SingHealth receives historic $135 million donation to fuel breakthroughs in healthcare transformation

·     This is the largest gift that SingHealth has received to date, and the single largest contribution to a public healthcare institution in Singapore.

·     The gift supports 10 distinct areas across the entire healthcare continuum including Population Health and Social Prescribing, Community Health, Biodiversity and Pathology research programmes as well as the Allied Health Professional Development programme.

·     In recognition of this transformational gift, the block which houses Outram Community Hospital and future population health efforts will be named the Khoo Teck Puat Centre for Population Health.

SINGAPORE, 13 January 2026 – A landmark $135 million philanthropic gift from the Estate of Khoo Teck Puat is set to transform healthcare delivery, fuelling major breakthroughs in research, innovation and advancements in professional development in SingHealth. This historic donation is the largest gift SingHealth has received to date, and the largest single contribution ever made to a public healthcare institution in Singapore. This strategic philanthropic investment will catalyse SingHealth’s efforts to accelerate research and innovation in 10 diverse areas ranging from population health and social prescribing to community health, biodiversity and pathology research, and allied health professional development as well as key clinical research programmes including maternal and child health, cardiovascular sciences and oncology.

President Tharman Shanmugaratnam graced the Gift Recognition Ceremony held this afternoon at Outram Community Hospital as Guest of Honour, where he unveiled a bust of the late Mr Khoo Teck Puat to commemorate the naming of the block that houses Outram Community Hospital and future population health efforts as the Khoo Teck Puat Centre for Population Health. Mr Ong Ye Kung, Minister for Health and Coordinating Minister for Social Policies, attended the event as a Special Guest.

Transforming Care through Research, Innovation and Education

The $135 million will unlock the potential of medicine by supporting four key areas:

·       Expanding innovative care models in the community to enable personalised and proactive health interventions

·       Adopting innovative technologies and digital solutions to optimise diagnostic precision and enhance patient outcomes

·       Advancing cutting edge medical research to address complex and urgent health challenges

·       Investing in attracting and retaining of healthcare talents as well as leadership development to nurture talent pipeline

The gift will drive transformative advances across a spectrum of healthcare domains by supporting impactful research, initiatives and programmes. Key impact areas include:

       i.         Population health research and social prescribing programmes, and community health initiatives;

     ii.         Digital pathology including the integration of the use of Artificial Intelligence (AI) capabilities;

    iii.         Biodiversity research and plant-based therapeutic discovery; and

    iv.         Leadership development for Allied Health Professionals.

It will also spur groundbreaking research in multiple clinical specialties including mental health and wellness, maternal and child health, transplant, cardiovascular sciences and oncology.

Shifting the Needle in Community Wellness: Population Health Research, Community Health & Social Prescribing

SingHealth will leverage this gift to advance predictive analytics and population health research to better stratify high-risk groups and enable targeted interventions for preventive care. The gift will also support the expansion of innovative care models such as the SingHealth Healthy, Empowered Active Living Labs. Population health researchers will drive community-based research with real-time data collection and rapid testing of interventions, scale community health programmes to enhance healthy longevity, chronic disease management, and cancer screening.

SingHealth Community Hospitals (SCH), the world’s first World Health Organization Collaborating Centre for Social Prescribing, will advance its mission to strengthen capacity building, services integration, collaboration and research in social prescribing. SCH will also build on established initiatives, which have enabled better patient outcomes and experience while achieving a shorter length of hospital stay, to enhance care coordination and delivery for patients. With psychosocial healing as an important component of holistic care, SCH will partner stakeholders to create micro-environments within health campuses that promote the sense of safety, dignity and psychosocial wellbeing for patients. Collectively, these initiatives shift care from episodic treatments to sustained, community-based wellness through timely interventions before health needs escalate.

Accelerating Precision Medicine: Digital Pathology

The gift will revolutionise diagnostic capabilities through the integration of cutting-edge AI technologies across pathology services in SingHealth institutions. Through AI-powered microbial genomics, diagnostic time can be sharply reduced from weeks to days with greater precision and safeguard against infectious outbreaks. Fungal infection diagnoses using AI will also be enhanced to enable earlier treatment and interventions. AI-enabled digital pathology capabilities will also enhance diagnoses for multiple cancer types including breast, prostate, gastric, colon and lung, potentially benefiting over 20,000 patients annually with shorter diagnostic time and enhanced patient care. Greater precision in drug effectiveness for pharmacogenomics testing can potentially improve outcomes for approximately 1,000 patients with neurological, cardiovascular, and thyroid conditions through more tailored medication regimes to mitigate effects such as hypersensitivity reactions and pain. Digital pathology represents a paradigm shift towards predictive healthcare using personalised medicine to hasten diagnoses for faster and more precise interventions to enable improved outcomes.

Pioneering Nature-Based Therapeutics and Biodiversity Conservation

The SingHealth Duke-NUS Institute of Biodiversity Medicine, set up to translate biodiversity studies to impact health and medicine, aims to establish Singapore as a global leader in plant-based therapeutic discovery by attracting world-class scientific talents in cutting-edge technologies including AI / Machine Learning to drive breakthrough discoveries. The goal is to accelerate drug discovery by integrating the comprehensive Biodiversity Atlas of Local Plants and Medicinal Compounds database with advanced extraction technologies, while combining unique plant genomic data with human cancer datasets to target cancer and chronic disease treatments to potentially improve diagnostic precision and patient survival rates. The gift will enable the establishment of end-to-end innovation pipelines that translate biodiversity insights into clinically proven therapeutics, preventive interventions and wellness applications. Beyond clinical discovery, this lays the groundwork for conservation by systematically capturing the genomic blueprints of regional plant species. As climate change, environmental transformation and ecological pressures intensify, gaining knowledge that anticipates how our regional plant species respond will empower the scientific community and the public to make informed decisions to protect biodiversity.

Allied Health Professional Development: Nurturing Tomorrow's Healthcare Leaders

There are close to 5,000 Allied Health Professionals (AHPs) in SingHealth from more than 30 diverse professions. This gift will develop visionary leaders who are recognised as experts at the national and global level, capable of transforming rehabilitation, diagnostic, and therapeutic services that restore and maintain patients' independence and quality of life. Nurturing inspiring and innovative AHP leaders through advocacy and role-modelling will raise the bar of excellence across the different professions that will impact preventive care capabilities that advance population and community health initiatives and drive novel patient care approaches.

A Visionary Commitment to Human Health

This gift from the Estate of Khoo Teck Puat strategically invests in a paradigm shift in healthcare delivery to enable Singapore to stay ahead of the curve in managing healthcare challenges through a multi-faceted approach that strengthens infrastructure, builds human capital and harnesses the latest technologies to ignite transformative change.

Ms Mavis Khoo, Trustee of the Estate of Khoo Teck Puat, said the gift reflects a deep belief in the potential of medical research, innovation and education to transform lives. “We are pleased to have this opportunity to partner SingHealth to shape a healthier future and expand what is possible in care and discovery. My late father would have turned 109 years old today. This gift is our way of honouring his legacy by supporting advancements in healthcare, which was a cause close to his heart, and enabling access to exceptional healthcare for future generations of Singaporeans,” she said.

With this gift, SingHealth is excited to trailblaze medical breakthroughs, pioneer innovations and unlock capabilities that will elevate its standing as a world class academic medical centre and healthcare group.

“We are deeply grateful and humbled to receive this transformational $135 million gift, which reflects not only the extraordinary generosity of the Estate of Khoo Teck Puat but more importantly, the tremendous trust they have in our capabilities to unlock the potential of medicine to change lives. The donation is a powerful investment in people, discovery and hope, that will fast-track breakthroughs, spark ideas that generate profound impact and foster a healthier Singapore for the future,” said Professor Ng Wai Hoe, Group Chief Executive Officer, SingHealth.