Taking Medical Innovation to Greater Heights - NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine

Issue 44
Nov 2022

DOSSIER

A virtually-impaired person stimulator, Artificial Intelligence (AI)-powered eye screening, mobile applications to help individuals with physical and speech difficulties to communicate, a smart pill dispenser, and more: this myriad of novel innovations were devised by the students from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine at the National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine), for the Medical Grand Challenge (MGC) 2022.

The MGC is a student-led medical innovation competition launched in 2016 by NUS Medicine. Medical students at NUS are encouraged to form multidisciplinary teams with students from other faculties and schools to engineer innovative and out-of-the-box solutions to solve unmet healthcare needs. This year, 10 teams emerged in the Finale—including teams from schools within NUS, Nanyang Technological University and universities in Malaysia, Indonesia and Thailand, competing in the Nascent Category, and eight teams in the Open Category.

MGC 2022 is the fourth year that overseas teams have participated in the MGC. At past challenges, participants from Indonesia, Malaysia and Thailand, as well as South Korea and Galway, Ireland, have added colour and diversity to the challenge with their own novel innovations, encouraging multidisciplinary collaboration.

Team STDetect, who won the top award in the Open category.

This year, the Finale was attended by Guest-of-Honour, Mr Ong Ye Kung, Minister of Health. This final stage of a year-long challenge, was a platform that showcased the burning passion and creativity of the teams. The shortlisted teams presented their projects to a panel of judges, many of whom are influential business leaders in commercial healthcare. Projects were assessed on their business strategy, creativity, design quality and healthcare impact.

The pitching session was undoubtedly intense, as the teams put up impressive presentations. Team Kiddx bagged the top prize in the Nascent category with their video monitoring and analysis software for real-time monitoring and detection of early signs of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) in the home setting.

In the Open category, Team STDetect swept the top award with a vending machine that facilitates access to Sexually Transmitted Disease (STD) testing kits, along with a mobile application for users to register their test kits and receive their testing results anonymously.

All the inventions were inspiring, as shown through the other awards that were presented at the Finale. They included the People’s Choice Award for Fisoguide, an AI-powered tele-physiotherapy based treatment application for people with Musculoskeletal Disorders (MSD), the Sustainability Award for BiliMonitor, a consumer-grade jaundice meter device for home use, and the Social Responsibility Award for AI-powered eye screening for the detection of glaucoma.

This year, a total of 10 participating teams competed against one another in the Nascent category. They took turns to propose solutions which they prepared from scratch, after identifying a clinical problem or unmet healthcare need at the start of the competition. In the Open category, eight teams worked on projects initiated by industry experts known as “Tech Mentors”. Alternatively, the teams could also choose to focus their energies on improving existing projects that were presented in previous competitions.

Throughout the year, the teams attended interdisciplinary boot camps and participated in consultation sessions with their tech mentors, who provide guidance and advise them on how best to improve their creations and build on their commercial viability.

Mr Ong Ye Kung, Minister of Health, graced the MGC 2022.

Professor Chong Yap Seng, Dean of NUS Medicine, is confident of the value that the MGC brings to the students’ learning experience. “The MGC hopes to be more than just another competitive venture or credential to beef up the students’ portfolios. We hope that the multidisciplinary nature of the MGC will prompt students to analyse problems and create innovative solutions, from a multifaceted perspective. We need to expose our students to real-life problems, so that they will have the confidence to apply the hard and soft skills they’ve acquired in their schooling years to tackle trickier, and often complex challenges that the future brings,” said Prof Chong.

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