Published on 7 January 2025

On the last day of 2024 

Professor Joseph Sung
Distinguished University Professor
Senior Vice-President (Health & Life Sciences)
Dean, Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine


I write this on the last day of 2024 reflecting on the exceptional year that we have gone through. What an exciting and fabulous year it had been! 

In 2024, LKCMedicine welcomed the first cohort of NTU MBBS students signaling that our MBBS curriculum is mature enough to be a standalone programme training competent doctors to serve the community. We have to thank Imperial College London (Imperial) for its invaluable partnership throughout these past 13 years, helping us to build a robust and widely recognised medical curriculum that equips future-ready doctors. We are very proud that our seven cohorts of medical graduates have been well-received, with accolades and many positive responses from their employers and colleagues in Singapore’s public healthcare sector. For the next stage of our development, we will focus more on collaborations with Imperial in the area of research, to expand our programmes in Neuroscience, Metabolism and Nutrition, Respiratory and Infectious Disease, as well as new programmes such as Artificial Intelligence and Environmental Health. 

2024 has been a pivotal year also in that we were given the mandate to add 36 more students to our Class of 2029 intake, ramping up total annual intake to 186. We are extremely grateful to the Ministries of Health and Education for their confidence in our MBBS programme. Indeed, at the time of inception, LKCMedicine was built for 250 students – we are glad that we can contribute more to Singapore’s healthcare workforce. Looking ahead, we are determined to continue to improve on our MBBS curriculum, and plans are afoot to introduce new elements such as digital health, artificial intelligence, humanistic medicine, safety in prescriptions, among others. We are also embarking on expanding our continuous education programmes for medical graduates, allied health professionals and nurses, and even to the public who are involved in taking care of the elderly and the terminally ill. 

Another major development we are very much proud of is the establishment of Singapore’s first Academic Health System (AHS) with our closest partner, the National Healthcare Group (NHG).  Thanks to the new leadership of NHG and the support of MOH, NTU-LKCMedicine signed an MoU with NHG in November 2024, witnessed by the Minister for Health Mr Ong Ye Kung. I always believe that a medical school cannot excel without a strong partnership with an academically oriented medical group. This year, after a lot of hard work and the indefatigable efforts of colleagues across LKCMedicine and NHG, our dream came true. This marks the beginning of the metamorphosis of our medical school and the NHG cluster. In the coming months and years, we will see the establishment of new academic clinical programmes (ACP), an increased number of joint appointees between LKCMedicine and NHG, as well as rise in activities in clinical research, education and fundraising. There is already a very encouraging trend of increased competitive grant application and grants won through the LKCMedicine-NHG collaboration. The train has just left its platform. We look forward to heading towards a destination of excellence in medical research and development, education and training, and innovation of our healthcare service.

As we welcome the new year, I would like to take this opportunity, on behalf of the School, to thank our outgoing Chairman Mr Lim Chuan Poh. Mr Lim has been leading LKCMedicine’s governing board since we started, charting the direction and tirelessly guiding the immensely successful development of the School over this past decade. Our tributes also go to Professor Lim Kah Leong (former Vice-Dean Research), Professor Jennifer Cleland (former Vice-Dean Education) and Professor Pang Weng Sun (former Vice-Dean Clinical Affairs), for their many contributions in research, education and clinical partnerships. We also wish to thank Professor Ho Teck Hua who took on the office of NTU President in 2023, giving the strongest of support to LKCMedicine’s development. Our respect and gratitude also to Professor Joe Sim, the new Group CEO of NHG, who emphasized since Day One of his tenure that the partnership between NHG and NTU is key to the success of both institutions. We warmly welcome our new chairperson of LKCMedicine’s governing board, Ms Chan Lai Fung, and we look forward to her guidance and leadership.

2024 has been a busy and challenging year. With our concerted effort, we now move from infancy into adolescence with renewed purpose and vigour.

 

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