2014 Research Initiatives
In 2014, NHG Group Research and Singhealth Centralised Institutional Review Board (CIRB) established a mutual recognition of their institutional review boards (IRBs). This was a milestone for medical research in Singapore, where researchers doing multi-centre studies in public hospitals or institutions no longer need multiple ethics reviews with different ethics review boards. The mutual recognition of the two IRBs would potentially save time, effort and costs, ultimately benefitting research that leads to better patient care.
NHG Group Research also developed and launched the NHG Clinician Scientist Career Scheme (CSCS) (Senior) in 2014. The CSCS (Senior) would serve as a bridging scheme to enable clinician scientists to develop their research capabilities so as to compete successfully for national research talent development schemes in the next few years. In the same year, the NHG Clinician Investigator (CI) scheme was also launched, which was targeted more at established, senior clinicians who would like to incorporate research into their clinical expertise. With the addition of CSCS (Senior) and CI schemes, NHG would now have a complete road map for research career track for developing clinician scientists/investigators.
The Rehabilitation Research Institute of Singapore (RRIS) was also established in 2014 between A*STAR, NSC and NTU. RRIS would bring together scientists, clinicians and engineers from the 3 institutions to develop innovative technology solutions for better patient outcomes across the healthcare ecosystem.
