IES and ASEAN Engineering Achievement Awards
Published: 29 Nov 2023
We are pleased to announce that a team led by Professor Dean Ho, Director of the Institute for Digital Medicine (WisDM) at the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, and Director of the N.1 Institute for Health, was awarded the Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award from the Institution of Engineers, Singapore (IES) as well as the ASEAN Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award.
The team includes members from National University Hospital (NUH), DSO National Laboratories, and National Centre for Infectious Diseases who collaborated to validate IDentif.AI, an AI-based platform that rapidly prioritises drugs and drug combinations for pandemic preparedness.
They are:
A/Prof Edward Kai-Hua Chow
Dr Agata Blasiak
Dr Shirley G.K. Seah
Dr Gek-Yen G. Tan
Anh T.L. Truong
Peter Wang
Lissa Hooi
Dr De Hoe Chye
Shi-Bei Tan
Kui You
Dr Alexandria Remus
A/Prof David Michael Allen
A/Prof Louis Yi Ann Chai
Dr Conrad E.Z. Chan
Prof David C.B. Lye
Pioneered at NUS Biomedical Engineering and WisDM, IDentif.AI was first developed immediately prior to the COVID-19 pandemic as a way to pinpoint the right drugs to combine against a broad array of infectious diseases. It has since been validated in the Wildtype, Beta, Delta, and Omicron variants of SARS-CoV-2, and is currently being expanded towards other variants. Importantly, it is also being used to address antimicrobial resistance (AMR), a major issue where infections caused by bacteria, fungi, and other pathogens are resistant to nearly all forms of treatment, causing exceedingly high patient death rates. The United Nations estimates that by 2050, AMR will account for the same number of global deaths annually as cancer.
With the development of IDentif.AI, international partners have received clearance to initiate clinical trials based off of AI recommendations. In addition, IDentif.AI was featured as one of two real-world AI use cases in the World Health Organization (WHO) Guidance on Regulatory Considerations of AI for Health. Research studies with IDentif.AI have published in prestigious journals such as NPJ Digital Medicine (Nature Partner Journal), ACS Nano, and others.
The IES Prestigious Engineering Achievement Award and the ASEAN Outstanding Engineering Achievement Award were created to recognise outstanding engineering achievements that have made significant contributions to engineering progress and quality of life in Singapore and ASEAN.
