A delegation from the French National Institute of Health and Medical Research (Inserm), headed by its Chairman and CEO Dr Gilles Bloch, visited Singapore from 26 to 29 September 2021 for their first international destination since the start of the pandemic.
The visit reflected the strategic priority of Inserm to Singapore health and biomedical research ecosystem for strengthening its international collaborations.
The delegation, comprising of six other experts, met up with the senior management of their partners in Singapore such as the Ministry of Health, the National Medical Research Council, the National Research Foundation, the National Centre for Infectious Diseases, the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR), the National University of Singapore, the Nanyang Technological University, the Duke-NUS Medial School, the National University Health System, Singhealth, AI Singapore and CNRS@CREATE.
Discussions centered on key priority target areas for the two countries identified by the France-Singapore Joint Science and Innovation Committee (JSCI), during its second meeting held on 24 June 2021, namely infectious and emerging diseases, aging, artificial intelligence and health data science as well as metabolic diseases and diabetes.
In particular, Inserm and NUS signed an agreement framework to work together on healthy ageing and health data.
The meetings were also an opportunity to share information on the best practices used by each country in the fight against Covid-19. Both sides expressed a renewed desire for deeper and sustained collaboration as a follow-up to the France-Singapore Scientific Working Group on Infectious Diseases set up in July 2020 by the Embassy of France and NCID.
