The SingHealth Duke-NUS Surgical Skills and Simulation Centre (SSSC) was launched today at the 2^nd SingHealth Surgical Congress. Located in Academia, the centre provides state-of-the-art facilities for surgical and procedural skills training. The SSSC caters to the needs of 20 specialties and subspecialties, offering them a range of surgical, simulation and procedural skills courses.

“As a key clinical and education partner for academic institutes and the industry, the new facility will allow our Academic Medical Centre to train more than 1,000 local and overseas healthcare practitioners each year – a 20 per cent increase from our current intake,” said the director of the Centre, Associate Professor Andrew Tan.

At the Congress, officiated by Minister for Health Mr Gan Kim Yong, the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre also conferred the Lee Seng Teik and Lee Hoo Leng Professorship in Plastic Surgery and Regenerative Medicine on Professor Yann Barrandon, a world-renowned expert in epithelial stem cell biology.

Prof Barrandon is joint professor of Stem Cell Dynamics at the Ecole Polytechnique Federale Lausanne and Lausanne University, and head of the Department of Experimental Surgery at the Lausanne University Hospital, Switzerland. He also heads the Stem Cell Dynamics laboratory at A*STAR’s Institute of Medical Biology.

Themed “Surgical Excellence through Collaboration”, the 2^nd SingHealth Surgical Congress attracts more than 600 local and international practitioners across professions as well as industry partners.