Leadership Transition at the National Health Innovation Centre (NHIC)

Appointment of Professor Benjamin Ong as Chair, NHIC Board Oversight Committee, from 1 January 2024

We are pleased to announce the appointment of Prof Benjamin Ong as Chair of the NHIC Board Oversight Committee (BOC) from 1 January 2024.  Prof Ong is currently Senior Consultant with the Division of Neurology, National University Hospital (NUH), and Professor of Medicine at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine NUS. He served as Director of Medical Services (DMS), Ministry of Health (MOH), Singapore, from January 2014 to January 2020.  Prior to this role, Prof Ong was Chief Executive, National University Health System (NUHS).  He currently also serves as the Chairman of the Health Sciences Authority (HSA), Chairman of the Expert Committee on COVID-19 Vaccination, Senior Advisor to the current DMS and a member of the Public Service Commission (PSC).

Prof Ong played a pivotal role in setting up new public healthcare facilities and advancing the evolution of healthcare models to cater to the demands of an ageing population. He bolstered regulatory frameworks in healthcare and enhanced capabilities in health technology assessment. Prof Ong also spearheaded efforts to fortify responses to infectious diseases, contributing to the establishment of the National Centre for Infectious Diseases. Notably, during his tenure as Chairman of the Integrated Health Information Systems Singapore (IHiS), now rebranded as Synapxe, he significantly advanced process improvements in patient care delivery and healthcare information technology (IT) systems.

Given his valuable contribution towards the nation, Prof Ong was conferred two National Day Public Administration Medals – Silver & Gold, for his leadership contributions, outstanding efficiency and competence in 2009 and 2015 respectively. In 2020, Professor Ong was awarded the Meritorious Service Medal by the President of the Republic of Singapore.

As the next Chairman of NHIC, Prof Ong will steer NHIC's strategic vision towards delivering impactful healthcare and economic impact in Singapore and beyond, through NHIC's holistic suite of programmes and partnerships.

We warmly welcome Prof Ong as Chair of the NHIC BOC, and look forward to his leadership in steering healthcare innovation and transformation in Singapore.

Professor Ranga Krishnan completes term of office as Chair, NHIC Board Oversight Committee, on 31 December 2023

Prof Ranga Krishnan led NHIC from 2014 to 2023 as Chair of the NHIC Board Oversight Committee (BOC), and completed his final term of office on 31 Dec 2023.  He steered NHIC's strategy from inception through development to where it is today.  Under his leadership, NHIC established itself as a key national programme office in the healthcare innovation ecosystem, assisting the clinical community in taking promising health technologies from ideation towards improved patient outcomes.

The need to establish NHIC to translate research into impactful healthcare and economic outcomes was conceived by Prof Krishnan over a decade ago, referencing the UK National Health System Innovation Hub model. Under his guidance, NHIC established a strong suite of programmes in funding, talent development and public-private partnerships to enable the development of commercially viable innovations from the healthcare clusters and academic medical schools to meet unmet clinical needs. Together with other schemes under the National Medical Research Council (NMRC), designed with innovation at the core through Prof Krishnan’s leadership, there has been a significant increase in the number of medical practitioners from the public health institutions pursuing innovation activities, leading to many healthcare products and services created for Singapore and global markets.

Prof Krishnan is also Chair of the National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Board, providing leadership guidance to NMRC in research and national strategies in Health and Biomedical Sciences (HBMS) for health and economic benefits to Singapore.  Given his wealth of experience and wisdom in technology transfer, Prof Krishnan was also instrumental in leading the Singapore Clinical Research Institute (SCRI) towards its vision of improving clinical trial efficiency in Singapore and the region. He was also a Board member of the Health Sciences Authority (HSA), and played a key role in establishing the Centre of Regulatory Excellence (CoRE) at the Duke-NUS Medical School to coordinate multi-regional trials. Given his significant contributions to Singapore, Prof Krishnan was conferred the Honorary Citizen Award in 2022.

We extend our heartfelt gratitude to Prof Krishnan for his years of invaluable guidance and support in steering NHIC's vision towards creating a strong healthcare innovation and enterprise framework in Singapore with significant national and global outcomes.