A cloud-based analytics platform for Singapore's public healthcare sector has been recently unveiled.

In June, Synapxe, the country's national healthtech agency, started onboarding hospitals and health facilities into the platform called HEALIX (Health Empowerment thru Advanced Learning & Intelligent eXchange). 

WHAT IT'S ABOUT

A first of such in Singapore, HEALIX is designed to be a "standardised, secure and scalable environment" for conducting analytics projects. 

In a statement to Healthcare IT News, Synapxe said the technology is "a shared platform that consolidates existing data infrastructure from individual public hospitals and health facilities in Singapore."

It also provides access to cloud-native tools for developing AI models, including pre-built algorithms and libraries, as well as custom development options. More tools and capabilities are expected to be onboarded into the platform over time. 

"This forward-thinking initiative demonstrates Synapxe’s commitment to enabling public healthcare users to leverage data and insights across the entire sector in a safe, transformative, collaborative and cost-effective manner, ultimately delivering a positive impact on health in Singapore," said CEO Ngiam Siew Ying in an official statement. 

HEALIX is hosted on both the public Government Commercial Cloud and private Healthcare Commercial Cloud.

To ensure seamless interoperability and interconnectivity of HEALIX, Synapxe collaborated with Amazon Web Services on a consolidated data infrastructure for streamlining its operations. 

In May, the agency signed a memorandum of understanding to join the AWS AI Spring programme, which aims to hasten the adoption of AI in Singapore. Through this, Synapxe had early access to AWS's latest tools and services, including generative AI, machine learning best practices, technical workshops, and advice on cost optimisation. 

Finally, when asked about the privacy and security aspect of the common analytics platform, Synapxe shared that a robust set of data security measures and encryption techniques aligned with Singapore government and industry frameworks have been implemented into HEALIX to ensure the safe and responsible use of data. The agency further explained that both data in transit and data at rest are de-identified and encrypted according to industry-standard encryption protocols, with multi-level access controls in place to prevent data misuse or unethical application.

WHY IT MATTERS

Consolidating existing data infrastructure across the public healthcare sector through one common platform brings considerable cost and resource savings, Synapxe emphasised. 

"This cost-efficient method minimises the need for various entities to manage and maintain multiple analytics platforms across Singapore’s public healthcare, providing users with faster access to quality data and services," it explained.

Meanwhile, having one platform also enables collaboration among stakeholders and potentially accelerates their pace of innovation by providing quicker access to de-identified data for analytics projects.

"With HEALIX, users will have access to up-to-date and consistent data which can accelerate their AI/ML project initiatives and drive better patient outcomes."

THE LARGER TREND

Public hospitals and health facilities in Singapore have increasingly adopted AI technologies to augment clinical care and operations in recent years.

To support this endeavour, the National Supercomputing Centre Singapore has helped deliver supercomputing facilities in two public healthcare clusters, the National University Health System and SingHealth. Their supercomputers now underpin the development of AI models for predicting patient disease risks and outcomes, as well as developing a healthcare GPT.

Other types of AI tools and systems have been developed and deployed over the years in each public health cluster. SingHealth, for example, also has AI for automatic spinal landmark detection, AI solutions for data analytics and clinical workflows supporting cancer care, and the 3D Disease Outbreak Surveillance System, which is now being upgraded into 4D DOSS. SingHealth, together with Synapxe and NTT Data, is also developing AimSG, a vendor-neutral platform where institutions can access a marketplace of validated and credible AI imaging solutions.

Over at NUHS, there are AI solutions for real-time hypercalcemia detection and predicting hospital bed availability. A new digestive centre at the flagship hospital, the National University Hospital, will adopt AI to create three systems for detecting, diagnosing, and monitoring digestive diseases.

Meanwhile, the National Healthcare Group is testing an imaging AI solution to predict falls and an AI that analyses heart ultrasound scans for heart failure.