NUHS secures $1.81m for AI-powered dementia prevention research

A multidisciplinary team will lead the project.

The National University Health System (NUHS) in Singapore has received $1.81m (S$2.33m) to develop an artificial intelligence (AI)-powered programme to improve dementia detection and prevention.

The project, titled “Innovative Methods for Proactive Risk Optimization and adVancEment in Cognitive Health (IMPROVE-COG)”, will be led by a multidisciplinary NUHS research team.

The funding is supported by the Ministry of Health through the National Medical Research Council Office, MOH Holdings Pte Ltd, under the NMRC Healthy and Meaningful Longevity – Cognition Grant Call.

The researchers, including the Health Services Research & Analytics team at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital,  will build a large language model using anonymised clinical data from NUHS’s DISCOVERY AI platform.

The tool will analyse clinical documentation to identify individuals at risk of mild cognitive impairment and dementia, supporting risk stratification and population health surveillance.

Meanwhile, the team will collaborate with Professor Teo Hock Hai and his group from the NUS School of Computing to utilise geographic information system mapping and spatial analysis to study the relationship between environmental and social factors and cognitive impairment.

S$1 = $0.78