Associate Professor, Economics & Head, Master of Management (Urban Transportation) Programme, Singapore University of Social Sciences
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Associate Professor, Economics & Head, Master of Management (Urban Transportation) Programme, Singapore University of Social Sciences
Walter Edgar Theseira is Associate Professor of Economics, School of Business, Singapore University of Social Sciences; and Adjunct Senior Research Fellow, Asia Competitiveness Institute, Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy. His Ph.D. is in Applied Economics and Managerial Science from the Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania. He has published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the Journal of Economic Behavior and Organisation. He has advised Government agencies on economics research, and is a Board Member of the Competition and Consumer Commission of Singapore. He served as a Nominated Member of Parliament, 13th Parliament of Singapore.
Assistant Director (Research & Development), Health Promotion Board
Giovanni Jacob is an Assistant Director (Research & Development) at the Health Promotion Board. A passionate public health practitioner, she conceptualises tech-enabled translational research projects to uncover novel health insights and enable the development of more targeted and personalised interventions at scale. Her specific interest is in reimagining traditional diet research and interventions for behaviour change, to more effectively empower individuals to take charge of their diet.
Deputy Director-General of Health (Healthcare Performance Group); Executive Director, Agency for Care Effectiveness,
MOH Singapore
Dr. Daphne Khoo is currently the Deputy Director of Medical Services (DDMS) (Healthcare Performance Group – HPG) as well as the founding Executive Director of the Agency for Care Effectiveness (ACE).
As DDMS (HPG) she leads the Ministry of Health’s teams which oversee Patient Safety, Clinical Outcomes, Value Driven Care, Population Health Indicators, Healthcare System Indicators and the National Improvement Unit. ACE is Singapore’s national Healthcare Technology Agency which conducts clinical and cost effective evaluation of drugs and device classes prior to coverage decisions by the Ministry of Health (MOH). ACE also issues MOH’s Appropriate Care Guides which guide clinical practice nationally.
Dr. Khoo received her Endocrinology training at the Singapore General Hospital and the Cleveland Clinic, USA. She spent earlier years of her career in clinical and translational research, as well as in the private sector. As Chief Medical Officer, Fortis Healthcare, she had responsibilities in 11 countries including India and Vietnam. She is a Past President of the Endocrine and Metabolic Society, Singapore, ASEAN Federation of Endocrine Societies as well as the Association of Women Doctors, Singapore.
Pediatric Neurologist, Sydney Children’s Hospital (Randwick), Australia; Associate Lecturer, University of New South Wales, Australia
Dr Didu (Sandi) Kariyawasamn is a paediatric neurologist, and post-doctoral researcher at UNSW Sydney. She currently practices at Sydney Children’s Hospital (Randwick) and holds the title of associate lecturer at the University of New South Wales. In 2022, she recently completed her PhD, evaluating the novel diagnostic and management pathways in paediatric neuromuscular disease.
Dr Sandi is active in the field of clinical trials and is part of the clinical research team providing access to new genetic therapies in the field of childhood onset neurological disease.
Dr Sandi’s goal is to provide optimal care and informed choice for families, based on best current evidence, taking into account the values and beliefs of the individual. The ethos that underpins her work is maintaining a child- and family-centred focus to improve the health and well-being of her patients.
Senior Consultant, Division of Paediatric Neurology, Department of Paediatrics, Khoo Teck Puat – National University Children’s Medical Institute, National University Hospital
Associate Professor Stacey Tay is currently Senior Consultant in the Division of Paediatric Neurology, Khoo Teck Puat – National University Children’s Medical Institute and Associate Professor of Paediatrics, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.
A/Prof Tay established the Neurogenetic Clinic, as well as the research and teaching arms of the division, founding a group that studies the genetics of paediatric neurological diseases, and conducts regular paediatric neurology teaching rounds. In her clinical work, she looks after children with neurogenetic disorders, neuromuscular disorders, movement disorders and epilepsy.
A/Prof Tay is actively involved in the special needs community and has professionally supported organisations such as the Muscular Dystrophy Association of Singapore and Ronald McDonald House Charities.
Chief Executive Officer and Board Director, EVYD Technology
Ming Jie serves as the Chief Executive Officer and Board Director of EVYD Technology, having founded the company in April 2020. Previously, Ming Jie served as the Head of Corporate Finance and Capital Markets department at Yidu Tech, the parent group of EVYD Technology.
Prior to EVYD Technology and Yidu Tech, Ming Jie oversaw the design and implementation of Investor Relations in the Capital Markets and Strategic Finance arm of Ant Group (formerly known as Ant Financial). Prior to his involvement in Ant Group, he worked at GIC Private Limited for seven years, with a focus on public equities.
Ming Jie earned a bachelor’s degree in Business Administration, majoring in Finance and Financial Mathematics from the National University of Singapore.
Vice Dean (Global Health) and Associate Professor (Practice), Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore
Li Yang is an infectious diseases physician who has spent the past decade researching and treating patients with antibiotic-resistant bacterial and invasive fungal infections. He is currently Vice Dean of Global Health and Programme Leader of Infectious Diseases at the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. Li Yang has served in several committees in the Ministry of Health (MOH). In particular, he co-chaired the RIE2020 infectious diseases workgroup, promoting antimicrobial stewardship, better control of antimicrobial resistance (leading to the launch of Singapore’s National Strategic Action Plan on Antimicrobial Resistance in November 2017), as well as tuberculosis. He continues to work with MOH on a part-time professional scheme. He has also served as a technical advisor on surveillance of antimicrobial resistance to the western pacific regional office of the World Health Organization.
Professor, Genome Bioinformatic, Radboud University Medical Center
Christian Gilissen obtained his PhD in 2012 at the department of Human genetics of the Radboud University Medical Center on the topic of “Disease gene identification through Next Generation Sequencing”. He currently holds a chair in Genome Bioinformatics at the department of Human Genetics at the Radboud University Medical Center in Nijmegen. In addition, he serves as the head of bioinformatics within the genome diagnostics division.
His research focuses on development and application of bioinformatics methods to identify the genetic causes of intellectual disabilities and on understanding the mutational mechanisms behind de novo mutations in humans. His work has been published in renowned genetic journals such as Nature, Nature Genetics, Nature Neuroscience, and the American Journal of Human Genetics.
His work was rewarded with the young investigator award (2012) and Lodewijk Sandkuijl award (2023) from the Dutch Society of Human Genetics and Young investigator award from the Dutch Bioinformatics community (2014), and the Isabel Oberlé award from the European Society of Human Genetics (2014). Christian Gilissen served on the Scientific Program Committee (SPC) of the American Society of Human Genetics (2014 – 2016) and European Society of Human Genetics (2019 – 2023).
Director of Healthcare Technology Department, Ministry of Health, Brunei Darussalam
Rudy has been working in the IT industry for over 19 years with a wealth of experience managing programs and projects for the Brunei Government in various ministries. He started out in 2003 as a system engineer at the Ministry of Finance where he was project manager and subsequently operations manager for the ministry’s datacenter. In 2008, he moved to the E-Government National Centre under the Prime Minister’s Office as head of operations and infrastructure until 2016 when he was appointed the chief operations officer for 2 years while also holding the role of program manager before being seconded to the Ministry of Health in 2018 as acting director of Healthcare Technologies Department. At the Ministry of Health, he is currently working on developing and implementing the Ministry’s Digital Health Transformation plan and project director for the revamp project of the country’s nationwide health information management system
Customer Experience Lead (ASEAN), Zoom
Jayraj is the Customer Experience Lead for ASEAN. He is a leading expert on unifed communications and contact center technologies and has hands on knowledge of the SEA market having worked with numerous clients through his over 20 years of career in the region. He has worked in various areas for contact center including consultancy, solution design and delivery. As the Sales Specialist for Zoom Contact Centre, he is driving the sale of this exciting new product in the market.
Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University
Dr. Conrad Tucker is a Professor of Mechanical Engineering at Carnegie Mellon University and holds courtesy appointments in Machine Learning, Robotics, Biomedical Engineering, and CyLab Security and Privacy. His research focuses on employing Machine Learning (ML)/Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques to enhance the novelty (i.e., generative designs) and efficiency (i.e., functional evaluations) of engineered systems. His research also explores the challenges of bias and exploitability of AI systems and the potential impacts on people and society.
Dr. Tucker has served as PI/Co-PI on federally/non-federally funded grants from the National Science Foundation, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, the Army Research Laboratory, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, among others. In February 2016, he was invited by National Academy of Engineering (NAE) President Dr. Dan Mote, to serve as a member of the Advisory Committee for the NAE Frontiers of Engineering Education Symposium. He recently served as a Commissioner on the U.S. Chamber of Commerce Artificial Intelligence Commission on Competitiveness, Inclusion, and Innovation and currently serves as a member of the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD) Expert Group on AI risk and accountability ONE AI. Dr. Tucker received his Ph.D., M.S. (Industrial Engineering), and MBA degrees from the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, and his B.S. in Mechanical Engineering from Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology.
Project Manager – Digital Health, Healthcare Redesign, Alexandra Hospital
Nikita Kanumoory Mandyam is a Project Manager (Digital Health) in the Healthcare Redesign team at Alexandra Hospital, a member of the National University Health System (NUHS) in Singapore. She manages the design, piloting and implementation of digital technology and innovation in hospital-supported community-focused patient-centred virtual healthcare models. Nikita is also an honorary visiting researcher at the Leadership Institute for Global Health Transformation in the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore, where she supports research and consulting related to health systems, health equity and digital health in Southeast Asia. Nikita holds a BSc (Hons) in Biological Sciences with a minor in Business from the Nanyang Technological University in Singapore.
Deputy Director-General of Health, Health Regulation Group; Assistant Commissioner (Cybersecurity – Healthcare) Ministry of Health, Singapore
Adj A/Prof (Dr) Raymond Chua is a Registered Public Health Specialist and Fellow with the Academy of Medicine. He is currently the Deputy Director-General of Health, overseeing the regulation of healthcare services, premises, and health digitalization in Singapore, to safeguard public health, assure patient safety and ensure healthcare innovations.
He is concurrently designated by Cybersecurity Agency of Singapore (CSA) as the Assistant Commissioner for Cybersecurity in Healthcare, to assist CSA in tracking and enhancing the cybersecurity policies relating to Critical Information Infrastructures and medical devices in Singapore.
He also chairs Public Service Division’s (PSD) Regulatory Advisory Group since October 2019 to provide guidance and broad direction in the use of regulatory tools and capability development of regulators in the public service. Besides these, he is also a Council Member of the Singapore Medical Council and Singapore Accreditation Council, as well as an Adjunct Associate Professor in the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health in National University of Singapore and Centre of Regulatory Excellence in Duke-NUS.
Senior Advisor to the Minister for Health Technology, Ministry of Health of the Republic of Indonesia
Mr Setiaji is an Expert Advisor of Health Technology to The Minister of Health in Indonesia. Setiaji, a digital leader and a civil servant with more than 10 years of experience in digital transformation and smart city development and digital transformation in the line ministries and government agencies in Indonesia. His experience leading the West Java Digital Services, Jakarta Smart City grows my expertise in information technology as he was a graduate of information technology engineering. All his expertises and experiences are being applied to serve the public effectively, efficiently, and impactful to the citizens based on data and technology utilization. He is a team builder who is very attentive to the needs of stakeholders and leaders. He is a digital leader with a warm & friendly attitude always! He plays an essential role in providing practical solutions that directly impact and improve public services. He has won various National and International awards in Digital Transformation: Top CIO on Digital Implementation, IT Works 2021 and The World CIO 200 Awards–SEA Edition, Global CIO Forum 2021.
Senior Machine Learning Scientist, Wadhwani AI; Assistant Professor, IIIT Hyderabad, India
Makarand Tapaswi is a Senior Machine Learning Scientist at Wadhwani AI, a non-profit on using AI for Social Impact, and an Assistant Professor at IIIT Hyderabad, where he leads a budding research group on teaching AI to understand video and language.
Makarand is very interested in using AI for Social Impact. At Wadhwani AI, he is leading the Machine Learning aspect of several projects in healthcare and education. His primary project is Newborn Anthropometry whose aim is to identify underweight newborns and monitor their growth using a video taken from a low-end smartphone. Makarand also leads other projects including screening subjects for Tuberculosis through cough, predicting features in medical images, particularly chest X-rays, and recently developing an assessment tool to estimate and improve students’ oral reading fluency.
Makarand’s academic research interests revolve around machine understanding of videos, language, and people. He enjoys teaching machines about human behavior and analyzing storylines, especially those conveyed through movies or TV shows. Previously, Makarand was associated with the Willow group at Inria Paris, and the Machine Learning group at the University of Toronto and the Vector Institute. Makarand completed his PhD at the Karlsruhe Institute of Technology, Germany.
Professor, Graduate Institute of Management and Department of Health Care Management, College of Management, Chang Gung University
Jui-fen Rachel Lu, is a Professor at the Graduate Institute of Management and Department of Health Care Management, College of Management, at Chang Gung University in Taiwan, where she teaches and researches on comparative health systems, health economics, and health care financing and has served as department chair (2000-2004), Associate Dean (2009-2010) and Dean of College of Management (2010-2013). Professor Lu was appointed to serve as Chair of the National Health Insurance (NHI) Commission, Taiwan Ministry of Health and Welfare since January 2023, which supervises the operation of the Taiwan National Health Insurance program, and is in charge of annual global budget negotiation.
Prof. Lu’s recent research focuses on analyzing the COVID-19 pandemic responses, and its impacts on household consumption patterns and delayed cancer treatment. In the face of the accelerating pace of digital health, she is also assessing the role of digital health under Taiwan NHI, and exploring the challenges of digital divide and digital trust. She is a long-time and active member of the Equitap (Equity in Asia-Pacific Health Systems) research network.
Prof. Lu was a Fulbright Visiting Scholar at Stanford University (2015-2016), a Takemi Fellow at Harvard (2004-2005), and an Honorary Professor at the University of Hong Kong (2007-2021). To promote health economics research, she cofounded the Taiwan Society of Health Economics (TaiSHE) in 2008 and served as President of TaiSHE from 2014 to 2017. Professor Lu has also served as Board of Director at International Health Economics Association (IHEA) from 2016 to 2022. She is currently an associate editor for the Health Economics journal.
She completed an undergraduate degree in public health at National Taiwan University and earned her M.S. in health policy and management and Sc.D. (with a concentration in health economics) from Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health.
Chief Operating Officer, Nalagenetics Pte Ltd (SG), PT Nalagenetik Riset Indonesia
Astrid started off her career as a scientist. She obtained her PhD from Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore, focusing on finding genetic markers that can predict complex diseases and how people respond to medications. Though her PhD and post-doctoral work gained significant scientific impact and even landed her an offer for a tenured track faculty member, it wasn’t what she was looking for. With the hope of making her scientific findings more impactful, Astrid and three colleagues at the Genome Institute of Singapore started Nalagenetics. Their first goal was to provide personalized medicine for the poorest people in the world: people with leprosy, by developing a diagnostic kit to detect a biomarker for a fatal hypersensitivity syndrome. Together with her co-founders, Nalagenetics has now grown to a team of 80+ people in Singapore and Indonesia. They’ve expanded their goal from provision of personalized prescription to personalized screening to help people make better healthcare decisions. Astrid is actively managing Nalagenetics’ operations and clinical research in Nalagenetics while juggling her mommy duties with two children at home.
Senior Researcher, Head of Unit, Research group leader, Molecular Pathology Laboratory, Dept. Pathology, AHH-Hvidovre Hospital, Copenhagen University Hospital
Educated in Denmark and the US, Jesper Bonde is an international recognized specialist in virology, cancer and cancer prevention. Dr. Bonde heads the molecular pathology laboratory at AHH-Hvidovre Hospital, Copenhagen University Hospital. The department operates the cervical screening program for 1/3 of Denmark, as well as the cervical cancer screening in the North Atlantic countries of Greenland and the Faroes Islands. The laboratory is spearheading the implementation of primary HPV screening and HPV self-sampling in Denmark. The department was recognized in 2021 for “10 best Public Innovations” for the innovative work on HPV self-sampling and has been awarded “best cervical screening unit” in Denmark five times in a row, latest 2023.Dr. Bonde is the principal investigator of studies on screening technology, HPV self-sampling, epigenetic diagnostic methods and biomarkers. A member of the National Cervical Screening Steering Committee, and appointed HPV expert to the Danish National Board of Health. Dr. Bonde also acts as advisor on health care policy, COVID, HPV and cancer prevention for a number of countries, organizations and institutions o.a. the Netherlands, Sweden, Poland, Norway, Iceland, Canada, Spain, and the UK National Health Service.
Fitbit Vice President and General Manager, Google
James Park is Fitbit vice president and general manager, Google, as well as co-founder of Fitbit. In his role, James leads the team responsible for development of wearables at Google. With a commitment to innovation, James and his team aim to make health more accessible, fun and achievable by offering a range of affordable, cross-platform devices.
James co-founded Fitbit alongside Eric Friedman in 2007 with a vision to make the world healthier, through hardware, software and services that give people a better understanding of their health and wellness. Since its founding, Fitbit has sold millions of devices across 100 countries, pioneering the wearables industry to make fitness tracking a cultural phenomenon and redefining how the world thinks and learns about health and wellness.
Previously, James was director of product development at CNET Networks. He also served as president and co-founder of Wind-Up Labs, Inc., an online photo-sharing company that was acquired by CNET Networks in 2005, and chief technology officer and co-founder of Epesi Technologies, Inc., a business-to-business software company.
Assistant Secretary of Health, Public Health Services Team, Department of Health, Philippines
Dr. Beverly Lorraine C. Ho is currently the Assistant Secretary of the Department of Health – Public Health Services Team. As Assistant Secretary of Health, she supports the Undersecretary in setting the strategic direction of the Health Promotion Bureau, Epidemiology Bureau, Disease Prevention and Control Bureau, Pharmaceutical Division, and the Knowledge Management and Information Technology Services.
She also serves as the alternate representative to the Board as Chair of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation Benefit Committee, wherein she ensures alignment of the benefits development pipeline of PhilHealth to the requirements and timelines as specified under the Universal Health Care Act.
Prior to her current posts, Doctor Beverly Ho also served as the Director of the Health Promotion and Disease Prevention and Control Bureaus. As the Health Promotion Bureau Director, she led the crafting of policies and programs that promote healthy behaviors, address social determinants of health, and transform communities, workplaces, and learning institutions to be health-enabling environments; and being the director of the Disease Prevention and
Control Bureau, she spearheaded integration of various health programs putting heavy emphasis on primary care.
She also served as Chief of the Research Division of the Health Policy Development and Planning Bureau; wherein, her leadership and efforts led to the passage of key legislations on sugar-sweetened beverages taxes, tobacco taxes, and universal health care. Doctor Beverly Ho also served through being part of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation and worked as a consultant of the Asian Development Bank.
Assistant Secretary Ho was also a fellow under various programs such as the Maurice R. Greenberg World Fellows Program at Yale University, Atlantic Institute, and Equity Initiative for Southeast Asia. She holds a medical degree from the University of the Philippines Manila and a Masters in Public Health – Health Policy and Management from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of
Public Health as a Fullbright Scholar.
In 2022, she was a recipient of the Ten Outstanding Young Men and Ten Outstanding Young Women for Nation Service.
Senior Medical Science Liaison, Takeda Pharmaceuticals (Asia Pacific)
Winnie Ang is a Senior Medical Science Liaison currently working and living in Singapore. Her area of focus as an MSL includes early access to medicine, patient services, and new asset launches.
She started her career in Medical Affairs with GSK’s Asia Pacific Oncology group in 2011 as a fresh graduate with a BSc (Hon) in Pharmaceutical Management from the University of Bradford. As of 2023, Winnie has accumulated 17 years of unique experiences from bench-to-bedside, as a pre-clinical research scientist, a medical assistant and as an MSL.
Winnie was a GSK Star Awardee for Performance in medical operations and has gone on to receive the Astellas Ambassador Program Award for setting up the medical affairs function as well as conducting cross functional training on medical and commercial partnerships for Malaysia and Singapore.
She recently launched Singapore’s Symptom Matcher websites for Fabry and Gaucher disease and accomplished a first in Asia Pacific for early access to Takeda’s TAK755, a then Investigational New Drug (IND), for a young patient in Singapore.
Clinical Geneticist, KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital
Dr Saumya Jamuar is a Clinical Geneticist at KKH, serves as the Lead PI of the Singapore Childhood Undiagnosed Disease/ BRIDGES Programme and is the Clinical Director of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Institute of Precision Medicine. He was the Inaugural head of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Genomic Medicine Centre. He is the co-founder of Global Gene Corporation Pte Ltd.
He completed his Genetics Fellowship at Harvard Medical School. He is actively involved in research, has presented at both local and international meetings and has published in top tier journals including The New England Journal of Medicine and Nature Genetics. His research areas include rare genetic disorders, dysmorphology, skeletal dysplasia, and neurodevelopmental genetics. He was awarded the Young Investigator Award at the 2013 American Epilepsy Society meeting and is the recipient of the 2015 Singhealth Outstanding Young Researcher Award, Singhealth Outstanding Publish Award, and 2021 National Medical Research Council Clinician Scientist Award.
Research Associate, Curtin University
Richard has extensive expertise in computer science and software engineering. During his doctoral research, he investigated techniques for detecting objects from 2-D images and 3-D point clouds acquired using stereoscopy and laser scanning (LiDAR) and developed extensions of machine learning approaches for combinations of these modalities.
Richard has also undertaken research with the Australian Department of Defence to evaluate the effectiveness of different display technologies for the detection and classification of vessels from submarine periscope imagery. During earlier work through Curtin University’s Depart of Computing, Richard helped investigate the feasibility of using WiFi signal strength for indoor navigation.
After completing his PhD in 2016, Richard was employed through Curtin University’s Department of Spatial Sciences and the Western Australian Department of Health to develop 3D facial visualisation and analysis software that would eventually become the free and open-source platform Cliniface. As well as continuing to develop and maintain Cliniface, Richard consults broadly to develop new functionality and assist users and researchers around the world to use Cliniface in their own work.
More recently, Richard has developed the initial version of software (SMAAT – Speech Movement and Acoustic Analysis Tracking) to assist Speech Language Pathologists in evaluating speech motor control in young children through the automated detection and analysis of facial movements from short video sequences.
Richard is fluent in contemporary programming languages including Python and C++, web-based technologies, database, and scripting languages, and is experienced in the development and deployment of software across all current mainline operating systems.
Richard enjoys collaborating with specialists from different fields and appreciates how vital effective communication and shared problem solving is in bringing state-of-the-art software solutions to practical reality within non-trivial problem domains.
Head of Medical Affairs, India and South East Asia, Takeda Pharmaceuticals (Asia Pacific)
Dr Choo-Beng Goh is currently the Head of Medical Affairs, India and South East Asia, Takeda Pharmaceuticals (Asia Pacific) Pte Ltd. Prior to this he was heading medical affairs for Asia Pacific at Takeda. He has more than fifteen years of experience with pharmaceuticals and vaccine medical affairs and clinical development having worked in Singapore, Taiwan and the United Kingdom with GSK and Takeda. A trained clinical oncologist, he is passionate about medical affairs and building high performing medical teams. Dengue will be the second vaccine launch after his experience with the GSK human papillomavirus vaccine. Exploring healthcare partnerships and innovative financing models are of his keen interest as well as working towards an Access First strategy for many of Takeda’s current portfolio assets.
Principal, Polaris Partners
Kim Png is a principal at Polaris Partners. Based in Singapore, she is focused on healthcare investments and venture building globally. She currently serves on the Board of Directors for 65 Labs, a program that will accelerate the development of therapeutic technologies originating from Singapore institutions.
Prior to Polaris, Kim was an investment professional at Temasek, where she was responsible for healthcare investments into public and private equities globally.
Kim holds an MBA from Singapore Management University, a Ph.D. in Cancer Biology from Rockefeller University, and a B.S.E. in Biomedical Engineering from Duke University.
Chief Data Officer, Health Promotion Board
Ms Nicole Lim is the Chief Data Officer of Health Promotion Board, overseeing data engineering, governance, data science and analytics. She drives the advancement of data-driven and citizen-centric approach to health promotion through unlocking the value of data as a strategic asset, creating value through analytics and data science applications, while continuing to uphold citizen trust in the secured use of their data. Prior to her current role, she was with the Singapore Tourism Board (STB) leading the use and sharing of data and insights to shape the tourism strategy as well as forging public-private data partnerships with leading industry partners. Prior to joining the public sector, Nicole spent numerous years in management consulting, working with Fortune 1000 MNCs and government agencies globally to deliver market entry and growth studies across health, education, F&B, IT, financial services and industrial product sectors.
Deputy Director (Integrated Programme), Health Promotion Board
Alice heads the Integrated Programme Department of the Health Promotion Board (HPB), which is a statutory board under the Ministry of Health, Singapore. HPB’s role is to empower individuals to take ownership of their health, towards its vision of a nation of healthy people.
Alice is currently responsible for planning, developing and executing population-level programmes that help Singapore residents incorporate holistic health across key health domains. Specifically, her focus is on delivering these programmes at scale in an integrated and personalised way to residents so as to change behaviours and improve health outcomes. Prior to her role in the Integrated Programme Department, Alice has been leading the National Steps ChallengeTM, a nation-wide physical activity initiative which was launched in 2015. Today, the National Steps ChallengeTM has reached out to 1 in 2 Singapore residents and has demonstrated sustainable and measurable changes in physical activity levels among its participants.
Alice has more than 10 years of experience in public health and health promotion. Her previous portfolio includes tobacco control and workplace health outreach. In tobacco control, she was part of the team overseeing the National Smoking Control Programme (NSCP) and she eventually conceptualized and implemented I Quit, a nation-wide intervention programme which utilises a multi-pronged approach in tobacco cessation among adults. In workplace health outreach, she drove the strategic alignment of Occupational Safety and Health and Well-being and Health Promotion at work, across the public and private sectors and key industries.
Director (Innovation Office), Health Promotion Board
Terence is the Director in the Innovation Office and the Policy and Strategy Division in the Health Promotion Board Singapore. He is responsible for the formulation, implementation, monitoring and evaluation of priority public health policy in the board, including nutrition, tobacco, precision in health promotion as well as partnerships and technology to help the nation live healthily.
Terence is a trained sociologist and lawyer who previously was an Assistant Professor at the University of California, San Francisco doing research on home and community-based care for the elderly and disabled.
Chief Health Scientist, Ministry of Health, Singapore
Executive Director, MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation
Professor Tan Chorh Chuan was appointed as the inaugural Chief Health Scientist and concurrently, Executive Director of the new Office for Healthcare Transformation in Singapore’s Ministry of Health since 1 January 2018.
Before joining MOHT Professor Tan served as President of the National University of Singapore (NUS) from 2008 to 2017. Prior to that he also held the positions of NUS Provost, then Senior Deputy President between the years of 2004 and 2008. He was former Dean of the NUS Faculty of Medicine and served as the Director of Medical Services, Ministry of Health, from 2000 to 2004, where he was responsible for leading the public health response to the 2003 SARS epidemic. More recently, he was appointed member of the Expert Committee on COVID-19 Vaccination in 2020, which advises the government on Singapore’s vaccination strategy.
In 2022, Professor Tan was were conferred The Distinguished Service Order. His other awards include the Public Service Star in 2003 for outstanding contributions to overcoming SARS in Singapore; the Public Administration Gold Medal in 2004 for his work as Director of Medical Services in the Ministry of Health; and the Meritorious Service Medal in 2015. He was awarded the National Science and Technology Medal in 2008 and is the first Singaporean to be elected as an international member of the US National Academy of Medicine.
A renal physician, Professor Tan obtained his medical training at NUS, and research training at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.
Chief, Smart Health Leadership Centre, Institute of Systems Science, National University of Singapore; Distinguished Visiting Professor of Population Data Science Research & Innovation Institute, Swansea University Medical School
Dr Adam Chee is the Chief of Smart Health Leadership Centre at NUS-ISS. There he leads his team to transform the future experience of health and deliver impact through technology, data, and design, by developing and blending the disciplines, skills and technologies through the delivery of practice-oriented training, mentorship-based consulting, industry-based applied research and collaboration.
Dr Chee is a Convergence Scientist renowned for his expertise in the field of health informatics, predominately in the regions of Asia. He is familiar with health and care, informatics, data science, innovation, technologies, and the business aspects of the ecosystem. Prior to joining the National University of Singapore, he led a few international projects, including digital health transformation for Saudi Health Council, Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, telehealth solution for LifeWatch AG, Switzerland and Health Information Exchange system framework for Integrated Health Information System (IHiS) Singapore.
Dr Chee ‘earned his stripes’ as an industry pioneer, implementing and managing clinical information solutions during his tenure with Singapore Health Services (SingHealth). He has since worked across the healthcare ecosystem, including the primary care sector, private and public tertiary hospitals, research institutes, government health agencies and non-governmental organisations (NGOs) across the globe. He had also worked in IT technical, system and technology management earlier in his career.
A recognised subject matter, Dr Chee serves as an Expert (Digital Health) with the World Health Organisation, a Fellow of Healthcare Information and Management Systems (HIMSS) and was the first Singaporean among 50 top global leaders inducted as a HIMSS Future50 Innovation Leader. He is also the Chair of Health Level Seven (HL7) Singapore and Founding Executive Council Member of HL7 Asia, and Chair of Technical Committee for Health Informatics, Singapore Standards Council. He holds several faculty positions with higher learning institutes across Asia.
Dr Chee is also appointed Distinguished Visiting Professor for Population Data Science Research & Innovation Institute (PDSRII) at Swansea University Medical School (UK) where he advises the delivery of PDSRII’s training and capacity-building programme. The programme aims to upskill the digital capabilities of researchers who uses health, social care, and other administrative data – that will effectively augment workforce capacity, skills, and engagement with data-intensive science in the UK and Singapore.
Associate Professor, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health and Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore
Dr Wee Hwee Lin is Associate Professor at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health as well as the Department of Pharmacy, Faculty of Science, National University of Singapore. She is also Director, Center for Health Intervention and Policy Evaluation Research based in SSHSPH. Dr Wee contributes actively to the local and international academic communities. She has conducted research for the World Health Organization and the International Decision Support Initiative (iDSI). She is a recipient of the International Society for Quality of Life Research (ISOQOL) Young Investigator Award in 2011 and served as an elected member of the Board of Directors of ISOQOL from 2013-2015. She was also an associate editor of Health and Quality of Life Outcomes (2012 – 2016), a leading journal on health-related quality of life. In addition, she was involved in developing the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement Diabetes Standard Dataset. Dr Wee is currently serving on the National Advisory Committee on Cancer and was two-time President for the International Society for Pharmacoeconomics and Outcomes Research Singapore Chapter in 2009 and 2018. Dr Wee’s current work involves the use of real world evidence in health technology assessments and economic evaluation of precision medicine.
Principal Health Specialist, Southeast Asia Regional Department (SERD), Asian Development Bank (ADB)
Dr Eduardo P. Banzon or Dodo Banzon is a Principal Health Specialist in the Southeast Asia Regional Department (SERD) of the Asian Development Bank (ADB), and Honorary Visiting Associate Professor in the National University of Singapore Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health. Before joining ADB in 2014, he was President and CEO of the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation, World Health Organization (WHO) regional adviser for health financing for the Eastern Mediterranean region and WHO health economist in Bangladesh, and World Bank senior health specialist in East Asia and the Pacific. He is also a former faculty member of the University of the Philippines (UP) College of Medicine and the Ateneo Graduate School of Business. He completed MD Medicine in the UP College of Medicine, and an MSc in Health Policy, Planning and Financing from the London School of Economics and the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine.
Vice President (Strategy), Hummingbird Bioscience
Lisa is the Vice President of Strategy at Hummingbird Bioscience. Lisa has more than 18 years of experience in the biomedical industry in the areas of oncology/hematology, oncology biomarker development, clinical pharmacology, preclinical and clinical development, as well as large-scale private and public research partnerships and investment promotion. She has previous experience at the Singapore Economic Development Board, ASLAN Pharmaceuticals, Bayer Healthcare, the Agency for Science Technology and Research (A*STAR), and served on the boards of multiple biomedical entities such as Precision Health Research, Singapore (PRECISE) and the Singapore Clinical Research Institute (SCRI). Lisa holds a BSc in Biochemistry from the University of Wisconsin-Madison, a MSc and PhD from Stanford University in Chemical Engineering and Chemical and Systems Biology.
Professor of Informatics, Population Data Science Research & Innovation Institute, Swansea University Medical School; Chair of UK-Medical Research Council’s Data Science Strategic Advisory Group
Professor David Ford is Professor of Informatics at Swansea University and Director of Population Data Science Research & Innovation Institute based in Swansea University Medical School (consistently ranked top 5 medical school and first for research environment and overall research quality in the UK).
Professor Ford has won over £100m in new research projects and infrastructure grants awarded by high-esteem funders in recent years. He is Principal Investigator (PI) of the Administrative Data Research Wales (ADR Wales), a £25m investment into Wales by the UK Research and Innovation’s Economic and Social Research Council as part of its over £90m investment in Big Data initiative in the UK.
Professor Ford established the UK Multiple Sclerosis Register (funded by UK MS Society); he is PI of the Family Justice Data Partnership (funded by Nuffield Foundation); Director of the Health Data Research UK for Wales and Northern Ireland; and Chief Data Officer for BREATHE – The Health Research Hub for Respiratory Health.
Professor Ford is also the Founder and Director of the world-renowned Secure Anonymised Information Linkage (SAIL) Databank, and the Secure e-Research Platform (SeRP), which is used by researchers and data custodians in the UK and around the world to safely curate and share their data.
Containing billions of person-based records, from the last quarter of a century or more, SAIL Databank is a rich and trusted population data resource based within Swansea University Medical School whose influence stretches globally. SAIL Databank involving over 750 data users located in more than 100 organisations globally is accredited to the highest international standards and exists to improve lives by providing researchers with secure, linkable and anonymised data that can be accessed and analysed from anywhere in the world – public data, for public good.
Voted in DataIQ’s most influential people in data, and also the Chair of UK Research and Innovation’s UK-Medical Research Council’s Data Science Strategic Advisory Group, Professor David Ford will speak about the pioneering work that he and team undertook to establish a privacy protecting repository for de-identified population data that could be unlocked for societal benefit.
Professor Ford’s presentation will cover the vast array of different data types entrusted to SAIL Databank since those early beginnings, including health, housing, education and other administrative data, imaging and genomics data, and underline the strict governance processes that keep the data secure but also helps to facilitate and support world-changing research.
Founder and CEO, ConnectedLife
Daryl Arnold is an entrepreneur experienced in data, marketing, technology, sustainability and health. Building businesses from the ground-up, achieving hundred million dollars plus of sales from Asia, Europe and America. Following successful exits in the digital space, now focused on Smart Cities, Internet of Things, Trust & Assurance, Open Data & AI, Health Diagnostics and Active Ageing.
Daryl is the founder and CEO of ConnectedLife a Singapore headquartered company immersed in clinical research, data science and product development. By integrating state-of-the-art consumer wearable devices, mobile applications and AI, the company improves the quality of life of people with chronic conditions through more effective remote diagnosis, monitoring and management of care.
Chief Technology Officer, Sheares Healthcare Group
Assoc Prof Low Cheng Ooi is an orthopaedic surgeon by training. During his 8 year tenure as Chief Medical Informatics Officer at 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 Advisor in the CMIO’s office at Ministry of Health, Singapore.
Co-founder & CEO, Biorithm
Born and raised in Singapore, Amrish NAIR received his B.Eng. and M.Eng. from the School of Electrical and Electronic Engineering at the Nanyang Technological University. His graduate studies research led him to numerous international publications and a US Patent on ECG signal analysis and monitoring. His research collaboration with TTSH cardiologist, Dr. David FOO and NTU supervisor Assoc.
Prof. Pina Marziliano led him to spin-off BIORITHM, a medtech startup combining cutting-edge signal processing and easy to use sensors to provide a comprehensive remote monitoring solution for pregnancy management.
As one of the founding members of BIORITHM, Amrish and his team set out with the aim of reducing preventable pregnancy complications while pushing technological limits to greater progression of baby and women’s health field
Executive Director, Centre of Regulatory Excellence (CoRE), Duke-NUS Medical School
Professor John Lim is founding Executive Director of the Centre of Regulatory Excellence (CoRE) at the Duke-National University of Singapore Medical School, inaugural Chairman of the Consortium for Clinical Research & Innovation Singapore (CRIS), Senior Advisor at Singapore’s Ministry of Health, and Policy Core Lead at the SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute.
Professor Lim is an experienced healthcare professional, government administrator and national regulator. He graduated in medicine from the National University of Singapore and holds postgraduate degrees in public health from NUS and health policy and management from Harvard University. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Medicine Singapore and a Specialist in Public Health Medicine under the Singapore Medical Council.
Formerly Chief Executive Officer of Singapore’s Health Sciences Authority and Deputy Director of Medical Services in MOH, Professor Lim has also held other senior positions in Singapore’s Health and Education ministries. His current roles promote capacity building, scientific excellence and innovation for health regulation and systems in Southeast Asia and Asia-Pacific. He is a member of the Singapore Food Agency Board, Singapore Medical Council, US Pharmacopoeia Council of the Convention and Asia-Pacific Regional Chapter Chair, Davos Alzheimer’s Collaborative Leadership Group, and APEC Harmonization Center Advisory Board, among others.
Professor Lim has been awarded the DIA Global Connector Inspire Award and the Regulatory Affairs Professional Society’s Founder’s Award for leadership in promoting global collaboration, and shaping regulatory practice and policy throughout his career.
Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology, London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine
Prof Kaja Abbas is an Associate Professor in the Department of Infectious Disease Epidemiology at the London School of Hygiene & Tropical Medicine. His research area is in vaccine impact modelling with a focus on estimating the health, economic, and equity impact of vaccination programmes to support evidence-based public health decision-making and inform vaccine policy in collaboration with partners and stakeholders at the global, regional, and national levels. He has worked on impact assessment of different vaccines, including human papillomavirus, measles, Haemophilus influenzae type b, rotavirus, pneumococcal, influenza, dengue, Strep A, typhoid, COVID-19, and basic vaccines in the childhood immunisation schedule, in varied settings of low-, middle-, and high-income countries.
Chief Rare Advocate and Co-founder, Rare Disorders Society (Singapore)
Kenneth Mah is the Chief Rare Advocate and Co-founder of the Rare Disorders Society (Singapore) a.k.a RDSS. Together with his wife, Patricia Mah, he leads the rare disorders community in Singapore and under his leadership, RDSS was awarded the charity status in 2015 and received IPC status in 2022. He continues to raise the awareness of rare disorders amongst the public and dedicates his time away from home to support other families with children living with rare disorders. Kenneth is also a volunteer with CaringSG in offering assistance to caregiver support groups in Singapore.
Kenneth’s elder daughter, Chloe (14 years old), has been diagnosed with Pompe disease when she was 7 months old. His tremendous dedication in juggling between family and helping the community earned him the SingHealth Inspirational Patient and Caregiver Award in 2012, and the Club Rainbow
Exemplary Caregiver Award in 2019. Kenneth is also the member of SingHealth Patient Advocacy
Network (SingHealth SPAN) member since 2017 and KKH SPAN member since 2023. Kenneth holds a Master of Business Administration from Victoria University (Australia), an Advanced Diploma in Marketing and a Diploma in Engineering (Electronics) from Ngee Ann Polytechnic.
CEO and Founder, Clinical Research Advancement
Yvanka is the CEO and Founder of Clinical Research Advancement. She has over 23 years of clinical research, medical affairs, and health outcomes experience with a focus on emerging markets.
Yvanka has served as the Vice President of Operations for Diaceutics within the Asia Pacific, Middle East & Africa regions. Before joining Diaceutics, she was the VP of Clinical Affairs and Real World Evidence (RWE) with Kantar Health. She has also served as the Head of Real World Evidence at IQVIA Singapore.
Yvanka has worked in clinical operations, medical affairs, health economics outcomes research (HEOR), Business Development, and Market access roles within the Pharmaceutical, Biotechnology, and Diagnostic industries.
Her early career focused on the successful launch of novel Oncology compounds in the US and LATAM where she collaborated on the successful launch of 9 (nine) novel Oncology compounds and a companion diagnostic.
She serves as a key advisor and member of the LUNGevity research collaboration with the FDA and as an advisor and board member of Jonda Health.
Yvanka is passionate about the advancement of Clinical research initiatives that support health equity, improve patient outcomes and result in the generation of real-world evidence.
Under her leadership, Clinical Research Advancement has become a trusted partner for clients seeking efficient, reliable, and high-quality clinical research services.
In her spare time, Yvanka is an ExCom member of the Young Presidents Organization (YPO), she is also a member of CHIEF, AmCham, and the UAE Singapore Business Council.
Yvanka holds a Bachelors degree in Biology, a minor in Chemistry, a Doctor of Pharmacy (PharmD) degree from the University of Michigan, and an MBA in International Business from Rutgers University in Singapore.
Business Lead, Digital Insights Value Stream, Roche Diagnostics Asia Pacific
Yvonne has been in the healthcare industry for over 10 years, working across different APAC markets. She started her career at Roche in 2018 as the Commercial Manager, Clinical Decision Support, APAC. Prior to that, she held various APAC leadership roles at Medtronic, and in multiple Singapore government agencies.
In her current role at Roche, she is responsible for the commercialisation efforts of digitally focused insights and Software-as-a-service (“SaaS”) businesses in oncology, infectious diseases and point-of-care areas for Roche Diagnostics in APAC. Yvonne holds a BSc in Economics and Political Science from University of California, Berkeley.
Head, SingHealth Duke-NUS Genomic Medicine Centre; Head and Senior Consultant, Genetic Services, KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital
Associate Professor Tan Ee Shien is Head of SingHealth Duke-NUS Genomic Medicine Centre, as well as Head and Senior Consultant for Genetics Service in KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH). She started her training in Paediatrics in KK Hospital and obtained her Membership of the Royal College of Paediatrics and Child Health (MRCPCH) in 2002. She then pursued her interest in genetics and was awarded the Health Manpower Development Plan fellowship in 2005. Her passion is to ensure that all patients with genetic diseases have access to the best care available. With this vision, she has also been appointed the Deputy Chief Medical Officer of PRECISE.
She was the Director of the National Newborn Screening Programme in Singapore from 2011 to 2023. In this role, she has led the expansion of the list of disorders tested in newborns. The Programme has been successful in ensuring that majority of the newborns in Singapore are tested.
Assoc Prof Tan is a strong believer in mentoring the next generation and is actively involved in education, serving as the Paediatric clerkship director for the Duke NUS Graduate Medical School from 2021-2023. She is also a Clinical Associate Professor in Duke-NUS Medical School and Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.
She was awarded Clinician Scientist Award 2009-2011 and is currently the Genomics Co-Lead of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Maternal and Child Health Research Institiute.
Research Fellow, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore
Dr. Marthe Smedinga works as a research fellow at the National University of Singapore. Her research is based in bioethics and focuses on public attitudes towards governance of health and genomic data, risk testing for Alzheimer’s disease and medical treatments involving genetic modification
Distinguished Fellow and VP, Biological Sciences, BD
Robert Balderas has 40 years of leadership experience in both academia and the biotechnology industry. As a corporate scientist, in the field of biotechnology he has contributed to the growth in both translational biology and the building of personalized medicine low cytometry based applications.
Robert has championed multiple key successful product launches during his tenure at Pharmingen and BD Biosciences and is recognized for his success in growing sales and profits. His experience in academic medicine accompanied by his strategic approaches as the VP of Research and Development is reflected in increased efficiencies within the Clinical and Research product development programs, with oversight in the development of more than 4000 reagents.
Robert Balderas track record of business process improvements is based on his expertise obtained while working at The Scripps Research Institute in the labs of Frank Dixon and Argyrios Theofilopoulos, where he focused 18 years in the field of autoimmunity. He is known for his ability to motivate his technical staff, diagnosing impediments in product development programs, building his efforts and focused on both product execution and career development of his staff, as well as integrating functional programs across other business operations. Robert has held several key positions during his tenure at BDB, including, Director of Research Reagent Marketing, Site Manager BD Pharmingen and VP R&D (Research and Clinical Reagents. Today, as VP of Biological Sciences, Robert is focused on driving market adoption of new products and technologies into the Life Science Community, as well as leading strategic, scientific collaborations for BD Biosciences. In addition, Robert has been the architect and pioneer of the BD Horizon and the Biology and Technology Champion of the BD FACSymphony Platform, as well as the BD FACSDiscovery S8 Imaging and Spectral Sorter Platform.
In addition his scientific experiences, Robert also received an MBA from the University of San Diego. Additionally, Robert also serves on the editorial board of Clinical Proteomics, has been involved with several business acquisitions, led two industrial/academic initiatives with CANVAC and the NCI, a board member on the HCMD Council (Human Cell Differentiation Molecule), a member of the UCSD Industrial Liaison Program, a member of the Deans Council for the UCSD School of Biological Sciences, a Board Member of FOCIS, SAB Member of Inflamex in Paris, a board member of the Oz Single Cell Consortium, a corporate member of the UCSD Jacobs School of Engineering and leads our BDB TLDP Recruiting Team for the BD Biosciences. He has shared in publishing over 75 scientific journal articles, and is a recipient of 2 BD Howe Award for “Sensing, Sourcing and Seeking New Technologies and for the Advancement of Technologies for Product Success”.
Asia Pacific Area Head, Roche Pharmaceuticals
Ahmed Elhusseiny has worked in the pharmaceutical industry for nearly 20 years, working across Europe, North America and Asia. He has a strong track record of developing and implementing comprehensive strategies for innovative health therapies. Prior to joining Roche in 2013, he was at Novartis for ten years, where he led various business units, including Ophthalmology and Primary Care.
Before becoming Area Head for Asia Pacific, Ahmed was the Head of Integrated Strategies for Pharma International 7. In this role, he led a regional transformation towards new ways of working and processes, improving decision-making across teams and enhancing the patient and customer experience. Ahmed also served as Head of Commercial for the Eastern Europe,
Middle East and Africa region.
Ahmed joined Roche in 2013 as the Therapy Area Head, Global Product Strategy for Neurosciences and Rare Diseases, he spearheaded Roche’s mission to develop innovative neurological and psychiatric treatments to improve patient lives. This included several treatments designated as a Breakthrough Therapy by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA).
Ahmed is passionate about building sustainable, patient-centric health systems and bringing quality healthcare to patients around the world. He holds a BSc in Biology and a Ph.D. in Neuroscience from McGill University. He also received an MBA from INSEAD. He currently resides in Singapore.
Senior Director of Research & Innovations, Google
Katherine Chou is the Sr. Director of Research and Innovations at Google with a specific focus on nurturing scientific and technical breakthroughs with global impact for health, climate change, and advancement of platform technologies for our developers and researchers. Our work is about innovating for a better world. With every new technological advance, we are being given a chance to redesign the future for the better. Our computer vision models can democratize expertise to improve lives, our speech & language models can unlock and enrich people’s capabilities, our geospatial models can help improve our environment and mitigate global crises, our multimodal models can discover new knowledge about the world, and so much more. And through thoughtful collaborations, we can learn to effectively integrate these changes back into live products and real-world situations for widespread adoption. We are at the frontier forging this technological shift.
Katherine has always been a serial intrapreneur at Google with a history of incubating products and establishing sustainable businesses. She previously developed products within Google[x] Labs for Life Sciences (now Verily) and co-founded Medical Brain. She also headed up global teams to develop partner solutions and establish developer ecosystems for Mobile Payments, Mobile Search, GeoCommerce, and Android.
Outside of Google, she is a Board member and Program Chair of Lewa Wildlife Conservancy, a Scientific Advisor to the ARCS Foundation, a fellow of the Zoological Society of London, and collaborates with other wildlife NGOs and the Cambridge Business Sustainability Programme in applying the Silicon Valley innovation mindset to new areas.
She holds a double major in Computer Science and Economics at Stanford University and an M.S. in CS specialized in graphics.
Principal and Head of Public Health, IQVIA Asia Pacific
With nearly 20 years of strategy and operations consulting experience in 30 countries across Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa, Steven has deep industry knowledge in pharmaceuticals, public health, and international development.
He has led strategy roadmaps and health product market dynamics projects for prominent international health organizations such as WHO, Global Fund and GAVI, governments of Pakistan, Indonesia, Senegal, and Nigeria, and industry clients such as Takeda, Novartis, Gilead, and Abbott.
His specific interests lie in using data to better inform clinical trial and access to high-quality and affordable drugs in low-middle income countries.
Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences, Epidemiology and Biostatistics, University of Auckland
Rod Jackson is a professor of epidemiology, at the University of Auckland, New Zealand. He trained in medicine and completed his PhD in epidemiology at the University of Auckland. His specialty interest is heart disease.
He has over 40 years of research experience in cardiovascular disease epidemiology. He co-leads a ‘big-health data’ research programme that generates very large cohort studies (500,000 to 2 million participants). From these large-scale cohorts Rod and colleagues have developed algorithms now widely used by New Zealand general practitioners for predicting risk of cardiovascular disease. He has published over 360 peer-reviewed papers.
Deputy Director of Planning and Cooperation Department, Ministry of Health Lao PDR
Dr. Chansaly PHOMMAVONG is currently Deputy Director of Planning and Cooperation Department and Deputy Director of HANSA project and Lao PDR COVID-19 Response Project funded by the WB, Ministry of Health Lao PDR
He earned his medical doctor from Leningrad Pediatric Medicine Institute, San Petersburg former Soviet Union (RUSSIA) and earned his master’s degree in Primary Health Care from Flinders University at Adelaide South Australia.
He has long experience working in government and has extensive experience in implementation and management of project funded by WB particularly on PBF and DLI design and implementation.
He is also an important figure in the development and implementation of Health Information Strategy in LAO PDR. Recently is leading core team of development and implementation of national integrated health information system applying free open-source software DHIS2 and leading development and implementation of Digital Health Strategy Lao PDR 2023-2027
Executive Director, Co-founder and CEO, MiRXES
Lihan co-founded and serves as CEO of Mirxes, a Singapore headquartered, RNA centric biotechnology company with the mission to improve and save lives through early, actionable and personalized diagnosis. Lihan oversees Mirxes group’s overall strategy and global operations in Singapore, USA, China and Japan with a team of 360 staff.
Prior to founding Mirxes in 2014, Lihan was a research scientist at the Bioprocessing Technology Institute, A*STAR where he co-developed a novel microRNA qPCR assay platform for microRNA biomarker and therapeutic target discovery. As a scientist-entrepreneur, Lihan is driving groundbreaking RNA research and actively champions a global ecosystem and standards to accelerate clinical adoption of RNA diagnostics.
Under Lihan’s leadership, Mirxes was named Singapore’s Most Promising Start-up in 2016 and Singapore’s Fastest Growing Companies in 2018, 2019 and 2020. Mirxes has successfully raised USD $130 million venture funding since 2016, which is among the highest raised by an Asia based genomics
companies.
Lihan was recognized by the MIT Technology Review as a member of the Innovators Under 35 (2015). He was also awarded the A*STAR Scientist-Entrepreneur Award together with his co-founders in 2017,
the NUS Outstanding Young Alumni Award and the EY Entrepreneur of The Year™ Singapore awards (Overall Winner & Biotechnology category) in 2021. Lihan has been serving on the Board of Enterprise Singapore since April 2022.
Lihan obtained his Ph.D. in Biochemistry from Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore. He has authored and co-authored more than 25 peer-reviewed publications and several
patent applications.
Preventable Vaccine Diseases and Immunization (VDI) Officer, World Health Organization (WHO) Lao Country Office
She is a Preventable Vaccine Diseases and Immunization (VDI) Officer at the World Health Organization (WHO) Lao Country Office. Souliya Channavong has more than five years of experience in public health with a focus on immunisation. She works closely with the Lao Ministry of Health to coordinate the immunisation programme for COVID-19 and routine vaccines. She is experienced in with strategy development, programme planning, and funding allocation. She also monitors the Adverse Event Following Immunization (AEFI) surveillance, investigation and causality assessment. She trains and supports healthcare workers on the COVID-19 vaccines introduction and AEFI surveillance system, developing guidelines, job aides, and instruction videos on immunisation topics.
She has a Bachelor of Medicine and Bachelor of Surgery from China and a Master’s degree in Epidemiology from Michigan State University. She has also participated in several international programs and initiatives, such as the Atlantic Fellows – The Equity Initiative, the Lower Mekong Initiatives Young Scientist Programme, the Young Southeast Asian Leaders Initiative (YSEALI) Women’s Leadership Academy, and the Alumni Thematic International Seminar on Public Health and Climate Crisis in the Indo-Pacific.
Chief Executive Officer, Amplify Health
Dr Axel Baur is an expert and thought leader in healthcare, and he is passionate about health-tech innovation and entrepreneurship. In his role as Chief Executive, Axel will lead a company aspiring to make Asia healthier through excelling in Technology, Data Science and People, and by doing so creating and sharing value in the health systems of Asia. He is based in Singapore. Axel has been immersed in the healthcare sector for more than 30 years.
He started his career with his PhD training in molecular biology and then built a biotech start-up. Axel then joined the consulting firm McKinsey, becoming one of its few healthcare industry leaders globally. He led the team globally and worked closely with clients across Asia, Europe, and the Middle East to deliver sustainable impacts to various healthcare systems and healthcare companies across the value chain, their shareholders and society.
Healthcare CIO Advisor, Zoom
Ron Strachan is currently the Healthcare CIO Advisor to Zoom. He also is principal of Optimize Health IT and prior to that, he served as the SVP & CIO at McLaren Health Care in Grand Blanc, Michigan.
Ron has been working in Information Technology for over 35 years with his primary focus on Healthcare IT for over 30 years. He has held positions of systems analyst, project manager, consultant, partner and CIO at firms including McLaren Healthcare (Michigan/Indiana), Community Health Network (Indiana), WellStar Health System (Georgia), Kurt Salmon Associates (Minnesota), HealthEast Care System M Health (Minnesota), Matria/Allere Healthcare (Georgia), Mercy Health – St. Vincent Medical Center (Ohio), The Detroit Medical Center, Price Waterhouse Coopers (Michigan), St. John’s Health System (Michigan), and RL Polk (Michigan).
In addition, in 2007 he served as Chairman of the Board of CHIME (the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives) and is a long-standing member of CHIME and HIMSS (Healthcare Information Management Systems Society). He has also served as Chairman of the Board of Women’s Advocates in St. Paul, Minnesota, and served on the Century College Technology Curriculum Advisory Committee, also in St. Paul, Minnesota.
Additionally, Ron has served on advisory boards for McKesson Corporation, Surgical Information Systems, the State of Georgia and is an active member of Gerson Lehrman Group Council of Advisors and the Coleman Advisory Network. Ron received a Master of Science in Business from Central Michigan University. His undergraduate work in Computer Science and Business Administration was completed at Davenport University also in Michigan. He has also performed post-graduate studies at Michigan State University.
He has been a speaker at technology events and was guest faculty at the Georgia Tech Graduate School of Business, the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Business Healthcare Information Technology Institute, University of St. Catherine’s HealthCare IT program, the CHIME CIO Boot Camp, and Minnesota and Georgia HIMSS educational events. Ron has also achieved the distinction of CHIME Fellow and was the first Certified Healthcare CIO from CHIME.
Theme Lead for Familial Hypercholesterolemia Clinical Implementation Pilot
Dr Ashna Nastar is a Consultant Endocrinologist at Alexandra Hospital, NUHS. She obtained her medical degree from the University of Cambridge, UK, graduating with Honours and a Masters in Experimental Psychology. She completed postgraduate training at National University Hospital, Singapore, where she attained her specialist qualification in Endocrinology.
She also serves as the Deputy Head of Chronic Programme (Live Better) at Alexandra Hospital. Her clinical and research interests are in lipid disorders, primarily familial hypercholesterolaemia, diabetes and cardiovascular risk management. She has a special interest in incorporating technology and real-world clinical evidence into improved solutions for personalised health. This includes pharmacogenomics and using digital platforms to improve risk communication around genetic testing for patients and their families.
Professor, Programme in Health Services and Systems Research, Duke-NUS Medical School; Professor of Medicine (General Internal Medicine) and Pathology, Duke University, Durham, NC, USA
Professor David B. Matchar, MD, is the Inaugural Director of the Programme in Health Services and Systems Research (HSSR) (2008-2018). He is also Professor of Medicine at Duke University in the United States. He received his B.A in Statistics from Princeton University. After completing his MD degree and residency training he served as fellow in the Department of Internal Medicine at Duke.
Professor Matchar has worked in clinical research for over 35 years; his work primarily relates to stroke and other chronically disabling neurological disorders, as well as clinical and public policy analysis. He served as Director of the Duke Center for Clinical Health Policy Research and established the Duke Evidence-based Practice Center, which was responsible for analysis in support of coverage policy for the US Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services, as well as guidelines for medical professional societies.
In August 2009, Dr. Matchar was awarded the prestigious STaR Investigator Award by the Singapore Ministry of Health’s (MOH) National Medical Research Council (NMRC) and the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), for developing a systems model to address crucial strategic and operational challenges presented by a rapidly ageing population. He is the Principal Investigator of several other MOH HSR grants including: Multifactorial, evidence-based programme of screening, Risk modification and physical therapy to prevent falls among vulnerable elderly recently discharged from hospital to the community, Randomised control trial to improve the uptake of and adherence to outpatient rehabilitation services among stroke patients and Defining and evaluating norms for health and social service use for population health segments. Industry sponsored grants include: Assessment of the feasibility of utilizing the SingHealth healthcare cluster to improve patient care and clinical outcomes for asthma and COPD patients through real world data linkages and Analytics and Management of non-communicable diseases in Cambodia.
Most recently, Professor Matchar was awarded a 3-year grant to assess the impact of enhanced primary care services for Singaporeans with chronic health conditions. Professor Matchar will approach this challenge using a simulation model linked to new and existing data sources. The model will represent the dynamic phenomena that promote or inhibit development of enhanced primary care, and will allow stakeholders to engage in in-silico experiments to consider the implications of various policy options.
While the content of Professor Matchar’s research spans the range of clinical medicine, the essential nature of his work has involved integration of researchers from multiple disciplines under a common conceptual framework, to address important and complex healthcare issues. His overarching goal has been to promote the use of best evidence to support clinical and public policy decision making. A fundamental challenge is how to bridge the gap between analysts and decision makers —a challenge made more difficult when the issues involve multiple stakeholders, competing priorities, and are complex in detail and dynamics (involve potential undesirable consequences due to feedback or time delays). For this work, Singapore has been an especially receptive environment for innovation in health services research.
Ultimately, Professor Matchar’s objective is to facilitate the work of the programme faculty, to enhance health services research in SingHealth and other healthcare clusters, and to establish a robust education programme in Health Services and Systems Research that will serve Singapore and the region into the future.
Co-Founder & CEO, Nalagenetics
Levana Sani is the co-founder and CEO of Nalagenetics, a biotechnology startup that focuses on personalized healthcare through genetic testing to provide the best treatment solutions that are more affordable and safer for patients.
Levana studied biochemistry, genetics, and business and holds a Bachelor of Biochemistry from the University of Southern California followed by an MBA from Harvard Business School. While being a part of the Genome Institute of Singapore, Levana and a team of scientists founded Nalagenetics in 2016. Her contributions to Nalagenetics led to Levana being selected in the Forbes 30 under 30 in 2021.
Nalagenetics has received US$12.6m from Series A funding and was selected as the 1st place winner in the Mobility and Healthcare categories at the 2021 G20 Innovation League. On the following year, Nalagenetics became part of Singapore’s SG100K, a study to map the genome of 10,000 participants to develop better tools through precision medicine to predict and prevent chronic diseases among Singaporeans and other Asians populations.
Today, Nalagenetics’ solutions are offered by a growing number of healthcare providers and laboratories in Asia and Europe, reflecting the company’s exceptional standards and depth of research as a scientist-led company.
Chief Medical Officer, Precision Health Research, Singapore (PRECISE)
Prof Tai E Shyong, MD underwent medical training at the University of Dundee in the United Kingdom. He is a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians in the United Kingdom and a Fellow of the Academy of Medicine in Singapore (Endocrinology). Prof Tai is currently a Professor in the Department of Medicine at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health and Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School. Prof Tai has also served on the committees that write the clinical practice guidelines for the Ministry of Health in the areas of lipids and diabetes mellitus.
Prof Tai has a longstanding interest in the development of novel treatments for diabetes mellitus that leverages on human genetics for the identification of novel drug targets and has published over 200 articles in peer reviewed journals.
As CMO, Prof Tai will identify precision medicine applications that are relevant to Singapore and design clinical workflows for their use as part of mainstream clinical practice.
Executive Director, Precision Health Research, Singapore (PRECISE)
Prof. Patrick Tan is the Executive Director (ED) 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, Prof 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.
Prof Tan is also Executive Director of the Genome Institute of Singapore and Professor at the Duke-NUS Medical School. He received his B.A. (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.
Other awards include the President’s Scholarship, Loke Cheng Kim Scholarship, Young Scientist Award (A*STAR), Singapore Youth Award, Chen New Investigator Award (Human Genome Organisation), President’s Science Award, and the Japanese Cancer Association International Award. In 2018, he received the American Association for Cancer Research (AACR) Team Science Award as Team Leader, representing the first time a team from Asia has received the award. He is an elected member of the American Society for Clinical Investigation (ASCI), the Bioethics Advisory Committee (BAC), a Board Member of the International Gastric Cancer Association, and on the Board of Reviewing Editors for Science.
Director, Chief Health Scientist Office, Ministry of Health
Mingshi is currently Director in the Chief Health Scientist Office, Ministry of Health (MOH). Her experience in the biomedical sciences sector spans across strategy development at the national and institutional levels, managing strategic funding initiatives, as well as overseeing research operations. In her role at CHSO, she leads the Office’s efforts to foster a supportive environment for clinical research, strengthen the translation of research, and work with different divisions to shape the Ministry’s science & technology agenda. The Office also oversees the Trusted Research and Real-World Data Utilisation and Sharing Tech (TRUST) initiative, a national platform that enables anonymised health-related research and real-world data to be brought together, accessed and used in an expeditious and secure manner.
Senior Consultant, Digital Health and Innovation, WHO Athens Quality of Care and Patient Safety Office; Senior Consultant, Regional Action Plan on Digital Health, WHO Western Pacific Region
He has a Medical Degree, Internal Medicine Speciality, a Master and PhD degrees in Management, and a Law Master’s degree, presently doing a PhD in Law. He was one of the first CMIOs in Portugal in 2009-2013 at Hospital Fernando Fonseca, Lisbon. During the years at the Ministry of Health he was responsible for setting the agenda for eHealth in Portugal. He was president of SPMS, Portugal’s Digital Health Agency for close to 7 years, where he led National eHealth. He represented Portugal for 8 years and was the former Member States co-chair of the EU eHealth Network, the highest policy body on eHealth in the Union.
Elected Fellow of the International Academy of Health Sciences Informatics (within IMIA) in July 2020. He is a National Defence Auditor. Since August 2020 he integrates the HL7 Europe Foundation Board of Directors. He now works as an academic at ISCTE Business School, one medical school (FCS-UBI), and at Korea University Medicine (Visiting professor), teaching and researching in Digital Health, Healthcare Systems and Transformation, Leadership and Management education for Medical Students and Health Professionals, he has authored a series of papers some of which looking at new trends for digital health at Global, European, National and Hospital levels. He is engaged in individual consulting projects in Healthcare Transformation and Digital Health (www.henriquemartins.eu). At present he works as Senior Consultant in Digital Health and Innovation for the WHO Athens Quality of Care and Patient Safety Office and as Senior Consultant for the Regional Action Plan on Digital Health for WHO Western Pacific Region.
Chief Executive, Health Promotion Board (HPB)
Mr Tay Choon Hong is the Chief Executive of the Health Promotion Board (HPB), which is part of the Ministry of Health in Singapore. HPB’s role is to empower individuals to take ownership of their health, towards its vision of a nation of healthy people. To achieve this, HPB works with a wide spectrum of 3P partners and stakeholders to build a supportive ecosystem that enables Singaporeans to engage in healthy lifestyle activities, and lead healthier lives.
Prior to this, Mr Tay was the Senior Director (Youth) in the Ministry of Culture, Community & Youth, and concurrently Deputy Chief Executive of the National Youth Council. He led the review of policies and programmes aimed at developing youths to be future-ready and committed to the nation. Mr Tay also served in the Public Service Division, where he oversaw the Public Sector Transformation change movement aimed at strengthening capabilities in innovation, collaboration, service delivery, employee engagement and citizen engagement.
Mr Tay previously served in the National Population and Talent Division, the Ministry of Manpower, and the Ministry of Home Affairs.
Mr Tay graduated from Carnegie Mellon University with dual Bachelor’s in Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Economics. He also holds a Master of Science in Management from the Stanford Graduate School of Business.
Director, National Institute of Public Health, Ministry of Health, Cambodia
Dr Chhorvann Chhea is the Director of the National Institute of Public Health, Ministry of Health, Cambodia. Dr Chhorvann is an epidemiologist, graduated from the University of California, Los Angeles.
He has been involved in health system research & policies focusing on human health workforce, quality of care, and health service delivery. Dr Chhorvann is actively involved in projects related to Health Equity and quality of pre-service training in medical education in Cambodia.
Chief Executive Officer, reach52
Edward is the founder and CEO of reach52; a tech startup on a mission to connect the 52% of the world that lack access to essential health services.
The reach52 model trains health workers to collect data, run targeted health awareness, education and screening campaigns, and provide access to essential health products. He has launched reach52 operations in six countries and 2500 communities, building relationships with over 30 funding partners, and developing the operations and digital platforms to enable this.
He has worked in health systems across three continents and 12 countries; and has extensive experience in digital health, health equity, access to medicine and essential health products, public health campaigns, supply chain, government relations and public affairs, private sector engagement strategy and startup operations.
Prior to reach52, he worked in healthcare consulting, for the UK National Health Service (NHS) and for a multinational pharmaceutical company in India, looking at access to medicine in more rural areas. He is a graduate from the London School of Economics
(LSE).
Treasurer, Precision Public Health Asia 2023 Conference; Research Fellow, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore
Dr Sharon Tan is dually trained in public health and dentistry. She is actively engaged in health services research to address challenges in the healthcare system, translate research findings into practice, and champion better healthcare and health particularly for the underprivileged in society. Her current work revolves around leveraging data, digital health and telehealth to improve population health.
Preventive Medicine Resident, National University Health System (NUHS)
Taufeeq is a preventive medicine resident with the National University Health System. He graduated with an M.B.B.S from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore in 2018, and was awarded UK’s prestigious Chevening scholarship in 2021. He also holds a distinction for Masters of Science in Public Health (MSc PH) from the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine. Taufeeq has worked as a medical doctor in the medicine, surgery, paediatric and emergency departments. He also has a spectrum of public health work experience in epidemiology, research, policy, operations, and health services transformation. Taufeeq has worked locally in government offices, health services departments, and internationally with the World Health Organization. He has interests in mentoring, infectious diseases and improving global and regional public health and health equity.
Vaccines Policy Lead, Growth & Emerging Markets, Takeda
Dr Nikki Kitikiti, MD MPH FAMS is Vaccines Policy Lead for Growth & Emerging Markets at Takeda based in Singapore. The Growth & Emerging Markets portfolio includes over 50 geographies in Asia-Pacific, Latin America, Africa and the Middle East. Her current work focuses on partnering policy and community stakeholders to support access to vaccines and their effective integration into public health programmes fighting neglected tropical diseases such as Dengue and Zika. Dr Kitikiti is a medical doctor and specialist Public Health Physician trained in Singapore. She is an Associate Visiting Expert at the Centre of Regulatory Excellence (CoRE) at Duke-NUS Medical School where she was involved in establishing the Coalition to Accelerate Patient Engagement in Asia-Pacific (CAPE), which is a regional multi-stakeholder initiative to advance meaningful and systematic patient involvement in health products development and all areas of the health system. Dr Kitikiti has a diverse range of health system experience including roles in clinical practice, government health agencies, hospital administration and has worked as a frontline health professional during the COVID-19 pandemic in Singapore.
Executive Vice President, Strategy, Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance (APLMA)
Xavier has over two decades of leading strategy, market development, life sciences advisory and managing healthcare businesses in emerging and developed markets. He is currently steering global strategy for the Asia Pacific Leaders Malaria Alliance – a policy advisory organization supporting Govts. and multi-lateral investments to eliminate communicable disease threats in the Asia Pacific. Previously, he was responsible for leading research and clinical development with thought leading institutions and industry players across the region to further develop evidence for the unique benefits of PacBio’s technologies in human genomics. Prior to PacBio, he was the regional director for population genomics and health systems with Illumina. In that role, he was responsible for developing strategic partnerships with national initiatives who are looking to deploy genomics at scale to improve patient outcomes, accelerate innovation and foster economic development. Prior to Illumina, he held various commercial, BD and management positions at Medtronic, IQVIA, IMS Health, International Pharmaceutical Federation, and the Clinton Health Access Initiative. Xavier is a licensed pharmacist in Singapore, with a BSc in Pharmacy (NUS), a MSc in Geographic Information Systems (VU) and a PhD in Public Health and Policy (LSHTM).
Director, Research, Evaluation and Monitoring Division, Health Promotion Board (HPB)
Karen is an experienced health promotion practitioner with a strong passion in improving population health. She leads a team at Health Promotion Board Singapore, focusing on practice-driven research and translating data into actionable insights to support development and implementation of policies, strategies and programmes.
Her work experience includes driving workplace health and community health, evaluation and monitoring of policies and strategies, designing and setting up technology-enabled research and interventions. In the recent years, she has led a team to set up a technology-enabled research platform, Health Insights Singapore, to uncover multi-dimensional lifestyle behavioural insights and development of sensor-based data features to better measure at risk lifestyle behaviours and physiological responses. This has informed the development of HPB’s Precision Public Health strategy to drive more tailored programmes and interventions.
She is concurrently serving as Adjunct Assistant Professor at NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.
Head of Market Access, Emerging Markets Region, GSK
Jonathan Tan has focused on re-imagining access to medicines for patients – through the fundamentals like health economics and public policy, to the development of innovative solutions and partnerships overcome financial and non-financial barriers to access for patients. He currently works in GSK as the Head of Market Access, Emerging Markets Region, and serves as the Treasurer for the Precision Public Health Asia Society. Prior to joining GSK, he worked in both Pharma and Consulting where he led projects in healthcare, insurance, and public policy. Jonathan holds an MBA and PhD in Genetic Epidemiology and Biostatistics.
Director, Leadership Institute for Global Health Transformation (LIGHT), Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore; Co-founder and CEO, AMILI
Jeremy is the co-founder and CEO of AMILI, the first dedicated gut microbiome full service company in Southeast Asia. He is also Director of the Leadership Institute for Global Health Transformation (LIGHT) at the NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health where he works to enhance cooperation, capacity building and knowledge sharing across the region. Trained in surgery and public health, Jeremy attained various post graduate qualifications including membership in the Royal College of Surgeons (Edinburgh), Master of Medicine (NUS) and Master of Public Health (Johns Hopkins, as a Fulbright scholarship awardee). He was an inaugural fellow of the Asia Society A21 young leaders programme in 2006.
Jeremy has a special interest in ways that technology can increase health equity and access to care. He advises a number of health technology companies and programmes in the region and globally. He also serves on the boards of/advises various charities and social enterprises, including HealthServe, Dover Park Hospice and SNTC. Jeremy has worked in executive roles in both public and private sectors, including time spent as a senior official in the Ministry of Health, Singapore and was prior to AMiLi, founding partner of global consultancy Oliver Wyman’s Asia health and life sciences practice (2013).
Principal, Boston Consulting Group (BCG)
Dr Alan Ong is a Principal with the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) where he is a core member of the healthcare practice. His specific focus is on health systems and digital health. Prior to joining BCG, he had stints as a policymaker in MOH, and as the medical director of AIA Singapore. Dr Ong is a public health specialist by training.
Chair, Scientific Committee, Precision Public Health Asia 2023 Conference
Director, Digital and Smart Health Office and Deputy Clinical Director, Ng Teng Fong Centre for Health Innovation
Dr. Ng Yih Yng is the Director of the Digital and Smart Health Office and the Deputy Clinical Director for the Ng Teng Fong Centre for Health Innovation. He is an emergency medicine and public health specialist by training and concurrently serves as the HomeTeam Chief Medical Officer, Ministry of Home Affairs, overseeing administrative healthcare services and policies across the HomeTeam Departments.
Chief Operating Officer (COO) and Senior Health Systems Researcher, Research For Impact (RFI)
Suan Ee Ong, PhD, is COO and Senior Health Systems Researcher at Research For Impact (RFI), a Singapore-based research organisation that offers research, monitoring and evaluation, advisory, and capacity-building services to organisations with social purpose goals across diverse sectors, including health, education, social protection, finance, and community development. Suan is also a fellow at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health at the National University of Singapore and the Galen Centre for Health and Social Policy in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia.
Chief Executive Officer (CEO), The American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham), Singapore
Dr Hsien-Hsien Lei is Chief Executive Officer (CEO) of The American Chamber of Commerce (AmCham) in Singapore — the largest and the most active international business association in Singapore and Southeast Asia representing over 600 companies. Hsien is also Adjunct Associate Professor at the National University of Singapore Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, member of the Johns Hopkins Bloomberg School of Public Health’s Advisory Board, Vice President of the Precision Public Health Asia Society and board member of TalenTtrust.
Prior to AmCham, Hsien was Vice President, Medical and Scientific Affairs, Medtronic Asia Pacific, where she was responsible for the Medtronic Innovation Centers in Japan and Korea, training and education, and the company’s health systems transformation strategy in the region. Hsien has extensive experience in scientific affairs, corporate and healthcare communications, advertising, public relations and government affairs. Hsien has lived and worked in the US, Taiwan, Japan, Vietnam, UK, and is now based in Singapore. She holds a BA (with honors) in Human Biology from Stanford University and a PhD in Epidemiology from The 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.
Vice Chair, HIMSS Asia Pacific; Advisor, Mitsubishi Global Health Architecture
Dr Dhesi Raja is a Public Health Medicine Specialist and was once the former Advisor to the Health Minister of Malaysia. Currently he is holding the position of Vice Chair for HIMSS Asia Pacific and the advisor to Mitsubishi Global Health Architecture. Dr Dhesi holds a Masters and a Doctorate in Public Health Medicine. He is also a Google scholar & performed his graduate studies in exponential technology in Mountain View, California. In 2015 he was awarded the Forbes Top 40 World Changers Award.
In 2016 he was the winner of the King’s College Life Science Award. He was also awarded recognition by Clinton’s Foundation for an exemplary approach to solving humanity’s grand challenges. In that year he also received from the United Nations General Assembly, New York the award for Top 10 Exceptional Scientist. In 2017 he was recognized as one of the Top 10 Innovators, by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT).
He was also extended a personal invitation by the Honorable Chancellor of Germany, Madam Angela Merkel as an Expert Panel for Anti-microbial resistance challenges and the use of technology to solve global grand challenges. He has written numerous publications on the application of IT in healthcare management. As a firm believer that healthcare should be accessible and affordable for all, Dr Dhesi continues his journey of promoting and advocating the democratization of healthcare innovations and leveraging data science & machine learning to improve healthcare overall. His vision and passion fuel the change that will transform the face of global health care services today.
Chair, Organising Committee, Precision Public Health Asia 2023 Conference
Adjunct Assistant Professor, Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health, National University of Singapore; Assistant Chief, Group Integrated Care (Population Health), National Healthcare Group
Dr Clive Tan is a Public Health physician with close to two decades of clinical and leadership experience in the healthcare sector. As Assistant Chief of Group Integrated Care (Population Health) in the National Healthcare Group, he is responsible for strategic planning for integrated care and population health efforts for the 1.5 million residents in the Central-North region of Singapore. He holds an MBBS from Singapore and a Masters in Public Health (MPH) from Johns Hopkins University, along with certificates in Gerontology, Humanitarian Assistance and Health Informatics (AMIA).
His work experience includes senior managerial roles, business development roles, education and evaluation, and policy and planning roles. He had a series of leadership roles within the Singapore Armed Forces and ended his military career as Group Head of the Force Health Group in the SAF, where he provided enterprise-level leadership in the areas of public health, biodefence & force health protection, health policy and medical informatics.
Dr Clive Tan had served as a Technical Officer in the World Health Organization’s Western Pacific Regional Office, covering Quality and Patient Safety, Hospital Management, and Health Service Delivery and Innovation. During his term at WHO, he organized regional meetings and policy roundtables involving senior health officials and policymakers and provided consultancy advice to ministries of health in China, Fiji, Kiribati, Lao PDR, Macau, Mongolia, and the Solomon Islands.
His research interests are in health systems strengthening, integrated care, healthcare quality, health behaviour change, health promotion, digital health and healthcare informatics.
President, Public Health Association of Australia; Governing Council, World Federation of Public Health Associations; Adjunct Professor, School of Population and Global Health, University of Western Australia
Tarun Weeramanthri is President of the Public Health Association of Australia, a member of the Governing Council of the World Federation of Public Health Associations, and an adjunct professor in the School of Population and Global Health at the University of Western Australia.
He is a trained specialist in internal medicine and public health, and has a PhD in social medicine. He was Chief Health Officer in Western Australia from 2008 to 2018, and previously in the Northern Territory from 2004 to 2007.
In 2014, he was awarded the Sidney Sax Medal by the Public Health Association of Australia for his contribution to public health nationally, and in 2022 he was made a member of the Order of Australia for service to public health administration.
Over the last few years, he has focused on addressing the health impacts of climate change and assisting the COVID-19 response in various Australian states and nationally, including through major reviews on contact tracing and quarantine.
Professor and Chair of Health Data Science at Queen Mary University of London
Rohini Mathur is a Professor and Chair of Health Data Science at Queen Mary University of London, specialising in the application of precision medicine approaches in globally diverse datasets to address health inequalities, particularly around cardiometabolic disease. Professor Mathur has active collaborations with colleagues across India, Singapore and Thailand. She was previously Associate Professor at LSHTM, where she completed a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Wellcome Trust examining ethnic inequalities in the care and outcomes of type 2 diabetes, and was a member of the OpenSAFELY collaborative working on a range of COVID-19 related projects. She completed an undergraduate degree in public health at the University of Waterloo in Canada, followed by an MSc and PhD at LSHTM.
Deputy Director, Digital Health and Innovation, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation
Dr Andrew Trister leads the Innovative Technology Solutions team’s efforts to leverage integrated mobile technology and data systems to aid in the appropriate use and process of performing diagnostics as well as to enable high-quality healthcare and wellness solutions in resource limited settings. Andrew will be leveraging advanced technologies and data science built around mobile devices as an interface to advance the goals of the foundation through internal and external partnerships.
Andrew is a physician scientist passionate about leveraging technology to improve health care for all. He believes the combination of multiscale digital data from patients can impact our understanding, prevention and treatment of disease. He joined the foundation from Apple, where he led clinical research and machine learning efforts in health for the special projects team. Prior to Apple, he was the senior physician at Sage Bionetworks, where he focused on incentives for researchers and participants to collaborate on large datasets and translating those findings to clinical settings.
Andrew completed residency in radiation oncology at the University of Washington, earned an M.D., PhD in bioengineering, MSE and BSE in computer science, and a B.A. in the biological basis of behaviour all from the University of Pennsylvania.
James Park is Fitbit vice president and general manager, Google, as well as co-founder of Fitbit. In his role, James leads the team responsible for development of wearables at Google. With a commitment to innovation, James and his team aim to make health more accessible, fun and achievable by offering a range of affordable, cross-platform devices.
James co-founded Fitbit alongside Eric Friedman in 2007 with a vision to make the world healthier, through hardware, software and services that give people a better understanding of their health and wellness. Since its founding, Fitbit has sold millions of devices across 100 countries, pioneering the wearables industry to make fitness tracking a cultural phenomenon and redefining how the world thinks and learns about health and wellness.
Previously, James was director of product development at CNET Networks. He also served as president and co-founder of Wind-Up Labs, Inc., an online photo-sharing company that was acquired by CNET Networks in 2005, and chief technology officer and co-founder of Epesi Technologies, Inc., a business-to-business software company.
Rohini Mathur is a Professor and Chair of Health Data Science at Queen Mary University of London, specialising in the application of precision medicine approaches in globally diverse datasets to address health inequalities, particularly around cardiometabolic disease. Professor Mathur has active collaborations with colleagues across India, Singapore and Thailand. She was previously Associate Professor at LSHTM, where she completed a postdoctoral fellowship funded by the Wellcome Trust examining ethnic inequalities in the care and outcomes of type 2 diabetes, and was a member of the OpenSAFELY collaborative working on a range of COVID-19 related projects. She completed an undergraduate degree in public health at the University of Waterloo in Canada, followed by an MSc and PhD at LSHTM.
Beverly Lorraine Ho is the Assistant Secretary of the Public Health Services Team of the Department of Health. As Assistant Secretary of PHST, she leads the development, implementation, and monitoring of standards, policies, and programs for population- and individual-based health services. She also oversees the Disease Prevention and Control Bureau, Epidemiology Bureau, and Health Promotion Bureau.
Prior to this, she was the Health Promotion Bureau Director, which leads the implementation of policies and programs that promote healthy behaviors and support conducive environments for health and the Director of the Disease Prevention and Control Bureau, which leads the primary care integration of various health programs. She previously served as the Chief of the Research Division of the Health Policy Development and Planning Bureau, where her efforts significantly contributed to the passage of key legislation on sugar-sweetened beverage taxes, tobacco taxes, and universal health care. She has also worked for the Philippine Health Insurance Corporation and the Asian Development Bank.
Bev is a fellow of the Maurice Greenberg World Fellows Program at Yale University, the Equity Initiative, and the Atlantic Institute. She holds an MD from the University of the Philippines and an MPH in Health Policy and Management from the Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health as a Fulbright Scholar
Professor Tan Chorh Chuan was appointed as the inaugural Chief Health Scientist and concurrently, Executive Director of the new Office for Healthcare Transformation in Singapore’s Ministry of Health since 1 January 2018.
Before joining MOHT Professor Tan served as President of the National University of Singapore (NUS) from 2008 to 2017. Prior to that he also held the positions of NUS Provost, then Senior Deputy President between the years of 2004 and 2008. He was former Dean of the NUS Faculty of Medicine and served as the Director of Medical Services, Ministry of Health, from 2000 to 2004, where he was responsible for leading the public health response to the 2003 SARS epidemic. More recently, he was appointed member of the Expert Committee on COVID-19 Vaccination in 2020, which advises the government on Singapore’s vaccination strategy.
In 2022, Professor Tan was were conferred The Distinguished Service Order. His other awards include the Public Service Star in 2003 for outstanding contributions to overcoming SARS in Singapore; the Public Administration Gold Medal in 2004 for his work as Director of Medical Services in the Ministry of Health; and the Meritorious Service Medal in 2015. He was awarded the National Science and Technology Medal in 2008 and is the first Singaporean to be elected as an international member of the US National Academy of Medicine.
A renal physician, Professor Tan obtained his medical training at NUS, and research training at the Institute of Molecular Medicine, Oxford.