Epidemiology and Preventive Medicine

Epidemiology is the branch of medicine that deals with the incidence, distribution, and determinants of diseases and other factors relating to health in populations. Our trained epidemiologists provide advice on study design and epidemiological approaches to addressing clinical questions and apply evidence to guide clinical decision-making and management. We have particularly strong expertise in infectious disease outbreak-related studies and hospital epidemiology. We welcome collaborators to leverage on our experience running case-control studies, longitudinal cohort studies, and clinical trials.

Our areas of surveillance includes staff medical leave, influenza, dengue and emerging infections.

Our team works closely with infection control unit to monitor, detect, and respond to infectious disease outbreaks within the hospital. Our expertise is in epidemiological investigations, contact tracing, and outbreak management.

Data science is the practice of drawing insights from data generated from conventional (experiments and observational studies) and unconventional sources (internet, social media and smart devices). It offers meaningful interpretations to unstructured data which are usually large in dimensions. With emphasis on evidential utilisation, data science opens the gate to further refined analysis and data explorations not adequately serviced by established quantitative techniques.

Our team provides consultation to collaborators who are engaged in clinical and health services research. We can assist in the entire spectrum of activities that lead to grant application and publication. These include systematic literature review, hypothesis formulation, sample size determination, data analysis with advanced statistical and machine learning techniques, presentation and communication of findings based on the best available medical evidence. We have experience in using R, WinBUGS, IBM SPSS (Statistics and Modeler) and Stata in analysis. Published widely in all major biomedical disciplines, our team members have held research grants awarded by NMRC (Singapore), NHMRC (Australia) and ministries and statutory boards of the Singapore Government.

We provide solutions and consultations for data management related matters from the beginning to the end, from requirement gathering and initialisation, to design, implementation and post implementation support. Capitalizing on our expertise and harnessing innovative technologies, we have replaced conventional data collection methods with novel technologies to enhance data accuracy, consistency, and concurrency.

The primary objective for our research activities is research with direct clinical and public health relevance for infectious diseases and non-communicable diseases, to protect population health and improve patient care. This includes local disease epidemiology and transmission/progression, clinical features, diagnosis and management, as well as understanding of psycho-socio-behavioural factors, to help inform clinical care decisions, policies, resource planning and program development.

Our team provides training in frontline infectious disease outbreak control and management, ranging from establishing and managing surveillance systems to detect outbreaks to contact tracing and public health interventions. We have experts in epidemiology, public health, data management and data analysis, who can provide teaching in epidemiology and surveillance, study designs, critical appraisal of evidence, statistical analysis, and design and development of databases.

Population Medicine provides the scientific basis for the specific activities of the healthcare system that, by themselves or in collaboration with partners, improve population health using the best available resources. We aim to further develop clinical capabilities in preventive and population medicine to better support the population health developments and healthcare transformation efforts in our institution. Areas of focus include health protection and prevention, economic analysis, and program and outcome evaluation.