AsianScientist (Jan. 17, 2017) – The National Heart Centre Singapore (NHCS) has selected WuXi NextCODE, the contract genomics organization subsidiary of WuXi AppTec, as their technology partner in their drive to advance population-based genomic research and precision medicine applications in Singapore.
This partnership marks an important first step in a national precision medicine initiative that brings together NHCS, SingHealth Duke-NUS Institute of Precision Medicine (PRISM) and the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) as a part of its mission to advance Singapore’s Smart Nation vision.
Under the partnership, WuXi NextCODE will create an instantly queriable cloud-based enterprise data warehouse integrating large-scale whole genome sequence, medical and wearables data from both cardiovascular patients and healthy control subjects recruited by NHCS. This proof-of-concept resource will power research into novel genetic risk factors for heart disease in the Singapore and Southeast Asia populations more broadly.
It will also enable the generation of clinical reports offering actionable insights on different types of genetic risk, carrier status and drug response, with the aim of informing personalized health and wellness. The partnership contemplates expanding from heart disease into other disease types, and WuXi NextCODE’s infrastructure is scalable to hundreds of thousands of participants.
“Singapore’s leadership in digital convergence and healthcare provides a unique opportunity to advance our technology in new ways to benefit patients and people here and across the region,” said Mr. Hannes Smarason, COO of WuXi NextCODE.
“Our collaboration with partners such as WuXi NextCODE in bioinformatics is one example of using Singapore as a testbed to develop new innovative technological solutions that bring significant benefits and create high value-added jobs and businesses for infocomm and media professionals in the health and pharmaceutical industries,” said Mr. Khoong Hock Yun, Assistant Chief Executive (Development), IMDA.
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Source: WuXi NextCODE.
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