Research Areas

Digital Health

  • Health Apps Assessment and Apps Development
  • Computerised health assessment 

Smartphone apps are increasingly being used to support the self-management of chronic conditions, such as asthma and diabetes. [1],[2],[3], Health apps can be intended for healthcare professionals, patients or general users, and offer a wide range of functions that could be successfully integrated into self-management programmes. [4]

Our health apps assessment projects systematically assess the functionalities of existing apps on the market against evidence-based guidelines. Findings will contribute to a framework for health apps assessment and design, particularly for managing chronic diseases; which can be used to inform recommendations or individual choices when prescribing, selecting or developing apps for chronic disease self-management.

 

Current projects: 

  • Health Apps Assessment and Apps Development 

  • Computerised Health Assessment

Digital Health Education​​​

  • eLearning for Healthcare professional education
  • Diabetes health literacy and competency assessment

The global independent Commission on the Education of Health Professionals for the 21st century concluded that the present content, organisation, and delivery of health professionals’ education are failing to serve the needs of patient and populations. The world was short of 7.2 million healthcare workers in 2013 and this figure will increase to 18 million by 2035. There is a need to improve not just the number of healthcare workers but also the quality of their knowledge and the relevance of their competences to the needs of the population that they serve.

Our work would help in bringing together and building the relationship between technology, pedagogy and content knowledge, which are key to the successful delivery of educational outcomes using technology, and will provide an exhaustive and evidence-supported guidance on the integration of eLearning in medical curricula, paving way for the transforming and scaling up of health professional education for the right set of healthcare workforce skills and competencies in order to successfully meet the evolving needs of populations.

Current projects: 

  • eLearning for Healthcare Professional Education 

  • Diabetes Health Literacy and Competency Assessment

Health Services and Outcomes Research​​​

  • Workplace Well-being and Health Study
  • Social and Economic Burden of Diseases within Dermatology and Cost-effectiveness of Treatment
  • Assessment Impact of enhanced primary care services 
  • Healthy Campus Initiative 
  • Building the Kidney Confidence Programme: A study to understand facilitators and barriers to timely decisions around dialysis initiation​
  • LIFE-lysis – the development of an intervention to support adjustment for incident patients on hemodialysis and their family members/caregivers


Our teams are involved in a number of HSOR projects in Singapore, in collaboration with the Ministry of Health, Singapore (MOH), various local healthcare institutions and other faculties and departments at NTU. Our current projects include topics such as: assessments of workers and students’ well-being and health; social and economic burden of diseases within dermatology; impact of primary care services and understanding needs of caregivers; kidney and dialysis studies. 

Current projects: 

  • Workplace Well-being and Health Study 

  • Healthy Campus Initiative 

  • Assessment of impact of enhanced primary care services
    Joint collaboration with Duke-NUS and the School of Public Health at NUS, to identify and model best practices in primary healthcare, in order to provide recommendations to MOH about enhanced primary care services. The aim is to improve the primary care system in Singapore to better address the needs of the ageing, chronically-ill population.

  • Social and Economic Burden of Diseases within Dermatology and Cost-effectiveness of Treatment​ 

  • Building the Kidney Confidence Programme: A study to understand facilitators and barriers to timely decisions around dialysis initiation​

  • LIFE-lysis – the development of an intervention to support adjustment for incident patients on hemodialysis and their family members/caregivers

Completed Projects

We have successfully completed several projects, resulting in reports for the corresponding funding agencies and a number of peer-reviewed publications. These include:

  • Social and economic burden of Atopic Dermatitis among children

  • Burden of skin repair in Singapore

  • Digital Health education and WHO health workforce capacity building

  • Evaluation of the national Advance Care Planning programme in Singapore 
    In close collaboration with the Division of Economics and the Department of Psychology of NTU’s School of Social Sciences, we evaluated the national ACP programme that is currently spearheaded by the National ACP Steering Committee, together with the Agency for Integrated Care. In this evaluation, we answered questions that have been stated by the Ageing Planning Office of the Ministry of Health, Singapore, on the success, economic impact, and effectiveness of the national ACP programme. We also developed recommendations to improve on the existing ACP model and processes.

  • WHO Academy 
    Provided analysis of the lifelong learning market, targeted towards the launch of the WHO Academy, which is a global initiative for health professions education. The Academy will employ state-of-the art blended learning modalities as well as adult learning principles, to transform health professionals' competencies and support the UN’s 2030 agenda for sustainable development.​

  • Understanding the needs of caregivers
    A scoping review commissioned by the Singapore Ministry of Health to inform policy and the staging of future research grant calls. We delivered a final report comprising a new conceptual framework for carer needs, the Approach to Sustainable Caregiving – Needs Driven (ASCeND) framework; identification and characterisation of carer needs; global overview of interventions mapped to carer needs; and recommendations for practice and research.​​