In December 2003, the Medical Education Unit (renamed the Centre for Medical Education, CenMED in November 2014), faculty of medicine (renamed the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine since 2005), National University of Singapore organised and hosted the 1st Asia Pacific Medical Education Conference (APMEC) under the co-chairmanship of Lee Tzu Hee (then Associate Professor in the department of haematology) and Matthew CE Gwee (then Interim Director of our MEU and Professorial Fellow in the department of pharmacology). Not only was this inaugural conference an important milestone in the history of our faculty of medicine (Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine), but it was also a significant initiative resulting in the birth of APMEC which became the forerunner of our APMEC series. The 13th APMEC was held from 13 - 17 January 2016 on the NUS campus in the tradition of previous conferences.

Associate Professor Chong Yap Seng has been appointed Vice-Dean (Academic Medicine), Dean's Office at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (NUS Medicine).

When you're dealing with 1.3 million samples and three storage sites, including a warehouse containing more than 40 freezers (with space for 30 more), operations more closely resemble a well-oiled machine than anything else. At this large scale, the TR maintains a high standard by following best practices laid out by the International Society for Biological and Environmental Repositories (ISBER), which promotes high quality standards for global biobanks.

"Her pale, yellow, wasted face dropped back, her mouth fell open, her leg moved convulsively, she gave a deep, deep sigh and died." (Crime and Punishment, Fyodor Dostoevsky) This passage could have described many people suffering from tuberculosis (TB) up to the 1940s, when the antibiotic streptomycin was discovered.

Pathologist, educator, mentor, Prof K Shanmugaratnam is happiest working quietly in his room at the Department of Pathology. He doesn't like interviews, but consented to a quick chat with MediCine.

In the article, "Bring back house calls", published in The Straits Times on Oct 17, Dr Sandeep Jauhar lamented that only less than 1 per cent of all doctor-patient encounters in the United States were house calls, resulting in doctors being ignorant of patients' home situations, and unplanned readmissions within a month in a fifth of Medicare patients, at a cost of US$17 billion (S$24 billion) a year.

Singapore's oldest institution for medical education traces its roots to 1905, starting out as the Straits Settlements and Federated Malay States Government Medical School before being renamed the King Edward VII Medical School and eventually, the NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.

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