Enigma Health, a healthcare AI spin-off from SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre, has demonstrated dramatic efficiency gains in clinical operations while securing strategic partnerships with pharmaceutical giant Roche and technology firm ST Engineering to expand its artificial intelligence platform's capabilities.
Clinical Audit Breakthrough Shows 90% Time Reduction
During a pilot program at Singapore National Eye Centre from January to June 2024, Enigma's AI platform analyzed more than 7,000 cataract surgeries and 1.2 million data points, including consultation notes, clinical summaries, diagnosis entries, physical examination notes and visual acuity test results. The system slashed audit completion time from 528 hours using traditional methods to just seven hours while significantly reducing human error risk.
"Instead of hiring more people to come in, this is a very good technology for us to use to leverage on existing manpower, and transform their job scope," said Associate Professor Daniel Ting, director of SingHealth's AI Office.
The platform demonstrated similar efficiency gains at KK Women's and Children's Hospital and the SingHealth Duke-NUS Institute of Precision Medicine, where genetic reporting time was reduced from 30 minutes per report to seconds, enabling processing of 1,400 reports in an hour instead of weeks.
Strategic Partnerships Target Clinical Trial Optimization
The memorandums of understanding signed at the Asia Tech X Singapore Summit will enable Roche and ST Engineering to leverage Enigma's agentic AI capabilities in specialized healthcare applications. Agentic AI represents a class of artificial intelligence that can reason and act autonomously.
Under the Roche partnership, Enigma's platform will accelerate clinical trial recruitment by rapidly identifying eligible patients from large databases based on specific inclusion and exclusion criteria. "When you look at a clinical trial, 40 per cent of the cost is actually on the recruitment side," explained Dr. Dario Heymann, chief executive of Enigma Health. "If you take away some of the time it takes to recruit a certain patient cohort, you can save a lot of money. You can also bring the drug earlier to market, and give care to a patient significantly earlier."
Technology Integration Enhances Healthcare App Development
The collaboration with ST Engineering will integrate Enigma's small language model into the AGIL Genie Studio platform, enabling users without coding experience to build more precise AI-powered healthcare applications through simple text instructions. Small language models offer advantages over large language models by using less computing power, operating faster, and maintaining enhanced data security through local deployment.
ST Engineering's hospital command centres, which manage crisis situations like the Covid-19 pandemic, will benefit from Enigma's specialized capabilities. "The command centre leverages open-source large language models, but we realised that for specific areas, you actually need the small language model that Enigma is building," said Tan Bin Ru, president of enterprise digital at ST Engineering.
Data Security and Regulatory Compliance
Enigma maintains strict data security protocols by deploying at the source rather than extracting data from healthcare systems. "We are not taking any data out from anywhere... we are deploying (Enigma) at the source," Dr. Heymann emphasized during a media briefing.
Minister of State for Digital Development and Information Rahayu Mahzam, who witnessed the MOU signings, highlighted the importance of governance alongside technological advancement. "Without clear rules, companies hesitate to invest, and doctors hesitate to adopt new technologies," she noted, adding that "healthcare transformation requires collective effort and shared expertise."
