Long-term Clinical Outcomes, Cost-of-care, Clinical Characteristics, Re-admission Rates, Outpatient Care and Mortality in Patients With Coronary Artery Disease or Congestive Heart Failure in Singapore

The research project is initiated by NHCS and its participating institutions include Ministry of Health (MOH), as well as National University Hospital (Singapore) Pte Ltd (NUH), Changi General Hospital (CGH), Khoo Teck Puat Hospital (KTPH), Singapore General Hospital (SGH), Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH), Ng Teng Fong General Hospital (NTFGH) , SingHealth Polyclinics, National Healthcare Group Polyclinics (NHGP), Sengkang Hospital (SKH), National University Polyclinics (NUP), and Alexandra Hospital (AH).

The research project will leverage on the Health Data Grid (HDG) pilot project, now known as Business Research Analytics Insights Network (BRAIN). BRAIN will be a virtual repository that will enable access to anonymised and merged data from disparate databases at multiple institutions. The structures of BRAIN will preserve patients' privacy and confidentiality, ensure IT security and allow access only by authorised persons. The BRAIN pilot project will be co-funded by MOH and the Infocommunication Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA). To avoid doubt, after the BRAIN pilot project, a separate approval from the appropriate stakeholders will have to be sought for further funding of the operating costs of the BRAIN, regardless of whether the value of the BRAIN has been demonstrated during the BRAIN pilot project. There is no direct cost involved in the research project.

For the research project, MOH will contribute administrative data from the Registry of Births and Deaths, Casemix & Subvention, the Mediclaim, and Omnibus databases, and the other participating institutions will contribute the data from the National Electronic Health Records (NEHR), Electronic Health Intelligence System (eHIntS) and Enterprise Data Warehouse (EDW) to BRAIN. Only anonymised data from BRAIN will be utilised for the research project.