The 11th TechInnovation 2023, IPI’s flagship event, sought to connect industry leaders, entrepreneurial innovators, technology seekers and providers to discover new technologies, explore technology commercialisation and collaborate within the global innovation ecosystem.
This year, the theme was Sustainable Urban Living. The event featured over a hundred technologies that will shape a future that is sustainable and health-focused.
Some of the featured innovations included:
- HY M&E, which creates a digital twin of a building to promote eco-friendliness, while IES has developed software for designing buildings that prioritise decarbonisation, ensuring they have minimal environmental impact by conserving energy.
- SunGreenH2 has developed special electrolyser materials that enhance green hydrogen production efficiency. Green hydrogen can be used to produce ecofriendly fuel for cars and cost-effective electricity for homes. Customers using SunGreenH2 products recently showcased a highly efficient anion exchange membrane (AEM) electrolyser in Germany and have also conducted tests on their electrodes, confirming their reliability.
- Nanolumi has developed nanoparticles to help biomedical practitioners deliver medicine/drugs to the targeted parts of our body to make us feel better. When used in imaging, these particles can help doctors determine the right treatment. Nanolumi's nanoparticles are customisable, brighter and elicit a faster response time against commercially available bio-imaging particles.
Christopher Robinson, Senior Director, Lux Research, said that essential sustainability technologies for the next decade will include innovations in climate tech, circular tech, and future consumer tech. He said: “Sustainability must be thought of as a process for managing consumption and disruptors to future generations, rather than trying to find the next big product.”
In other healthcare developments at the event, Professor Tan Cher Heng, Executive Director at the Centre for Healthcare Innovation stated: "We are at the tipping point of adoption of AI into routine clinical care.” He highlighted the requirement for standardised technical evaluation of AI solutions, and the need to ask questions such as “Is this a robust model? Is it generalisable?”.
Professor Tan also highlighted how AI can help mitigate the rising costs of healthcare in Singapore. He emphasised the potential of AI to alleviate challenges such as rising manpower costs through enhanced disease detection, personalised treatment, and more efficient resource allocation. However, the adoption of AI in healthcare has been slow, as users have encountered hurdles like data standardisation, system integration, and clinician trust, especially when models lack accuracy or explainability.
A panel of subject matter experts was cautiously optimistic, concluding that "We can all be very excited about AI but (we must wait) until we see how it's going to fit”. Some of the challenges listed during the session included that a trust deficit exists, particularly in clinical decision-making, and AI is not yet poised to replace doctors.
Panelists highlighted regulatory challenges, highlighting AI's iterative nature which current static regulatory frameworks find difficult to accommodate, and advocated for more flexible regulations. The panel also emphasised the importance of data sharing and standardisation to encourage collaboration in AI healthcare. They called for startups to rigorously test AI models with real-world data and urged larger entities to give their support by providing data access.
Elizabeth Han, Group Head of Innovation at IHH Healthcare, added: “My broader aspiration for where I see AI healthcare is ultimately to move away from sick care into well- care. And what I mean by that is, for all of us to be able to use AI in a way where we don't actually have to go to the hospital or become get sick, where we can (get) healthcare done in the home setting, and where we may not even need to see a doctor but we can have solutions or even problems alerted to us.”
TechInnovation 2023 also saw IPI formalise strategic partnerships with Thailand and Japan via memoranda of understanding (MOUs). The first, with Thailand's Intellectual Property Acceleration Commercialization Enterprise (IPACE), aims to co-market innovative technologies across various industry sectors. The second, with Panasonic, is geared towards promoting collaboration between Singaporean and Japanese companies through IPI's Corporate Open Innovation Programme.
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