Singapore remains on track to deliver on its National Precision Medicine program, despite major barriers to overcome

May 26, 2021 | Case Study

Precision medicine (PM) aims to improve healthcare delivery with the use of omics data (most notably genomics) combined with data analytics to develop tailored approaches to predicting disease progression and treatment responses for individual patients. More than 40 countries have invested in PM initiatives to date, and PM is one of the nine program areas identified by the World Economic Forum's Centre for the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Despite the promise and potential of PM to revolutionize healthcare, few PM initiatives to date have taken off. One of the major reasons for this is the prohibitive upfront investment needed, with a long gestation period before evidence of improved patient care. In addition, many of the enabling technologies and data analytics tools are still in their infancy. Singapore, however, is one of the few countries on track to meeting their PM objectives.