News: Forging ahead with the next phase of growth

On 2 and 3 November, LKCMedicine held its management retreat, the LKCMedicine 2.0 Summit, at ONE°15 Marina Sentosa Cove to consolidate its 2025 strategic plan.

Joined by LKCMedicine Governing Board Chairman Mr Lim Chuan Poh, NTU leadership including President Professor Subra Suresh and Deputy President and Provost Professor Ling San, as well as National Healthcare Group and A*STAR leadership including Professor Philip Choo and Professor Ng Huck Hui, about 100 participants heard from the School’s leadership on four proposed key thrusts: innovative education, transformative research, synergistic partnerships and organisational excellence.

Following each session, LKCMedicine’s core leaders facilitated lively open floor discussions to gather views and insights from the audience.

In his speech titled “The Role of LKCMedicine in NTU”, Prof Suresh spoke about elevating NTU for the next major quantum leap and along with it, elevating LKCMedicine on a global scale leveraging on the strengths of Singapore and NTU.

He touched on how the university can contribute to addressing some of humanity’s grand challenges: mitigating our impact on the environment; harnessing the science, art and technology of learning; addressing technology’s impact on humanity; and responding to the needs and challenges of healthy living and ageing.

“LKCMedicine is uniquely positioned, not only to contribute to NTU’s aspirations, but equally to society within Singapore, Asia and beyond in so many profound ways. There are many ways in which we can use the strengths of LKCMedicine for the benefit of NTU and for society,” said Prof Suresh.

In his opening remarks, Mr Lim noted that LKCMedicine’s research and education are impacting lives.

“Our education programme has received rousing endorsement both locally and abroad, our graduates are serving Singapore especially in this pandemic and real time of need, our transformative research programme has been awarded top tier grants, and our beautiful campus is much admired as a smart and very efficient campus.”

He highlighted that with Industry 4.0, we were seeing convergent changes in technology that were transforming industry and society. Faced with these disruptive changes, Mr Lim said, “We therefore need to revisit what these developments mean for medical education, practice and research and how we can harness them to bring further benefits to society and humanity.”

On the next phase of growth for the School, LKCMedicine Dean Professor Joseph Sung said, “We want to lay down more tangible goals, more solid plans, and try to figure out a pathway to reach these goals. On teaching and learning, we would like to prepare our MBBS students for advancing technology and to prepare them for practising medicine and to work as a team with allied health professionals.”

Prof Sung shared his plans to set out a path clearly marked with milestones and pathways on how to achieve these goals with distinct deliverables. Quoting Charles Darwin, he added, “It is not the strongest of the species that survive, nor the most intelligent, but the one most responsive to change.”

In addition to the sharing sessions, participants joined in breakout discussions on key topics such as innovative education and transformative research as well as a panel discussion on “LKCMedicine and Key Partnerships” with thought leaders in research and healthcare.