to institutionalise talent management and women’s leadership initiatives across the company.

     

    In her previous role as COO at Fullerton, Ms Laminto led group procurement, strategic human and talent resources, innovation and transformation projects, as well as environmental and social initiatives.

     

    She has held senior global executive roles in the healthcare industry, notably in the field of medical devices and specialty innovative pharmaceuticals. She was a country director for the hospital group at Johnson & Johnson and had extensive experience working in the Asia-Pacific region in driving key strategies on new and novel metabolic surgery technology. She also has more than 20 years of experience in strategic marketing, account management, business development, change management, government engagement and leadership development.

     

    Ms Laminto holds an MBA (strategy and finance) from the University of Chicago Booth School of Business.

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    Ritu Bhandari

    Manager, policy and insights, Economist Impact

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    Ritu Bhandari

    Manager, policy and insights, Economist Impact

    November 16th 2022

    Ritu Bhandari is a manager with the Policy and Insights team at Economist Impact. She has over seven years of experience working in a wide range of public policy topics including food security, technology and sustainability. At Economist Impact, she manages research programs for private-sector, governments and NGO clients in Asia, covering topics like agriculture and food, climate and sustainability, and technology. She holds a Master’s degree in Public Policy from Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, National University of Singapore, where she specialised in economic policy analysis.

11:35 am -12:00

Coffee Break

12:05 pm -12:50 SGT

Concurrent: Women’s health: building a roadmap for equity

Around the globe healthcare systems seem to have failed women in many ways. Constrained choices and lack of access to appropriate and timely care contribute to gender disparities in outcomes, particularly in areas like oncology. Men are often the subject of studies. As a result, plenty of health issues specific to women have, despite their ubiquity, been routinely neglected. Women are also often at a disadvantage in treatment. Procedures such as hip implants and heart surgery, for example, are more likely to fail in them than in men. Of the world’s regions, East Asia experiences the greatest numbers of female cancer cases and deaths. Addressing the cancer burden in women recognises opportunities to tackle gender inequities that have long plagued women’s health more widely. Which disease trends in women require our most urgent attention? How could patient pathways in various social groups be improved to ensure equal access to healthcare? What system needs to be put in place to translate the aim of healthcare equity into practical steps that deliver more inclusive care and support? How much investment is needed to reach targets, and where will these resources come from? This session will look at systemic issues in women’s health and how they highlight global disparities in healthcare access.

  • Hsien-Hsien Lei Organisation Logo
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    Hsien-Hsien Lei

    Chief executive, American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham), Singapore, and adjunct associate professor, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore

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    Hsien-Hsien Lei

    Chief executive, American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham), Singapore, and adjunct associate professor, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore

    November 16th 2022

    Hsien-Hsien Lei is chief executive of the American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Singapore. She is also adjunct associate professor at the National University of Singapore Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, a member of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s advisory board, vice-president of the Precision Public Health Asia Society and a board member of TalenTtrust.

     

    Prior to AmCham, Ms Lei was vice-president of medical and scientific affairs at Medtronic Asia-Pacific, where she was responsible for the Medtronic innovation centres in Japan and Korea, training and education, and the company’s health systems transformation strategy in the region. She has extensive experience in scientific affairs, corporate and healthcare communications, advertising, public relations and government affairs.

     

    Ms Lei has lived and worked in the US, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam and the UK, and she is now based in Singapore. She holds a BA (with honours) in human biology from Stanford University and a PhD in epidemiology from Johns Hopkins University Bloomberg School of Public Health, where she was the recipient of a US National Institutes of Health cardiovascular disease epidemiology training grant. Her doctoral thesis explored the genetic epidemiology of end-stage renal disease and type 2 diabetes. She completed her post-doctoral fellowship at National Taiwan University Hospital in the department of internal medicine.

  • Sabine Kapasi
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    Sabine Kapasi

    Global strategy lead, United Nations Emergency Response

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    Sabine Kapasi

    Sabine Kapasi

    Global strategy lead, United Nations Emergency Response

    November 16th 2022

    Sabine Kapasi is a gynaecologist and global strategy lead at United Nations Emergency Response, UN Disaster Assessment and Co-ordination (UNDAC).

     

    Dr Kapasi has worked with several healthcare businesses and projects in the public and private sectors. She advises the government of five states on health policy and has worked on pricing models for Obamacare and helped design Ayushman Bharat.

     

    With UNDAC, as part of the pre–first responders’ team, she has worked in several crisis areas, including Peru, Venezuela, South Korea, Egypt, Iraq, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Poland and Estonia. After March 2021, she worked with the National Expert Group on Vaccine Administration for Covid-19 on vaccine policy and outreach advisory.

     

    Dr Kapasi provides strategy consulting in the areas of healthcare, healthtech, agritech, negotiation communication, market analysis, conflict management, business incubation, women-centric businesses and governance. She has successfully established healthcare startups and healthtech incubators for industry leaders.

     

    She studied medicine at Manipal University and data strategy at the Wharton School, Harvard Business School and New York University Stern School of Business. She has worked in 68 countries and teaches courses at HKS NUS and INSEAD.

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    Yolanda Augustin

    Oncologist, St George's University of London

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    Yolanda Augustin

    Oncologist, St George's University of London

    November 16th 2022

    Yolanda Augustin is a Malaysian oncologist with a special interest in global oncology. She co-leads a global oncology programme at St George’s, University of London, focused on developing affordable therapeutics and diagnostics for cancer and infectious disease in low- and middle-income countries. The programme brings together interdisciplinary experts from academia, global health and industry, with research collaborations in Malaysia, Vietnam, India and Senegal. Current projects include drug repurposing/repositioning for cancer, affordable point-of-care diagnostics for HPV, DNA screening for cervical cancer and development pipelines for affordable cancer therapeutics. Her team also runs advocacy programmes with community healthcare champions and local stakeholders in rural communities in Sarawak, Malaysia, aimed at removing barriers to equitable healthcare access and cancer service delivery.

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    Emily Tiemann

    Manager, health practice, Economist Impact

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    Emily Tiemann

    Manager, health practice, Economist Impact

    November 15th 2022 November 16th 2022

    Emily Tiemann is a Health Practice Manager in the Policy and Insights team at Economist Impact in Singapore, where she is involved in projects ranging from Breast Cancer, Fertility and Digital Health. Prior to this, she worked in policy at the HFEA, the UK’s fertility regulator, leading projects related to consent, the Code of Practice and clinic inspections. She also worked closely with the Department of Health to outline the new upcoming legislation related to extending the storage periods of gametes and embryos beyond 10 years. Emily started her career as an embryologist at fertility clinics carrying out diagnostic and micromanipulation procedures. Emily has a degree in Biology from McGill University in Canada and a Master’s degree in Women’s Health from University College London.

12:05 pm -12:50 SGT

Antimicrobial resistance: the overlooked pandemic and its implications for preventive care

Some 1.3m people died in 2019 from diseases caused by bacteria that have become resistant to antibiotics. That is nearly as many as from malaria and HIV combined. Greater antimicrobial resistance (AMR) has been driven by the overprescription of antibiotics for non-serious diseases, and the economic burden of superbugs is growing. In 2016 British government scientists predicted that if no serious effort is made to check AMR, it could kill more than 10m people a year globally by 2050. AMR has been deadliest in sub-Saharan Africa, where it caused 24 deaths per 100,000 people in 2019, and South Asia (22 deaths per 100,000). By 2018 South Asia’s 1.8 billion people were taking a quarter of the world’s antibiotics. In most of the subcontinent antibiotics are easy to obtain and are sometimes used to compensate for poor sanitation and healthcare.

 

More widely available cheap diagnostics would prevent doctors from prescribing the wrong drugs. Better sanitation and healthcare would reduce demand for antibiotics. Better medical training would curb overprescription. Fighting superbugs may be costly, but failing to do so is costlier. In 2019 over-the-counter sales of antibiotics were banned in Islamabad, Pakistan’s capital. What likely policy changes are needed to minimise the risk from AMR in the future? What are some of the solutions to overprescription of antibiotics? How and to what degree do regulatory oversight, supervision and risk management need to change? Are more stringent, far-reaching regulatory mechanisms needed, such as penalties for irrational prescription or overuse? Would a UN resolution help solve the problem?

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    David Paterson

    Director, ADVANCE-ID (ADVANcing Clinical Evidence in Infectious Diseases)

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    David Paterson

    Director, ADVANCE-ID (ADVANcing Clinical Evidence in Infectious Diseases)

    November 16th 2022

    David L Paterson is an infectious diseases physician who is director of ADVANCE-ID, a newly established network of hospitals across Asia. Dr Paterson completed his infectious diseases fellowship at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Centre, where he subsequently worked as chief of transplant infectious diseases. He then returned to Australia, working for the University of Queensland before moving to the National University of Singapore in March 2022. He has published more than 500 scientific papers, predominantly in the area of antimicrobial resistance. His major research interest is in leading clinical trials on strategies for treatment of infections due to antibiotic-resistant bacteria. Most recently, he led the MERINO trial, which was published in JAMA in 2018.

  • Hsu Li Yang Organisation Logo
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    Hsu Li Yang

    Vice dean (global health) and programme leader (infectious diseases), Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore

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    Hsu Li Yang

    Vice dean (global health) and programme leader (infectious diseases), Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore

    November 16th 2022

    Li Yang Hsu, an infectious diseases physician, is currently vice dean of global health and head of the infectious diseases programme at Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore (NUS). He is also associate director of the Singapore Centre for Environmental Life Sciences Engineering, a research centre of excellence on biofilms and microbial communities based jointly at Nanyang Technological University and NUS. Although he has been involved in covid-19 research and education, his primary academic focus is in the area of antimicrobial resistance. He has worked with famed comic book artist Sonny Liew to publish educational comics on both covid-19 and antimicrobial resistance.

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    Norio Ohmagari

    Director, Disease Control and Prevention Centre and AMR Clinical Reference Centre, National Centre for Global Health and Medicine, Japan

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    Norio Ohmagari

    Director, Disease Control and Prevention Centre and AMR Clinical Reference Centre, National Centre for Global Health and Medicine, Japan

    November 16th 2022

    Norio Ohmagari has been director of the Disease Control and Prevention Centre of the National Centre for Global Health and Medicine (NCGM), Japan, since 2012. NCGM is one of six national medical centres in Japan with infectious diseases as the main focus. He also serves as director of the AMR Clinical Reference Centre, which is commissioned by the Ministry of Health, Labour and Welfare, Japan.

     

    Dr Ohmagari joined NCGM in 2011, after serving as chief of the division of infectious diseases at the Shizuoka Cancer Centre. He completed his clinical fellowship in infectious diseases at the University of Texas, Houston.

     

    Dr Ohmagari is engaged in the care, prevention and research of infectious diseases from a global perspective. As a physician, he is directly involved in the clinical management of patients with infectious diseases. Dr Ohmagari is also actively working on activities related to controlling antimicrobial resistance in Japan as well as the on-site response to infectious disease crisis management in Japan.

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    Mary Chan-Park

    Professor, School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

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    Mary Chan-Park

    Professor, School of Chemistry, Chemical Engineering and Biotechnology, Nanyang Technological University, Singapore

    November 16th 2022

    Mary Chan-Park is the 2019 Board of Trustees Chaired Professor of Chemical and Biomedical Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU). She also holds a joint appointment at the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine at NTU. She is the director of the Centre for Antimicrobial Bioengineering and the director of the NTU Centre for Aquaculture Research, Innovation and Enterprise (CARIE). She is a fellow of the American Institute for Medical and Biological Engineering. She is also an associate editor of the American Chemical Society journal Applied Materials & Interfaces.

     

    Professor Chan is a leader in the field of antibacterial and antibiofilm polymers. Her research expertise is in cationic antimicrobial polymers, which are non-toxic and biocompatible. Her biodegradable antibacterial polymers are being explored as device coatings and solutions to fight the global antimicrobial resistance public health crisis. She has published extensively, with more than 250 papers in top-tier journals such as Nature Materials, Nature Communications, Nano Letters and Advanced Materials.

     

    Professor Chan was a pioneer of the chemical and biomolecular engineering degree programme at NTU. She obtained her BEng (chemical) and PhD (polymers) from the National University of Singapore and MIT in 1986 and 1993, respectively.

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    Nuriesya Saleha

    Senior manager, health practice, Economist Impact

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    Nuriesya Saleha

    Senior manager, health practice, Economist Impact

    November 15th 2022 November 16th 2022

    Nuriesya Saleha is the senior manager of the health practice team for Asia-Pacific at Economist Impact. She is a part of the policy and insights team based in Singapore, working with multi-disciplinary teams across the globe on projects spanning a range of disease focus areas. Ms Saleha has been in the healthcare sector for nearly ten years. She previously worked at Woodlands Health, an upcoming public healthcare campus in Singapore, developing new clinical models and processes by engaging with various clinical stakeholders. Prior to that, she was involved in managed-care-related projects in Singapore and Malaysia at Fullerton Health, and did health system operations and research at Johns Hopkins in Baltimore. She has a master’s degree in health administration from Johns Hopkins University and undergraduate degree in economics and biochemistry.

12:50 pm -1:50 SGT

Networking lunch

2:00 pm -2:45 SGT

Removing silos: integrated disease management and personalised care

Health systems, policies, funding streams and disease management are often siloed. Personalised care focuses on a treatment plan that is customised for each patient. It is also important to place additional emphasis on patient values, needs and preferences. A growing issue in LMCs, comorbidities are associated with higher costs and death rates for communicable diseases. Moving from “sickcare” towards healthcare and patient-centricity promotes a more holistic approach to health.

 

Infectious and non-communicable diseases are linked, and both are major challenges across Asia that are often not managed in a holistic way. NCDs can increase susceptibility to infections while infectious diseases can lead to chronic ones. To improve patient quality of life, a more integrated model of care should be implemented, where treatment considers the connection between a condition and its comorbidities. Where can breaking down silos in treatment foster efficiencies in the healthcare system? How can we mitigate the inefficiency of having patients deal with multiple specialists and primary-care appointments, and the lack of interoperability between different systems? What is the optimal way to manage a patient with multiple illnesses?

  • Carmelia Basri
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    Carmelia Basri

    Vice chair, strategic and technical advisory group of tuberculosis, WHO-SEARO, and senior adviser for HIV and TB programmes, USAID Indonesia

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    Carmelia Basri

    Carmelia Basri

    Vice chair, strategic and technical advisory group of tuberculosis, WHO-SEARO, and senior adviser for HIV and TB programmes, USAID Indonesia

    November 16th 2022

    Carmelia Basri is a senior public health professional, senior epidemiologist and independent grant management consultant with more than 35 years of work experience implementing and providing technical input in the health sector in Asia, and particularly in Indonesia. Ms Basri has solid experience providing high-level technical advisory on TB and HIV disease control, policies, strategies, activities, and monitoring and evaluation at regional and national levels. She has a strong track record of working in an integrated manner within an interdisciplinary and international team as well as engaging with various stakeholders at all levels. She possesses a high degree of integrity in health sector and development issues, with proven skills in planning, analysis, co-ordination and problem-solving to establish results-based programmes with government, the private sector, international donors and civil-society organisations.

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    David Boettiger

    Senior research fellow, The Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales

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    David Boettiger

    Senior research fellow, The Kirby Institute, University of New South Wales

    November 16th 2022

    David Boettiger uses his detailed knowledge of epidemiology, biostatistics and health economics to analyse large trials and cohorts and to build quantitative models that address key infectious disease concerns. He collaborates extensively with major public health groups such as the World Health Organisation, World Bank and US Centres for Disease Control and Prevention to improve health policy. Most notably, his research is cited in international guidelines on the use of antiretroviral therapy and has significantly enhanced the lives of people living with HIV. He serves on the board of the Australian Society for HIV, Viral Hepatitis and Sexual Health Medicine (ASHM) international committee and as an editorial board member for JAIDS and Health Policy and Planning, both leading journals for research in resource-limited areas. He also holds academic affiliations with the University of California, San Francisco, and Chulalongkorn University.

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    Joanne Yoong

    Founder, Research for Impact

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    Joanne Yoong

    Founder, Research for Impact

    November 16th 2022

    Joanne Yoong is an applied economist working at the intersection of behavioural economics and health and financial decision-making for the well-being of vulnerable populations. Ms Yoong’s primary appointment is as senior economist at the University of Southern California (USC), where she directs the offices of the USC Centre for Economic and Social Research in Singapore and Washington, DC, and is a principal member of the USC Behavioural Economics Studio.

     

    Based in Singapore, Ms Yoong also holds faculty appointments at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore, the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine, Singapore Management University and the RAND Corporation. She is the author of over 70 peer-reviewed articles in leading economics, medical and public health journals.

     

    In addition to her academic work, Ms Yoong is the founder of Research for Impact, a Singapore-based social enterprise working to make behavioural and social science research accessible, inclusive and transformative for all.

     

    She received her PhD in economics at Stanford University as an FSI Starr Foundation Fellow after an early career in financial services, and her AB summa cum laude in economics and applied and computational mathematics from Princeton University.

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    Lee Chien Earn

    Deputy group chief executive (regional health system), Singapore Health Services (SingHealth)

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    Lee Chien Earn

    Deputy group chief executive (regional health system), Singapore Health Services (SingHealth)

    November 16th 2022

    Lee Chien Earn is currently the deputy group chief executive (regional health system) at SingHealth, where he leads population health efforts to enable residents in eastern Singapore to keep well, get well and live well. His past appointments include chief executive of Changi General Hospital and deputy director of medical services for health services and healthcare performance in the Ministry of Health of Singapore, where he led the strategic development and improvement of healthcare services.

     

    Professor Lee is an adjunct professor with three institutions of higher learning: Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore; Duke-NUS Medical School; and Singapore University of Technology and Design. He has been a member of several international committees under the World Health Organisation, International Hospital Federation and Joint Commission International.

     

    Professor Lee co-edited Singapore’s Health Care System: What 50 Years Have Achieved (2015) and contributed the chapter on strategies for health services in the 6th edition of the Oxford Textbook of Public Health (2015). He has also published and presented in international journals and conferences, respectively.

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    Gillian Parker

    Senior manager, policy and insights, Economist Impact

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    Gillian Parker

    Senior manager, policy and insights, Economist Impact

    November 16th 2022

    Gillian Parker is a senior manager for policy and insights at Economist Impact and is currently based in Singapore. Previously she was deputy editor for Eco-Business, a news site and business intelligence firm specialising in sustainability issues across Asia.

     

    Before moving to Singapore in 2019, she lived in sub-Saharan Africa for nearly a decade. She worked in Johannesburg and Lagos as a risk analyst for Control Risks, helping firms operate in challenging environments and navigate regulatory and political instability, ethno-religious conflict and community relations. Her other consulting work has included UKAID projects focusing on policies, laws and regulations affecting businesses in Nigeria and climate-resilient infrastructure in southern Africa. Before that, she reported across a dozen countries for The Economist, Time and Voice of America among other international news outlets. She was also a contributor to the Economist Intelligence Unit, focusing on bespoke reports and indexes on topics ranging from food security to small and medium-sized enterprises in Nigeria and Islamic finance.

     

    Ms Parker has a master’s degree in African and Asian politics from SOAS and hails originally from Northern Ireland.

2:00 pm -2:45 SGT

Concurrent: The future of cancer care

A survey of 61 countries published in The Lancet concluded that one-seventh of planned cancer surgeries have been delayed in regions that experienced covid-19 lockdowns. Medical advances now hold the hope of prolonged life, or even cures, for a growing if still small number of patients in cancer care. What is the state of cancer treatment after the pandemic? Can cancer be cured? Which cancers need our urgent attention in Asia? What is the disease burden, as well as the economic and social burden, of cancer in the region? What are the latest advances in cancer diagnostics and treatment, and what is their impact and return on investment? How well are countries across the region addressing the challenge? Who is paying for the latest innovations? As the aftermath of covid-19 begins to recede, we will take a closer look at the strengths and weaknesses of Asia’s response to cancer.

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    Huren Sivaraj

    Co-founder and chief executive, Oncoshot

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    Huren Sivaraj

    Co-founder and chief executive, Oncoshot

    November 16th 2022

    Huren Sivaraj is a medical oncologist whose work falls at the intersection of health informatics and oncology. Oncoshot, which was founded in 2018, is a first-in-class real-time aggregated insights-sharing marketplace for clinical research stakeholders to plan and manage cancer trials. The company’s mission is to improve patient access to cutting-edge cancer research by addressing enterprise-level inefficiencies arising from a lack of real-time cancer population insights during clinical research planning. Oncoshot’s core principles centre around providing academic and private cancer centres with the security, privacy and control measures required for scalable insights sharing between hospitals and industry stakeholders. Its technology applies federated data systems, artificial intelligence and machine learning to oncology patient data. Locally, Oncoshot supports public and private cancer research stakeholders as the technology platform behind the Project EISE (pronounced “easy”) ecosystem. By facilitating safe and secure aggregated insights exchange, Project EISE boosts the outreach of Singapore’s research institutes to global pharma, biotech and contract research organisations. This provides cancer patients in Singapore with access to a wider set of clinical trial options at every point in a cancer treatment journey. The company has expanded to Australia and India since its inception, highlighting its applicability and success.

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    Mary Wong-Hemrajani

    Chairman, Global Chinese Breast Cancer Organisations Alliance

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    Mary Wong-Hemrajani

    Chairman, Global Chinese Breast Cancer Organisations Alliance

    November 16th 2022

    Mary Wong-Hemrajani is the current chairman of the Global Chinese Breast Cancer Organisations Alliance (GCBC). She is also a breast cancer survivor and has over 30 years’ experience in management and corporate finance roles. She served as chief executive for several multinational companies before devoting herself full time to volunteer work to support breast cancer patients. In 2017 Ms Wong-Hemrajani was named Survivor of the Year and received an award from the Susan G Komen Breast Cancer Foundation for her outstanding performance and service to promote education, patient support and screening of breast cancer. Recently, she was nominated to be a panellist for the Breast Cancer Initiative Working Group of the World Health Organisation.

     

    After becoming a volunteer, Ms Wong-Hemrajani completed several professional courses in patient support, strengthening the capacity and management of patients’ groups. As chairman of GCBC, she initiated the Pink Angels service, a free service whereby “pink angel” breast cancer survivors accompany patients through treatment, offering peer support and encouragement. During the covid-19 pandemic, she developed a series of online support services for breast cancer patients and promoted the Pink Academy, an online workshop to raise breast cancer awareness and promote breast health and positive survivorship.

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    Pierce Chow

    Professor and programme director, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, and senior consultant surgeon, National Cancer Centre Singapore and Singapore General Hospital

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    Pierce Chow

    Professor and programme director, Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore, and senior consultant surgeon, National Cancer Centre Singapore and Singapore General Hospital

    November 16th 2022

    Pierce Chow is a professor and programme director at the Duke-NUS Medical School and senior consultant surgeon at the National Cancer Centre Singapore (NCCS) and the Singapore General Hospital. He is concurrently a National Medical Research Council (NMRC)–funded senior clinician scientist and was the founding president of the College of Clinician Scientists, Academy of Medicine Singapore.

     

    After completing his surgical residency and PhD, Professor Chow trained in liver transplantation in Australia. On top of his busy clinical practice in hepato-pancreato-biliary surgery, he has been very active in clinical and translational research in liver cancer.

     

    He co-founded the Asia-Pacific Hepatocellular Carcinoma trials group and has been the protocol chair of nine prospective multi-centre clinical studies in liver cancer over the past 20 years. He has led the multi-disciplinary NMRC Translational and Clinical Research National Flagship Programme in Liver Cancer since 2016. He is also a faculty member at the Genome Institute of Singapore and the SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute, and research director at the Institute of Cell and Molecular Biology Singapore.

     

    He is also very active in medical education and was the inaugural course director of the human structure and function course in the MD programme of the Duke-NUS Medical School (2007–19). He is also the inaugural director of the PhD programme in clinical and translational sciences at Duke-NUS (since 2018). Professor Chow is on the faculty of the surgery residency programme at SingHealth and continues to be course director for advanced trauma life support courses.

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2:50 pm -3:35 SGT

Concurrent: Where’s your head at? Mental illness as the great unspoken epidemic of our time

More than 700,000 people lose their life to suicide every year, and the world is likely to miss a 2030 target of reducing suicide by one-third. In 2005, and later in 2012, the WHO adopted resolutions promoting a comprehensive, co-ordinated response to mental health from the health and social sectors of member states. In June 2021 it issued an implementation guide for suicide prevention in these countries. This was based on a revised mental health action plan for 2013-2030, which states that all countries need to take action to prevent suicide through a comprehensive national strategy. Where is the problem of suicide most acute? How can mental health stigma be reduced? If what gets measured gets managed, how do we quantify mental health issues? Who will pay for mental health treatment? What mental health solutions are insurance leaders already offering to enterprise clients, and what are the barriers to implementing them?

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    Anthea Ong

    Former nominated member, Parliament of Singapore, and founder and chairperson, WorkWell Leaders

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    Anthea Ong

    Former nominated member, Parliament of Singapore, and founder and chairperson, WorkWell Leaders

    November 16th 2022

    Anthea Ong served as a nominated member of parliament from 2018 to 2020 in the 13th parliament of Singapore. She is a mental health advocate, social entrepreneur and impact investor, life and leadership coach, strategy consultant, yoga and wellness instructor, and author, among many other roles. 

     

    Ms Ong divides her time across many different communities and has founded or co-founded several initiatives in her main focus areas of migrant rights, mental health, environmentalism and social impact, including SG Mental Health Matters, WorkWell Leaders, A Good Space Co-operative, Hush TeaBar and Welcome In My Backyard. She also has served on several boards and committees in these fields, including Unifem (now UN Women), Society for WINGS, Daughters of Tomorrow, Social Service Institute, National Volunteer and Philanthropy Centre, and Tripartite Oversight Committee for Workplace Safety and Health. Prior to devoting herself to civil society and social impact work full time, she spent over 25 years in the corporate world as a C-suite leader.

     

    A sought-after speaker on human-centred leadership, mental health and social entrepreneurship, Ms Ong has also published numerous commentaries and contributed to anthologies such as My Life, My Story by the National Library Board and the recently published Social Context, Policies, and Changes in Singapore.

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    Janice Weng Huiqin

    Senior assistant director, MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation, Singapore

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    Janice Weng Huiqin

    Senior assistant director, MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation, Singapore

    November 16th 2022

    Janice Weng is senior assistant director in the MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation (MOHT). She leads the digital mental health and wellness programme, focusing on designing and co-creating innovative digital solutions to improve the wellness journey of citizens across life stages. An award-winning initiative developed during the pandemic period is mindline.sg, an anonymous self-care and self-help therapy platform.

     

    Prior to joining MOHT, Ms Weng held leadership positions in consulting firms and led teams to deliver policy consulting, and business and digital transformation projects for public sector clients. She also has extensive experience in the human and social services sector, specialising in outcome measurement, programme evaluation and nonprofit capacity building. She has a master’s degree in public policy from the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy.

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    Jiang Long

    Director, Office of Co-operation and Collaboration, Shanghai Mental Health Centre, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine

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    Jiang Long

    Director, Office of Co-operation and Collaboration, Shanghai Mental Health Centre, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine

    November 16th 2022

    Jiang Long is a psychiatrist researcher and chief co-ordinator for external co-operation and collaboration at Shanghai Mental Health Centre, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, a WHO Collaborating Centre for Research and Training in Mental Health based in China. He received his PhD from Central South University, a WHO Collaborating Centre for Psychosocial Factors, Substance Abuse and Health, with joint training at the Université Catholique de Louvain in Belgium, in psychiatry and mental health. Dr Long served as a full-time consultant at the WHO (2019–20) and as a seconded officer at the National Health Commission of China (2020–21). His research focuses on public mental health and addiction medicine. He has authored over 30 peer-reviewed journal articles and editorials and co-edited a national textbook in medical psychology. He holds committee membership in several academic associations.

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    Neerja Birla

    Founder and chairperson, MPower initiative, Aditya Birla Education Trust

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    Neerja Birla

    Founder and chairperson, MPower initiative, Aditya Birla Education Trust

    November 16th 2022

    An inspiring personality, Neerja Birla is a progressive, dynamic and versatile leader, driven by her passions and an unwavering resolve to give back to society responsibly. A passionate educationist and a mental health champion, Dr Birla is the founder and chairperson of Aditya Birla Education Trust (ABET), a social enterprise that endeavours to positively impact the lives of people from all sections of society and bring about progressive change in the field of education and on the mental health landscape of India.

     

    Dr Birla currently holds the global chair of mental health at the G100, an eminent and empowered club of the top 100 women leaders in the world with a vision for the future, in regards to inclusivity and the economic and social empowerment of women globally. A firm supporter of gender equality in society, she is also a member of the Asia Gender Network, the first pan-Asian network committed to mobilising capital for gender equality. She also serves as a trustee of the Mumbai Police Foundation.

     

    Dr Birla holds a bachelor of science honours degree in psychology from the University of Derby, UK.

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    Gillian Parker

    Senior manager, policy and insights, Economist Impact

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    Gillian Parker

    Senior manager, policy and insights, Economist Impact

    November 16th 2022

    Gillian Parker is a senior manager for policy and insights at Economist Impact and is currently based in Singapore. Previously she was deputy editor for Eco-Business, a news site and business intelligence firm specialising in sustainability issues across Asia.

     

    Before moving to Singapore in 2019, she lived in sub-Saharan Africa for nearly a decade. She worked in Johannesburg and Lagos as a risk analyst for Control Risks, helping firms operate in challenging environments and navigate regulatory and political instability, ethno-religious conflict and community relations. Her other consulting work has included UKAID projects focusing on policies, laws and regulations affecting businesses in Nigeria and climate-resilient infrastructure in southern Africa. Before that, she reported across a dozen countries for The Economist, Time and Voice of America among other international news outlets. She was also a contributor to the Economist Intelligence Unit, focusing on bespoke reports and indexes on topics ranging from food security to small and medium-sized enterprises in Nigeria and Islamic finance.

     

    Ms Parker has a master’s degree in African and Asian politics from SOAS and hails originally from Northern Ireland.

2:50 pm -3:35 SGT

Healthspan over lifespan: mitigating the diseases of ageing

By 2025 Asia will have more than 450m seniors aged 65 years and over, making up 10% of the population. Understanding and tackling the diseases of ageing will lessen the time at the end of many people’s lives that is spent in pain and discomfort. Illnesses in the crosshairs of healthcare leaders include cognitive disorders and neurodegeneration, diabetes and associated metabolic problems, and cancer. Dealing with these might not greatly extend average lifespans but would surely increase what is known in the argot as healthspan.

 

There is enormous potential in Yamanaka Shinya’s work on a set of proteins, the Yamanka factors, that can give differentiated cells the ability that embryonic stem cells have to turn into other kinds of cells. The prospect is of a limitless supply of genetically matched cells for anyone who needs an organ replacement. But what are the social, political, regulatory and environmental implications of increasing longevity using this and other methods? Where can digital tools help citizens live longer, healthier lives? What other innovations are on the horizon for the “silver economy”? How can healthy ageing initiatives lead the way in the growing field of preventive, community-based care? Where does life-course theory, which looks at ageing across the entire age spectrum, overlap with notions of preventive care?

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    Ana Llena-Nozal

    Senior economist, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

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    Ana Llena-Nozal

    Senior economist, Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD)

    November 16th 2022

    Ana Llena-Nozal has led the long-term-care work at the OECD since 2018. She co-ordinates several topics on long-term care and ageing such as dementia care, the future of the long-term-care workforce, social protection and funding in long-term care, the impact of covid-19 in long-term-care services, policies to promote healthy ageing and end-of-life care. She has been leading work on advising countries in long-term-care reforms for Croatia and Lithuania.

     

    Since Ms Llena-Nozal joined the OECD in 2006, she has worked on various projects related to health, employment and social policy. She has been a member of the income-inequality team working on policies to address social mobility, and part of the team reviewing sickness and disability policies in selected OECD countries. She was also one of the authors of the Employment Outlook, working on issues related to health and work.

     

    Before joining the OECD, Ms Llena-Nozal was a researcher at the Institute of Development Studies (Sussex University), Utrecht University and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam. Her previous research includes international comparative projects in the areas of education, labour market policy and health inequalities. She has a degree in development studies from the London School of Economics (MSc) and in economics from the Pompeu Fabra University (MSc) and the Vrije Universiteit Amsterdam (PhD).

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    Paulin Straughan

    Director, Centre for Research on Successful Ageing (ROSA), Singapore Management University

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    Paulin Straughan

    Director, Centre for Research on Successful Ageing (ROSA), Singapore Management University

    November 16th 2022

    Paulin Straughan is professor of sociology (practice) and dean of students at Singapore Management University, and director of the Centre for Research on Successful Ageing, a centre dedicated to expanding the healthspan of Singapore’s ageing society. Professor Straughan serves as a consultant on numerous projects commissioned by various government agencies, including the Marriage and Parenthood Surveys commissioned by the National Population and Talent Division. She has published in both sociology and medical journals. Her books include Marriage Dissolution in Singapore: Revisiting Family Values and Ideology in Marriage, and Ultra-Low Fertility in Pacific Asia: Trends, Causes and Policy Issues (with Gavin Jones and Angelique Chan). Professor Straughan was a nominated member of parliament from 2009 to 2011, during which time she argued for work-life balance and the nurture of a more pro-family social environment.

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    Rintaro Mori

    Regional advisor on population ageing and sustainable development, United Nations Population Fund

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    Rintaro Mori

    Regional advisor on population ageing and sustainable development, United Nations Population Fund

    November 16th 2022

    Professor Rintaro Mori is regional adviser on population ageing and sustainable development at the UNFPA Asia-Pacific office. After paediatric training in Japan, he practised in Australia, Nepal and the UK as a senior physician and studied epidemiology and public health at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine before being involved in guideline development for NICE, UK. He has also actively been involved in research and aid work in Madagascar, Bangladesh and Mongolia, as well as research in health systems and women’s and children’s health at the both national and the global levels. He was appointed director of the department of health policy at the National Centre for Child Health and Development and professor in health policy for families and children at Kyoto University, where he pursed his research on the life-course approach to achieve sustainable social and health-care systems in the context of population ageing, before taking up his current role in 2018.

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    Emily Tiemann

    Manager, health practice, Economist Impact

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    Emily Tiemann

    Manager, health practice, Economist Impact

    November 15th 2022 November 16th 2022

    Emily Tiemann is a Health Practice Manager in the Policy and Insights team at Economist Impact in Singapore, where she is involved in projects ranging from Breast Cancer, Fertility and Digital Health. Prior to this, she worked in policy at the HFEA, the UK’s fertility regulator, leading projects related to consent, the Code of Practice and clinic inspections. She also worked closely with the Department of Health to outline the new upcoming legislation related to extending the storage periods of gametes and embryos beyond 10 years. Emily started her career as an embryologist at fertility clinics carrying out diagnostic and micromanipulation procedures. Emily has a degree in Biology from McGill University in Canada and a Master’s degree in Women’s Health from University College London.

3:45 pm -4:15 SGT

Coffee break and networking

9:00 am -9:30 SGT

Keynote - Voices: the future of artificial intelligence and healthcare

Is healthcare ready for artificial intelligence (AI)? While modern healthcare areas are more and more digitised and ready for AI, there are still visible gaps for sufficient and well-labelled data. In the coming years, we may expect visible breakthroughs in AI drug discovery, medical robots, AI pathology, multi-omics and diagnostic AI, personalised treatment, and even AI in longevity research. Glean insights from the frontier of AI advancements from both a global perspective as well as with insights from China.

 

Keynote available for broadcast and on-demand for November 17 only.

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    Kai-Fu Lee

    Chairman and chief executive, Sinovation Ventures, and President, Sinovation Ventures Artificial Intelligence Institute

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    Kai-Fu Lee

    Chairman and chief executive, Sinovation Ventures, and President, Sinovation Ventures Artificial Intelligence Institute

    November 17th 2022

    Kai-Fu Lee is the chairman and chief executive of Sinovation Ventures and president of Sinovation Ventures Artificial Intelligence Institute. Sinovation Ventures, managing US$3bn dual-currency investment funds, is a leading venture capital firm focusing on developing next-generation deep-tech companies in China. Prior to founding Sinovation in 2009, Mr Lee was the president of Google China and a senior executive at Microsoft, SGI and Apple.

     

    He has been working in the areas of artificial intelligence research, development and investment for more than 30 years. In the field of artificial intelligence, Mr Lee built one of the first game-playing programs to defeat a world champion (1988, Othello), as well as the world’s first large-vocabulary, speaker-independent continuous speech recognition system. He founded Microsoft Research China, later renamed Microsoft Research Asia. While with Apple, he led AI projects in speech and natural language. Mr Lee has authored ten US patents and more than 100 journal and conference papers.

     

    Mr Lee is co-chair of the Artificial Intelligence Council and the World Economic Forum Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution, and he is a fellow of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). He received a bachelor’s degree in computer science from Columbia University and a PhD from Carnegie Mellon University, as well as honorary doctorate degrees from both Carnegie Mellon and the City University of Hong Kong.

9:30 am -10:00 SGT

In conversation with healthcare regulators

It is argued that regulation does not hinder innovation in healthcare platforms, but rather raises standards and therefore increases value. More regulatory clarity makes products more competitive. Technology is worth more when evidence backs its claims of effectiveness. But technology almost always outpaces regulation. Covid-19 has removed multiple institutional and cultural barriers to the adoption of digital solutions in healthcare, though some remain. A big reason why it has taken so long for consumer technology to disrupt healthcare is that the highly regulated sector does not lend itself to Silicon Valley’s “move fast and break things” credo. Regulators, for their part, are trying to move faster themselves. A recent improvement is the introduction of regulation around software as a medical device in most major Asia-Pacific jurisdictions, which limits the claims developers can make around the health impacts of their products. In February 2021 the Australian department of health, via the Therapeutic Goods Administration, introduced several exclusions and exemptions aimed at reducing unnecessary regulatory burdens for specific types of software products. Where is healthcare on its digital transformation journey in the Asia-Pacific and beyond? Where can data privacy and regulation enable innovation in healthcare technology?

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    Budi Wiweko

    Chairman, National Health Technology Assessment Committee, Ministry of Health, Indonesia

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    Budi Wiweko

    Chairman, National Health Technology Assessment Committee, Ministry of Health, Indonesia

    November 17th 2022

    Budi Wiweko is chairman of the National Health Technology Assessment Committee in the Ministry of Health, Indonesia. He also serves as president-elect of the Indonesian Society for Obstetrics and Gynaecology for 2022–25 and as vice director of the Indonesian Medical Education and Research Institute in the faculty of medicine at Universitas Indonesia (IMERI FKUI).

     

    Dr Wiweko has helped develop the in vitro fertilisation field in Indonesia and is one of the founders of the Indonesian Association for In Vitro Fertilisation (IA-IVF). He is also a co-ordinator for training in reproductive endocrinology and infertility at Hospital Universitas Indonesia. He served as president of the IA-IVF for 2016–21 and was general secretary for the Indonesian Society for Obstetrics and Gynaecology for 2018–22. 

     

    Dr Wiweko has undertaken substantial research in the area of assisted reproductive technology and is an expert on AMH (anti-mullerian hormone) in Asia. He developed the AMH nomogram and an AMH-based individualised controlled ovarian stimulation formula for infertility treatment. 

     

    Dr Wiweko graduated as a specialist in obstetrics and gynaecology from Universitas Indonesia in 2005 and was a research fellow at Hyogo College of Medicine, Japan. He completed his PhD in the faculty of medicine, Universitas Indonesia, in 2014. He also received a master’s degree in public health from the University of Gadjah Mada, Indonesia.

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    John Lim

    Executive director, Duke-NUS Centre of Regulatory Excellence, and chairman, Consortium for Clinical Research and Innovation, Singapore

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    John Lim

    Executive director, Duke-NUS Centre of Regulatory Excellence, and chairman, Consortium for Clinical Research and Innovation, Singapore

    November 17th 2022

    John CW Lim is founding executive director of the Centre of Regulatory Excellence at the Duke–National University of Singapore Medical School (Duke-NUS), inaugural chairman of the Consortium for Clinical Research and Innovation Singapore, senior adviser at Singapore’s Ministry of Health and policy core lead at the SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute. He is also professor of practice at Duke-NUS and the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.

     

    Formerly chief executive of Singapore’s Health Sciences Authority and deputy director of medical services (industry and research matters) in the Ministry of Health, Professor Lim has also held other senior positions in Singapore’s health and education ministries. His current roles promote capacity building and scientific excellence for health products regulation, health policies and systems in South-east Asia and the Asia-Pacific.

     

    In 2018, Professor Lim received the Drug Information Association’s Global Connector Inspire Award for leadership in promoting global collaboration to advance healthcare products to patients, and the Regulatory Affairs Professional Society’s highest Founder’s Award recognising substantial sustained impact in shaping regulatory practice and policy over the course of his career.

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    Emi Michael

    Global health manager, Economist Impact

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    Emi Michael

    Global health manager, Economist Impact

    November 17th 2022

    Emi is a manager in the Health Policy and Insights team at Economist Impact. She has a special interest in health inequalities and the social determinants of health. Emi is a global health research strategist and has a wealth of experience in global health research, policy and programming. Her expertise in global health advisory, program design and healthcare communications mean that Emi brings a breadth of experience to the team across technical areas. Her current role involves exploratory research using economic models, rapid reviews of scientific papers and development of a global index on health inclusivity. Emi also designs and works on longer term research assignments across the international development sphere, including in the Education and WASH sectors.

     

    Emi has experience working across sectors, having held various roles across the health and social care industry, serving as a Health Inequalities Manager within the UK Department of Health and Social Care, Consultant Epidemiologist with the World Health Organisation under the Health Securities and Preparedness Division and as a Technical Delivery Officer with UNICEF. Emi has an undergraduate degree in Biomedical Science from the University of Warwick and a Master in Public Health from Imperial College London.

10:00 am -10:15 SGT

Action hour - case studies: digitising patient consent in a decentralised world

Hear how the Concentric team experienced, first hand, the problems associated with consenting patients for medical procedures using traditional paper-based systems. Learn how this in-depth knowledge enabled them to re-think, re-design and digitise the consent process and improve shared decision making. Understand how clinician and user feedback was utilised to help iterate and refine the product. They will discuss how the consent process has been optimised and will describe their innovator journey from first use to overcoming barriers of adoption.

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    Edward St John

    Co-founder and chief medical officer, Concentric Health

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    Edward St John

    Co-founder and chief medical officer, Concentric Health

    November 17th 2022

    Edward St John is the co-founder and chief medical officer of Concentric Health, a platform for digital consent and enhanced, shared decision-making. Dr St John is also a consultant oncoplastic breast surgeon working at Portsmouth Hospitals University NHS Trust (UK). He is passionate about healthcare and effective, safe innovation. He is co-lead of the Royal College of Surgeons (England) Future of Surgery Innovation Hub. He is also chair of the iBRA-NET Innovation Group (allied with the Association of Breast Surgery and British Association of Plastic, Reconstructive and Aesthetic Surgeons), whose mission is to identify, evaluate and translate useful innovations into breast surgical practice. He is also an NHS clinical entrepreneur fellow. Among other skills, he has domain expertise in consent and shared decision-making, the evaluation of medical devices and digital health. Having established Concentric as the market-leading digital consent application in the UK, it is ready for translation into international markets.

10:15 am -10:30 SGT

Action hour - case studies: fostering mental wellness through communications technology access for migrant populations

  • Meera Sachdeva Organisation Logo
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    Meera Sachdeva

    Co-founder, Call Home

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    Meera Sachdeva

    Co-founder, Call Home

    November 17th 2022

    Meera Sachdeva is a tech-for-good enthusiast, an advocate and a management consultant. At the Boston Consulting Group, where she has worked for the past four years, she focuses on social impact, supporting clients in South-east Asia on issues ranging from economic development to sustainability. After volunteering with a number of organisations on pandemic-related needs, she co-founded Call Home and continues to volunteer as their funding and partnerships lead.

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    Stevanus Satria

    Product manager, Call Home

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    Stevanus Satria

    Product manager, Call Home

    November 17th 2022

    Stevanus Satria a versatile tech expert and agile enthusiast. Over the past five years, he has assumed the roles of product manager, full-stack developer and to a lesser extent, UI designer. At the crux of it all is the desire to deliver value to users as quickly as possible. Hailing from a design-centric university, he stumbled into product management after graduating with a mechanical engineering degree. His current focus is on Confluence, a content management tool, and Jira, a project management platform, along with Figma, a collaborative web application.  His goal is to design for impact and quality of life improvements for users.

10:30 am -11:10 SGT

In conversation… What’s next in biotech and digital healthcare innovations

Technological breakthroughs promise to change how we produce food, look after the sick and tackle climate change. Concerted action against covid-19 has brought together decades of cumulative scientific progress, with profound effects on the future of medicine. Technologies such as CRISPR gene editing will cure hereditary diseases, produce disease-resistant crops and enable the breeding of malaria-free mosquitos. Scientific advances in fields such as gene sequencing and AI make new modes of care possible. Digital devices and treatment pathways can also enhance treatment recommendations and with them patient outcomes, as complex algorithms work on data to streamline decision-making. With the covid-19 crisis spurring technological advancements, gaps in digital inclusivity must be closed as healthtech innovations push the physical and the digital together. What part will the metaverse play in the future of healthcare? Will it have a greater effect on B2B or B2C products? Is Asia better placed than the West to leapfrog in innovations because it has fewer legacy systems? What innovations are on the horizon in biotech and digital tech? To what extent will new market entrants change the roles that incumbents and multinational corporations play? What models can traditional healthcare platforms consider adopting to stay relevant in coming years? How can innovative start-ups and established companies maximise their opportunities in healthtech?

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    Farhad Imam

    Director, health and life sciences, Gates Ventures

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    Farhad Imam

    Director, health and life sciences, Gates Ventures

    November 17th 2022

    Farhad Imam is a physician scientist with research expertise in brain and lung development/disease and clinical background in maternal and newborn health. He completed his undergraduate and medical scientist training programme in biochemistry at Stanford University, followed by residency and fellowship in paediatrics and neonatology at Harvard Medical School. In 2013 he moved to the University of California, San Diego, where he was an assistant professor in neonatology in the department of paediatrics. His laboratory’s focus on hypoxia neuroprotection was a synthesis of his basic scientific training in developmental biology, genetics and genomics with his clinical work with critically ill newborns.

     

    He comes to Gates Ventures from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation’s maternal, newborn and child health discovery and tools team, where he oversaw a portfolio of projects centred on development of novel diagnostics, therapeutics and devices to provide transformational improvements in health for mothers and infants worldwide. He also led translation of novel discovery targets downstream through product development, including de-risking of drug device combinations for newborn lung disease (aerosolised lung surfactant), creation of a pre-clinical in vitro and in vivo drug discovery pipeline for asphyxia neuroprotection, and establishment of high throughput biomarker discovery platforms.

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    Roberta Sarno

    Director of digital health, Asia-Pacific Medical Technology Association (APACMed)

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    Roberta Sarno

    Director of digital health, Asia-Pacific Medical Technology Association (APACMed)

    November 17th 2022

    Roberta Sarno is the director of digital health at the Asia-Pacific Medical Technology Association (APACMed), the only regional association to provide a unified voice for the medical device, equipment and in-vitro diagnostics industry in Asia-Pacific. She joined APACMed in 2019 to lead the new digital health committee, and supports the association’s members to establish a digital health ecosystem, build knowledge and advocate for optimal policies that help digital health innovation in APAC.

     

    Prior to joining APACMed, Ms Sarno worked as a senior consultant and business development manager at Alcimed in Paris and Marseille, France, where she supported clients in the healthcare sector on innovation and strategy projects. Before that, she worked as a genetic engineering researcher at Curie Institute, in collaboration with the French startup Meiogenix.

     

    She holds a PhD in genetics (Curie Institute, Paris) and a master of business foundations (INSEAD).

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    Santos Das

    Manager, global health, Economist Impact

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    Santos Das

    Manager, global health, Economist Impact

    November 17th 2022

    Mr. Santos is part of the Economist Impact’s Health Practice team with primary focus on health policy and research. He is a public health subject matter and domain expert with over 14 years of diverse experience in consulting, industry, non-profits and public sector. Santos is well steeped in the area of global health, prior to joining Economist Impact; he was part of various healthcare projects in India, Middle East and Africa. He has worked across the health ecosystem, from leading research projects on digital health and PPP evaluation for Apollo Hospitals to MENA pharma market dynamics at Ernst & Young and with UNICEF as part of the WASH program. Mr. Santos has published multiple research articles on digital health and telemedicine.

     

    Mr. Santos has completed his Masters in International Public Health from Liverpool School of Tropical Medicine, UK and Masters in Social Work from Tata Institute of Social Sciences, India.

11:15 am -12:00 SGT

The patient will see you now: healthcare as a consumer product in the anywhere economy

The pandemic hastened a paradigm shift in healthcare where digital tools are readily created and used to modify the process of care. Patients no longer rely exclusively on a medical professional as a gatekeeper. The new trend towards healthcare on demand has immense potential in Asia and beyond. Healthcare is turning into a consumer product. AI, digital diagnostics and telehealth are key to this movement, along with a new wave of capital flooding into a vast industry. Costly, highly regulated health systems are being shaken up by firms that target patients directly and meet them where they are—which is increasingly online. E-pharmacies fulfil prescriptions, wearable devices monitor health in real time, telemedicine platforms connect patients with physicians and home tests enable self-diagnosis. Big tech collectively poured some $3.6 billion into health-related deals last year.

 

They are particularly active in two areas of healthcare: devices and data. Automating aspects of the value chain can free HCPs to see more patients with urgent needs. In a few key Chinese cities, the hospital can come to the patient, with decentralised devices augmented by the occasional in-person nurse visit. This is part of the wider trend of healthcare moving beyond tertiary institutions and hospitals to homes and the community. Is the “patient pathway cliff” the new patent cliff? The consumer-health boom has hit some snags. The Theranos saga offers a cautionary tale of how tricky biology is, compared with much computer science. Do legacy healthcare systems risk being left behind if they don’t digitise? What will traditional healthcare players need to do to reinvent themselves as platforms? What are the ethical, social and legal concerns and risks associated with AI-based systems? Will increasing regulatory oversight help or hinder digital health? Can we trust algorithms to make life-and-death decisions? To what extent can we use AI systems to build capacity and free time for HCPs? How do we mitigate the challenges of scarce talent, the need to establish data privacy, and the complexity of regulation and compliance? What policy changes are likely to be needed to support the benefits of big tech’s move into healthcare while minimising the risks to consumers? How does empowering patients foster the development of preventive healthcare?

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    Bronwyn Le Grice

    Chief executive and managing director, ANDHealth

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    Bronwyn Le Grice

    Chief executive and managing director, ANDHealth

    November 17th 2022

    Bronwyn Le Grice has over 18 years of executive experience in the health technology sector spanning commercialisation, venture capital, capital raising and industry advocacy. Formerly an investment director with a leading health-care venture capital firm, BioScience Managers, between 2012 and 2017 she managed over $65m of private and public equity capital raisings and was actively involved in portfolio investments of over $30m.

     

    In 2017, working with a consortium of industry partners, Ms Le Grice created ANDHealth, Australia’s only commercialisation organisation dedicated to digital health, with a specific focus on digital medicine and digital therapeutics. The novel ANDHealth+ programme, piloted in 2018–19, supported ten companies to go on to raise over $47m, create 296 jobs and impact more than 200,000 patients in under four years.

     

    Ms Le Grice is a non-executive director of Lumos Diagnostics and holds various advisory roles, including with the Australia New Zealand Leadership Forum Health Technology Sector Group, Swinburne University’s Innovation Precinct advisory board, the RMIT University Health and Biomedical Sector Expert Research Advisory Group and the NSW Cyber Security Standards Harmonisation Task-Force. In 2020 she received the Most Valuable Woman in Leadership Award by the BioMelbourne Network.

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    Jonathan Ley

    Assistant director, InHealth and Finance Redesign, MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation, Singapore

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    Jonathan Ley

    Assistant director, InHealth and Finance Redesign, MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation, Singapore

    November 17th 2022

    Jonathan Ley is currently from the integrated health promotion team within the Ministry of Health Office for Healthcare Transformation (MOHT), focusing on the development of digital tools and data analytics. Concurrently, he is the secretariat team lead of the digital mental health workgroup, which is under the Inter-agency Task-force on Mental Health and Well-being. As part of his work, he engages key partners across the health, social and community sectors to develop key enablers of scaling that will in turn create a patient-centric, data-driven and digitally enabled healthcare system. Prior to joining MOHT, he was the chief of staff for a regional healthtech startup, and spent most of his formative years at Deloitte and EIU, where he supported healthcare, medtech, private equity firms and government-linked organisations in areas such as business model transformation, growth strategy, feasibility studies, and stakeholder navigation and advocacy. His work experience spans across strategic planning and execution, digital innovation and transformation, stakeholder engagement and partnerships, and data analytics.

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    Jocelyn Ho

    Health policy analyst, health practice, Economist Impact

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    Jocelyn Ho

    Health policy analyst, health practice, Economist Impact

    November 17th 2022

    Jocelyn is a health policy analyst in the Policy and Insights team at Economist Impact in Hong Kong. She is involved in projects that span the Asia Pacific region as well as globally. Her interests lies in cancer and mental health but she has worked on projects related to bone health, rare diseases and childhood vaccinations. Prior to joining Economist Impact, Jocelyn worked as a radiation therapist delivering radiation treatments to cancer patients in Canada. Jocelyn holds a degree in Medical Radiation Sciences from McMaster University in Canada and a Master’s degree in Global Health and Development from University College London.

12:05 pm -12:50 SGT

Data and interoperability in healthcare: ethics, opportunities and the way forward

Data will be one of the most important commodities in healthcare in 2022. Healthcare consumers and patients are increasingly custodians of their own data and expect to access healthcare on demand—anywhere and anytime. To analyse that data, healthcare providers, payers and suppliers will increasingly rely on machine-learning algorithms and software to improve diagnoses, treatment and outcomes. Regulators—focusing on issues around data security and privacy, as well as competition and intellectual-property rights—will struggle to keep up. The value of data arguably lies in offering real-time visibility and remote access, and in its being analysed or manipulated by various entities. Pioneering healthcare firms are looking to elevate and future-proof their IT infrastructure, cyber-security and workflows to enhance efficiency and improve patient outcomes.

 

The demand for more data “sovereignty” to comply with evolving local laws, attempts to balance an improved experience for customers with efforts to keep their data safe, and the roll-out of new technology in an evolving regulatory environment are among the myriad shifts that present challenges for IT decision-makers in healthcare. Privacy imperatives and regulation can both enable and stymie the adoption of technology and innovation. In the early days of the covid-19 pandemic, companies augmented the work of multilateral organisations and opened swathes of proprietary data to the public so things like the severity of lockdowns could be measured.

 

Keeping China mostly free of covid-19 for some time has cost residents a good deal of privacy, especially around their data. Those with smartphones must scan QR codes to enter public buildings or catch a taxi, train or domestic flight. Is the loss of data privacy a fair cost of government interventions in public health? What are the potential drawbacks of relying on data as a tool? Will increasing data collection drive the emergence of surveillance states? If what gets measured gets managed, which data gaps need plugging to enable optimal healthcare? What implications do Web 3.0 and zero-party data have for data ownership, privacy and application development? What progress has been made towards an interoperable digital platform for patient identity? How else can healthcare platforms digest today’s deluge of data? What should leaders be doing to encourage the de-siloing of organisations and their data to harvest insights? Should data be considered a public good? Can we ask patients for more lifestyle data to deliver better treatment? What are the ethical and legal concerns here? And is data privacy killing patients?

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    Andrei Blaj

    Co-founder and chief operations officer, Medicai

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    Andrei Blaj

    Co-founder and chief operations officer, Medicai

    November 17th 2022

    A serial technology entrepreneur, Andrei Blaj started his first company in 2007. He seeks to enable innovation through technology in fields like healthcare. In 2018, together with a group of incredibly smart and knowledgeable friends, he co-founded Medicai, a medtech startup in Europe that is helping to digitalise medical imaging. Mr Blaj has a degree in computer science with a specialisation in computer vision and artificial intelligence.

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    Ruma Bhargava

    Country lead, health care, C4IR India, World Economic Forum, and professor, Manipal University

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    Ruma Bhargava

    Country lead, health care, C4IR India, World Economic Forum, and professor, Manipal University

    November 17th 2022

    Ruma Bhargava is a public health and social impact professional working in policy, advocacy, research and implementation of strategies. A Chevening fellow from the University of Oxford, she currently leads the India health-care vertical of the World Economic Forum and serves as an adjunct professor at Manipal University. Dr Ruma also heads Samarpann, a non-governmental organisation working in rural and tribal India to ensure health, education and livelihood.

     

    Dr Ruma has worked with the International Red Cross to define policies for covid-19 relief across the Asia-Pacific region and earlier with the government of India to conceptualise strategies for India’s Universal Immunisation Programme reaching 26m children and 30m pregnant women annually. She regularly consults with multiple stakeholders, including the UN, government and civil society in domains of health systems strengthening, maternal and child health, communicable and non-communicable diseases, and digital health.

     

    She holds an MBA from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, a master’s degree in public health and a bachelor of dental surgery from Manipal University.

  • Teng Liaw
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    Teng Liaw

    Emeritus professor of general practice and health informatics, and head of the WHO Collaborating Centre for eHealth, UNSW Sydney

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    Teng Liaw

    Emeritus professor of general practice and health informatics, and head of the WHO Collaborating Centre for eHealth, UNSW Sydney

    November 17th 2022

    Teng Liaw is a general practitioner, health informatician and clinician scientist. He heads the World Health Organisation (WHO) Collaborating Centre for eHealth and works with WHO headquarters and WPRO on national digital capability maturity and readiness in digital health development, interoperability, implementation and quality improvement. He collaborates with and is a member of the I-DAIR (International Digital Health and AI Research Collaborative) independent review panel.

     

    Dr Liaw is a global thought leader and has edited journals and published extensively on electronic decision support, mobile health, digital health maturity models, data quality and interoperability through common data models, socio-ethical issues in artificial intelligence and machine learning, governance (clinical and data), and environment and corporate social responsibility.

     

    He is a founding fellow of the International Academy of Health Science Informatics and Australian College of Health Informatics/Institute of Digital Health. He is an elected international fellow of the American College of Medical Informatics. He chairs the International Medical Informatics Association Primary Care Informatics Working Group and the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners National Research and Evaluation Ethics Committee.

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    Chee Hew

    Director, data analytics and consulting, Clearstate, EIU Healthcare

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    Chee Hew

    Director, data analytics and consulting, Clearstate, EIU Healthcare

    November 15th 2022 November 17th 2022

    Chee is an experienced consultant in the healthcare and life sciences sector in North America and Asia Pacific, with more than 18 years of experience in business and operational strategy consulting, leveraging strong market research capabilities. She has more than 12 years of healthcare experience specifically in China.

     

    Prior to joining EIU Healthcare, Chee was the Strategy & Change Pharmaceutical leader in IBM Global Business Services (previously PricewaterhouseCoopers) in China. Before that, she was with the North American R&D pharmaceutical industry practice based in Toronto.

     

    Chee has extensive experience working with senior executives of both healthcare and life sciences companies and government organizations to develop and implement strategic plans.

     

    Chee focuses on med tech globally, working with global IVD leaders such as Abbott Diagnostics, Roche Diagnostics, Danaher (i.e. Beckman Coulter, Leica, Radiometer), Bio-Rad and Sysmex. Chee has managed large scale projects to provide credible market insights to help clients achieve sustainable growth.

     

    In Asia Pacific, she has worked with other medical technology companies and research institutes. She has led numerous consulting projects to formulate winning go-to-market strategies in emerging markets in Asia Pacific and Latin America.

     

    She has published various white papers and presented at major conferences on current healthcare topics in Asia. She has covered topics such as “Future Outlook for Health in China”, “SE Asia: The New Emerging Healthcare Market Challenge”, “Digital Healthcare”, etc.

     

    Chee holds an MBA from Schulich School of Business, York University (Canada) and BSc (Hons) in Microbiology from University of Toronto.

2:00 pm -2:45 SGT

Nudging or nagging? Encouraging citizens towards good health

The cost and future sustainability of healthcare systems is a major concern for Asian governments, and enhanced efficiency and sustainability a constant priority. When patients are empowered to be part of the decision-making process around care through initiatives such as health literacy drives, they are also more likely to build better and more trusting relationships with providers, driving care continuity and adherence to treatment regimens. Digitisation has opened the door to remote patient management, better and faster communication, and more efficient and accessible forms of preventive and curative care. How can consumer-facing health platforms facilitate faster buy-in and behavioural change to drive preventive care? How can public health campaigns be used to influence government policy and personal behaviour to restrict consumption of unhealthy food and other “vice” items, addressing risk factors for chronic and acute illnesses? How can leaders in healthcare and the public sector encourage healthier lifestyles in a sustainable, authentic way? Is this too paternalistic?

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    Nina Gloriani

    Member, WHO Scientific Steering Committee for Covid-19 Solidarity Vaccines Trial, and former dean, College of Public Health, University of the Philippines

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    Nina Gloriani

    Member, WHO Scientific Steering Committee for Covid-19 Solidarity Vaccines Trial, and former dean, College of Public Health, University of the Philippines

    November 17th 2022

    Nina Gloriani is a medical doctor with a public health background, and post-graduate training in microbial immunology and medical biotechnology. She had post-doctoral fellowships on HIV/AIDS immunology and virology (University of California, Los Angeles, US), hepatitis C molecular analyses (Kobe School of Medicine, Japan), sexually transmitted diseases (Centres for Disease Control and Prevention, San Francisco, US), and clinical microbiology and molecular diagnostics (Georgetown University Medical Centre, US).

     

    Dr Gloriani retired in 2018 as full professor of medical microbiology and immunology after serving academia for 37 years. From 2007 to 2013, she served as dean of the College of Public Health (CPH), UP Manila, and at the same time, as director of the SEAMEO-TROPMED regional centre for public health, hospital administration, and environmental and occupational Health. From 1995 to 2005, she served as director of the Institute of Biotechnology and Molecular Biology of the National Institutes of Health, Philippines, and from 1995 to 1998, as chairman of the department of medical microbiology of CPH. 

     

    Although retired, she continues to serve as technical consultant to various agencies in the fields of medical microbiology, microbial immunology, medical biotechnology and public health. Dr Gloriani served as the chairperson of the DOST Expert Vaccine Panel on Covid-19 Vaccine Clinical Trials from March 2020 to March 2022. She currently serves as a member of the WHO Scientific Steering Committee for Covid-19 Solidarity Vaccines Trial. She continues to chair the National Certification Committee for Poliomyelitis Eradication in the Philippines.

     

    She is also a member of the advisory council of experts of the Go Negosyo business group in the Philippines, and a Clinical Microbiology Consultant at the St Luke’s Medical Centre Institute of Pathology, in Quezon City, Philippines.

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    Polly Cheung

    Founder, Hong Kong Breast Cancer Foundation

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    Polly Cheung

    Founder, Hong Kong Breast Cancer Foundation

    November 17th 2022

    Polly Cheung is a specialist in general surgery and an honorary consultant surgeon at the Hong Kong Sanatorium and Hospital. She currently serves as member of the national advisory board of Rogel Cancer Centre of the University of Michigan and as a member of the board of the Chinese University of Hong Kong Medical Centre. Throughout her professional life, Dr Cheung took the lead in bringing into Hong Kong various advancements in breast disease and cancer management, from introducing mammogram screening, ultrasound and needle biopsies in diagnosis, to sentinel node biopsy, breast conserving surgery, breast reconstruction and oncoplastic surgery.

     

    Dr Cheung founded the Hong Kong Breast Cancer Foundation in 2005, providing holistic cancer care to patients including psychosocial and paramedical support, as well as promoting breast health education and screening in the community. She has also established the territory-wide Hong Kong Breast Cancer Registry, in 2007.

     

    Dr Cheung is honorary clinical associate professor of surgery at the University of Hong Kong, trainer for the College of Surgeons of Hong Kong for surgical trainees, president of Breast Surgery International (2011–13), and founding president of the Hong Kong Society of Breast Surgeons (2012). She plays an active role in mentoring breast surgical trainees.

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    Woo Yin Ling

    Professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, University of Malaya

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    Woo Yin Ling

    Professor of obstetrics and gynaecology, University of Malaya

    November 17th 2022

    Woo Yin Ling is a professor of obstetrics and gynaecology at University of Malaya and a consultant gynaecological oncologist in University Malaya Medical Centre. She completed her specialist and sub-specialty training in gynaecological oncology and post-doctoral research degree in the UK and was conferred her PhD by Cambridge University. Professor Woo has received many awards for her professional excellence, including the Royal College of Obstetrician and Gynaecologist Gold Medal and the Cancer Research UK Gordon Hamilton Fairley Fellowship.

     

    Professor Woo is an international opinion leader in the prevention and treatment of cervical cancer. She is currently the Malaysian country representative for the Asia-Oceania Research Organisation in Genital Infection and Neoplasia (AOGIN), is a member of the Asia-Pacific Economic Consortium and Commonwealth Task-Force and sits on the educational committee of the International Papillomavirus Society. Having conceptualised and executed Programme ROSE, she is now one of the founding trustees of the ROSE Foundation.

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    Gerard Dunleavy

    Manager, health policy, Economist Impact

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    Gerard Dunleavy

    Manager, health policy, Economist Impact

    November 17th 2022

    Gerard Dunleavy is a manager in the health policy team at Economist Impact. He manages global engagements with international clients in the health-care sector, from conceptualising to delivering and executing customised research projects. He manages multidisciplinary teams, conducting both quantitative and qualitative analyses, across a broad range of disease areas and health policies.

     

    Prior to joining Economist Impact, Mr Dunleavy worked in academic settings specialising in evidence-based synthesis and epidemiological studies. He holds a PhD in public health and epidemiology and a master’s degree in health education and promotion, both from Maastricht University.

2:50 pm -3:35 SGT

Defying disinformation: health in the age of “fake news”

Misinformation kills. Joe Rogan’s Spotify podcast has at various times claimed that covid-19 treatments were concealed by hospital leaders or are a threat to reproductive health, and that public-health announcements on the subject were brainwashing, among other falsehoods. Misinformation and its more malicious sibling, disinformation, divides and distracts us from optimal preventive and curative healthcare.

 

Vaccines had been a contentious issue for some even before covid-19, but the pandemic has politicised them further. Hesitance has led to hundreds of thousands of preventable deaths globally. Recently, Hong Kong bore the brunt of an Omicron spike due to deaths amongst the unvaccinated elderly. Despite ongoing efforts at persuasion—a deluge of data, public-health drives, incentives—and failing that, vaccine mandates, sceptics remain steadfast. In March 2021 the Malaysian government outlawed the dissemination of false information related to the covid-19 pandemic. Is this an erosion of civil liberties or a necessary step towards population immunity? Where can influential public advocates mitigate hesitance? What are the ongoing results of disinformation? Which preventive and curative treatments are most affected? What are the optimal strategies to combat fake news? How did Singapore drive a successful campaign to vaccinate its elderly against covid-19?

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    Alice Budisatrijo

    Head of misinformation policy, Asia-Pacific, Meta

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    Alice Budisatrijo

    Head of misinformation policy, Asia-Pacific, Meta

    November 17th 2022

    Alice Budisatrijo leads Meta’s misinformation policy work in Asia-Pacific and is based in Singapore. In her capacity, she develops Meta’s policies to address misinformation and provides subject-matter expertise in the enforcement of the policies. Prior to this role, Ms Budisatrijo led Meta’s news partnerships in Indonesia and Malaysia, and she oversaw a number of programmes and initiatives under the Meta Journalism Project. She helped launch Meta’s fact-checking partnerships in South-east Asia and has represented the company in various misinformation, journalism and news literacy forums. Prior to joining Meta in 2017, Ms Budisatrijo was a journalist for BBC News and covered breaking news in South-east Asia. She has a master’s degree in public policy from the University of Oxford.

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    Clara Jiménez Cruz

    Co-founder and chief executive, Maldita.es

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    Clara Jiménez Cruz

    Co-founder and chief executive, Maldita.es

    November 17th 2022

    Clara Jiménez Cruz is the co-founder and chief executive of Maldita.es, a Spanish foundation and non-profit news organisation created to fight disinformation in public discourse through fact-checking and data journalism. Maldita.es develops tech tools that enable citizens to make informed decisions. The Maldita.es team also engages with its audience through new formats, such as its WhatsApp fact-checking chatbot, which won the European Press Prize in 2020. After a decade-long career as a TV journalist, Ms Cruz, who works regularly with national media organisations in Spain, was appointed to the High-Level Group against Disinformation by the European Commission and is a current member of the advisory board of the International Fact-Checking Network. Among other recognitions, she has been awarded a 2019 Ashoka Fellowship and was named Spanish Young Journalist of the Year in 2020. Ms Cruz is also the co-founder of Factchequeado, a US-based initiative to combat disinformation among Hispanic communities.

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    Tim Nguyen

    Head, unit for high-impact events preparedness, World Health Organisation

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    Tim Nguyen

    Head, unit for high-impact events preparedness, World Health Organisation

    November 17th 2022

    Tim Nguyen is head of the unit for high-impact events in the epidemic and pandemic preparedness and prevention department of the World Health Organisation (WHO) Health Emergencies Programme. Mr Nguyen joined WHO in 2006 as a technical officer in the yellow fever programme, which co-ordinated an initiative funded by GAVI to provide 40m doses of vaccine to populations most at risk. In 2008, he joined WHO’s Global Influenza Programme and took part in the global response to the first influenza pandemic of the 21st century. In 2011, Mr Nguyen was the founding member of WHO’s Global Hepatitis Programme and project manager for the development of the first WHO treatment guideline for the hepatitis C virus. From 2014 to 2017, he was the unit leader for knowledge management, evidence and research for policymaking at the WHO regional office for Europe, based in Copenhagen. There, he established the scientific journal Public Health Panorama and developed the WHO/Europe resolution and action plan for evidence-informed policymaking.

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    Gerard Dunleavy

    Manager, health policy, Economist Impact

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    Gerard Dunleavy

    Manager, health policy, Economist Impact

    November 17th 2022

    Gerard Dunleavy is a manager in the health policy team at Economist Impact. He manages global engagements with international clients in the health-care sector, from conceptualising to delivering and executing customised research projects. He manages multidisciplinary teams, conducting both quantitative and qualitative analyses, across a broad range of disease areas and health policies.

     

    Prior to joining Economist Impact, Mr Dunleavy worked in academic settings specialising in evidence-based synthesis and epidemiological studies. He holds a PhD in public health and epidemiology and a master’s degree in health education and promotion, both from Maastricht University.

3:40 pm -4:25 SGT

Decoding genomics: cell and gene therapies

Genomic sequencing has been one of the stars of the covid-19 crisis. The application of genetics to medicine in a systematic and transformative way illuminates the pathology of diseases while helping to track, cure and prevent them. Our increasing understanding of key biological structures at a micro level has implications for precision health. Now human genomes can be sequenced in just a few hours. This technology has vast potential—and a much bigger prize lies ahead. Today’s tech giants are placing bets on the future of gene editing, and many developments in cell and gene therapy are set to come to fruition between now and 2025. People’s genomes can be examined for clusters of genes that raise or lower the risk of specific diseases, with implications for preventive screening. Genomic surveillance is critical to robust public health preparedness. Contact tracing, origin discovery and the identification of variants of concern would be vastly more difficult without current advances in genetic sequencing. How can healthcare leaders use the expertise honed by covid-19 to improve the diagnosis and treatment of diseases of every kind? What issues of accessibility need to be considered? Where does AI play a part in processing the deluge of data coming from genomics? How can trust be built between key stakeholders, experts in genomics data and AI systems? What ethical and legal issues need to be resolved?

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    Patrick Tan

    Executive director, PRECISE (Precision Health Research, Singapore) and Genome Institute of Singapore, A*STAR

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    Patrick Tan

    Executive director, PRECISE (Precision Health Research, Singapore) and Genome Institute of Singapore, A*STAR

    November 17th 2022

    Patrick Tan is the executive director of PRECISE and will oversee the implementation of phase II of Singapore’s National Precision Medicine Strategy, which aims to transform healthcare in Singapore and improve patient outcomes through new insights into the Asian genome and data-driven healthcare solutions.

     

    During the 2020 covid-19 pandemic, Professor Tan was programme director of Operation Stronghold, establishing one of Singapore’s largest covid-19 testing facilities through a joint effort involving A*STAR (Agency for Science, Technology and Research), National University Health System and Temasek Holdings.

     

    He is also executive director of the Genome Institute of Singapore and professor at the Duke-NUS Medical School. He received his BA (summa cum laude) from Harvard University and MD PhD degree from Stanford University, where he received the Charles Yanofsky Prize for Most Outstanding Graduate Thesis in Physics, Biology or Chemistry.

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    Richard Scott

    Chief medical officer, Genomics England

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    Richard Scott

    Chief medical officer, Genomics England

    November 17th 2022

    Richard Scott is chief medical officer at Genomics England. He joined the organisation in 2015. Dr Scott is also a consultant and honorary associate professor in clinical genetics at Great Ormond Street Hospital for Children and the UCL Institute of Child Health, where his practice focuses on diagnosing children with rare multisystem disorders.

     

    Dr Scott trained in medicine at Cambridge University and University College London. He specialised in paediatrics and subsequently clinical genetics in London and completed his PhD on childhood cancer syndromes at the Institute of Cancer Research. Through his clinical practice and in his role at Genomics England, he is passionate about harnessing the power of new genomic technologies for the benefit of all patients in mainstream health care.

  • Surakameth Mahasirimongkol
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    Surakameth Mahasirimongkol

    Director, Medical Life Sciences Institute, Department of Medical Sciences, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand

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    Surakameth Mahasirimongkol

    Director, Medical Life Sciences Institute, Department of Medical Sciences, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand

    November 17th 2022

    Surakameth Mahasirimongkol is director of the Medical Life Sciences Institute in the Department of Medical Sciences at the Ministry of Public Health, Thailand. He has served in the Ministry of Public Health for more than 20 years, including as a medical officer in the Department of Medical Science from 2000 to 2012, and at the Centre of International Co-operation from 2000 to 2003. Dr Mahasirimongkol was medical officer and director of Banluem Hospital (2000–03) and Maharaj Hospital (1999–2000). He has been a committee member of the Thailand TB/HIV Research Foundation since 2013. He has received the National Innovation Award, Thailand; Thai Government Public Health Service Award; and Journal of Human Genetics Young Scientist Award.

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    Neeladri Verma

    Manager, health practice, Economist Impact

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    Neeladri Verma

    Manager, health practice, Economist Impact

    November 17th 2022

    Neeladri Verma is a manager in the health practice team at Economist Impact. She works with international clients in the healthcare sector on global assignments conceptualising, delivering and executing bespoke research projects. She engages with multiple stakeholders and manages multidisciplinary teams, conducting quantitative and qualitative analyses across health priority themes. Dr Verma has a rich and diverse background in health and research, focusing primarily on Asian markets. A dental doctor by trade, she also holds an MBA from the University of Hong Kong. Prior to joining Economist Impact, she worked as a healthcare consultant at the Asia Care Group, conducting research and strategic analyses on topics such as vaccine procurement, the role of the private sector in health reforms, health system appraisals and multisectoral approaches to health policy.

4:30 pm -5:15 SGT

Connecting climate change and care: green and sustainable health

A new IPCC report says the window to meet UN climate targets is vanishing. Emissions must peak by 2025 to keep global warming well below the 2°C limit. Even though climate change is the defining crisis of our generation, the severity of its impact on human health might not be obvious. Natural security is the task of making societies resilient to risks stemming from their connection to the living world, including disease, food insecurity, biological warfare and environmental degradation. Humans put unsustainable demands on the very same environment their health depends on, exceeding nature’s capacity for regeneration.

 

Not adopting aggressive climate policies brings its own costs, including lost lives, livelihoods and productivity, and destruction caused by extreme weather events. Ongoing deforestation and biodiversity loss is increasing the risk that zoonotic diseases will spill over to humans. Is covid-19 a warning of what may come from encroaching on animal habitats? This panel seeks to explore the rise in awareness of ESG concerns against the backdrop of the SDGs, and the links between climate change and common health issues in Asia such as respiratory disease, heatstroke, malnutrition, waterborne diseases and mental health issues. What are the major health challenges here? Where can healthcare leaders mitigate carbon footprints and medical equipment waste? How can we incentivise green health amid a turbulent global geopolitical landscape where ongoing conflict is disrupting supply chains and driving inflation?

  • Akeem Ali
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    Akeem Ali

    Head, Asia-Pacific Centre for Environment and Health, World Health Organisation, Western Pacific Region

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    Akeem Ali

    Head, Asia-Pacific Centre for Environment and Health, World Health Organisation, Western Pacific Region

    November 17th 2022

    Akeem Ali is a public health physician with extensive work experience across the globe in low-, middle- and high-income countries. Following initial clinical practice, Dr Ali has worked as a frontline public health practitioner, strategist, advocate and leader in various settings. He led local public health authorities in the UK over a ten-year period as a director of public health before joining WHO as a health systems and policy specialist for the Pacific sub-region leading on supporting the small island developing states of the Pacific to develop resilient health systems, widen coverage to affordable healthcare, and protect their population from public health emergencies and the impact of climate change. He recently moved to lead WHO’s Asia-Pacific Centre for Environment and Health in the Western Pacific region, based in Seoul.

  • Chen Qiufan
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    Chen Qiufan

    Science fiction writer and columnist

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    Chen Qiufan

    Chen Qiufan

    Science fiction writer and columnist

    November 17th 2022

    Chen Qiufan (Stanley Chan) is an award-winning Chinese speculative fiction author, translator, creative producer and curator. He is vice-president of the Chinese Writers Association science fiction committee, honorary president of the Chinese Science Fiction Writers Association, culture leader of the World Economic Forum (2018–19), Asia 21 Society Young Leader (2022), and has a seat on the Xprize Foundation Science Fiction Advisory Council. His work includes the novel Waste Tide and the book AI 2041: Ten Visions for Our Future, which he co-authored with Kai-Fu Lee. He is currently a writer-in-residence of Pro Helvetia.

  • Zulfiqar Bhutta
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    Zulfiqar Bhutta

    Founding director, Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health, Aga Khan University, and co-director, Centre for Global Child Health, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada

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    Zulfiqar Bhutta

    Zulfiqar Bhutta

    Founding director, Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health, Aga Khan University, and co-director, Centre for Global Child Health, The Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto, Canada

    November 17th 2022

    Zulfiqar A Bhutta is the founding director of the Centre of Excellence in Women and Child Health and the Institute of Global Health and Development, Aga Khan University. She is also the inaugural Robert Harding Chair in Global Child Health and co-director of the SickKids Centre for Global Child Health in Toronto, Canada. Dr Bhutta leads large research groups in Canada, Pakistan and East Africa focused on scaling up evidence-based interventions in community settings and implementation of RMNCAH&N (reproductive, maternal, neonatal, child and adolescent health and nutrition) interventions in humanitarian contexts. Dr Bhutta is a fellow of the Royal Society and received the 2021 Institute for Health Metrics and Evaluation Roux Prize for significant contributions to women and child health research, and she was recently awarded the John Dirks Canada Gairdner 2022 Global Health Award, one of the most prestigious awards in global health.

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    Shaileen Atwal

    Public health analyst, policy and insights EMEA, Economist Impact

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    Shaileen Atwal

    Public health analyst, policy and insights EMEA, Economist Impact

    November 17th 2022

    Shaileen Atwal is a public health analyst in the Policy and Insights team at Economist Impact in London, where she is involved in projects ranging from Sex and Gender Equity in Brain-disease Research and Digital Health. Prior to this, she completed her Master’s in Public Health Degree at the University of Warwick. She has keen interest in the sustainability of food systems and has conducted research exploring the risk factors associated with farmer suicides in India and developed a campaign for SUSTAIN to increase the sustainability of small and medium food enterprises at the Environmental Change Institute, University of Oxford. Shaileen has a degree in Physiotherapy from St George’s University of London and started her career specialising in the field of neurology.