Accelerating Change in Medical Education and Research
For the 2021 Milken Institute Asia Summit, we asked #PowerofIdeas contributors to consider how the disruptions and innovations of the recent past can be reframed for a thriving future. See more coverage on the Milken Institute LinkedIn page. This article originally appeared in the Power of Ideas.
Duke-NUS Medical School is a graduate-entry medical school that brings together experienced and highly accomplished students with outstanding faculty, translational biomedical research programs, bench-to-bedside innovation, lifelong learning, and, above all, a collaborative spirit. Along with many industries worldwide, we faced pressing challenges across all of our missions when the pandemic descended.
One of our first challenges when COVID reached the shores of Singapore was the abrupt removal of our medical students from the hospital environment where they would typically spend almost half of their training time learning the practical basis of medicine.
While nothing substitutes for clinical learning at the bedside, we leveraged technology and the collective strengths of our partners to craft educational programs sufficiently resilient to promote effective learning and training. This allowed two classes of medical students to graduate on time during the pandemic, adequately prepared to step into Singapore’s public hospitals as highly functioning doctors. Some clear highlights and principles that will likely persist beyond the pandemic include:
While our researchers also endured many challenges, our long-term strategy of recruiting the best scientists from around the world, and, in particular, assembling a multidisciplinary team of scientists focused on the problem of emerging infectious diseases, provided a strong core foundation allowing Duke-NUS to make valuable contributions to the global fight against COVID. These contributions extended well beyond basic scientific discoveries such as:
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In the face of widespread border closures, virtual communication technologies paradoxically facilitated international collaborations and interaction with key global bodies such as the World Health Organization, opportunities that would previously have required travel and physical face-to-face meetings. As a result, we have seen many new partnerships between our school and partners to expand the reach of our innovative models and technologies. These virtual interactions will likely remain an important part of our normal operations going forward.
These developments feed into a wider shift in outlook and emphasize the importance of broad and transparent global interactions for sharpening future pandemic preparedness. Looking forward, we believe we can leverage our strengths in emerging infectious diseases combined with our expertise in health systems research, regulatory excellence, and global health to build on our global partnerships and enhance our resilience in the face of future pandemics. Through our parent universities—Duke University and the National University of Singapore—and our academic medicine partner SingHealth, Singapore’s largest public health-care provider, we can build global networks for genomic surveillance, capacity building, and health-care transformation.
In the context of our SingHealth Duke-NUS Global Health Institute, we also have the capacity to use our experiences to reach populations that have experienced health-care disparities during the pandemic, especially in our region. Several countries in Southeast Asia have suffered disproportionally from COVID because of underdeveloped health-care infrastructure and limited vaccine access. Capitalizing on our organizational lessons learned, we are well-positioned to contribute to improved future preparedness and resilience in Singapore, regionally and globally, thereby transforming medicine and improving lives.
Executive Vice President, MI International at Milken Institute
2yThank you, Dean Thomas Coffman, for sharing your insights with us.