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Novel initiative in Asia integrates predictive AI with personalised health coaching to empower early action and prevention
SINGAPORE, Aug. 27, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Dementia remains a hidden epidemic in Singapore, with slightly more than half of all cases going undiagnosed. According to the Well-being of the Singapore Elderly (WiSE) 2023[1] study, 51.5 per cent of dementia cases remain undetected. This is a troubling figure given that an estimated 45 per cent of dementia cases are preventable through early lifestyle interventions[2].
In an effort to close this gap, a multidisciplinary research team from the National University Health System (NUHS) has been awarded SG$2.33million, which is supported by the Singapore Ministry of Health through the National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Office, MOH Holdings Pte Ltd under the NMRC Healthy and Meaningful Longevity - Cognition Grant Call.
The team's project, titled "Innovative Methods for Proactive Risk Optimization and adVancEment in Cognitive Health (IMPROVE-COG)" brings together the power of artificial intelligence, community partnerships, and global expertise to shift the paradigm from late-stage diagnosis to lifelong brain care.
"In the local context, dementia may go unnoticed. Many older adults and their loved ones believe memory loss is simply part of ageing, and may not realise that help is available," says Principal Investigator Dr Tan Li Feng, Senior Consultant, Division of Geriatric Medicine, Department of Medicine, Alexandra Hospital (AH). "With smaller family sizes and more older adults living alone, it can be harder to gather the corroborative observations that help us recognise the early signs of cognitive decline. This means opportunities for early support and intervention are sometimes missed."
Undercoding and missed diagnoses
Studies overseas show that in up to one-third of hospital admissions involving persons with dementia, the condition was not recorded accurately as a diagnosis[3]. Undercoding and limited clinician awareness are significant contributing factors to the underdiagnosis[4].
"Even when symptoms are present, they can be overlooked," explains Co-Principal Investigator Dr Benjamin Tan, Consultant, Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, National University Hospital (NUH). "For example, a patient admitted for pneumonia may have been showing signs of cognitive decline that are flagged in social workers' and therapists' reports, but not formally assessed."
"Relevant patient information may also be scattered across various healthcare encounters, resulting in fragmented data and missing pieces of the puzzle."
Harnessing AI and real-world data
To counter these blind spots, the research team, including the Health Services Research & Analytics team at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, will develop an AI-powered large language model (LLM) trained on anonymised real-world data from NUHS's DISCOVERY AI platform[5]. The screening and surveillance tool will analyse diverse clinical documentation to identify individuals at risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia, offering a scalable and cost-effective solution for risk stratification and population health surveillance.
"This project leverages the robust NUHS data infrastructure ecosystem that allows anonymised patient data visualisation, enabling earlier detection and identification, and improvements in clinical care delivery," says Dr Andrew Makmur, Group Chief Technology Officer, NUHS. "Ultimately, we hope that the LLM will make the process of diagnosing dementia more accurate, efficient and cost-effective."
Following the development of the LLM, the research team will work with Co-Investigator Professor Teo Hock Hai and his team from the NUS School of Computing to leverage Geographic Information System mapping and spatial analysis to explore the relationship between environmental (e.g., exposure to green spaces) and social factors and cognitive impairment and thereby guiding more effective and equitable healthcare interventions.
Launching Asia's first digital brain care tool
In line with the Healthier SG programme and recognising the precious window of opportunity for early intervention, the research team will also deploy Asia's first digital Brain Care Tool, a culturally tailored application that integrates two key innovations:
- The Brain Care Score (BCS): A holistic score that helps individuals track their brain health across physical, lifestyle, and social-emotional domains, from blood pressure and sleep to social engagement and stress. By evaluating 12 modifiable risk factors, the BCS provides a bird's eye view of overall brain health, which also covers pertinent age-related brain diseases including stroke and late-life depression.
- The Brain Care Coach: A next-generation AI-powered behavioural interventional tool that delivers personalised nudges, tracks progress, and motivates users to adopt brain-protective behaviours such as exercising, improving diet, and quitting smoking.
Originally developed and validated by the Brain Care Labs at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School, the BCS is now a cornerstone of the Global Brain Care Coalition, which aims to reduce the global incidence of dementia, stroke and late-life depression by 30 per cent by 2050.
In Singapore, the tool will be localised and designed to incorporate community inputs to ensure cultural relevance and alignment with the population's needs. Individuals will be able to engage with it regardless of age, prior diagnoses or digital literacy. The research team will collaborate with community partners, including the Health District @ Queenstown, St Luke's Hospital, and Yong En Care Centre to pilot and develop the AI-coach. The research team also includes investigators from NHG Health, to scale the AI and digital tools to more hospitals when ready.
"Our long-term goal is to integrate the AI-powered screening and surveillance tool with the digital Brain Care Tool intervention across community settings," Dr Tan Li Feng says. "Dementia and poor brain health profoundly affect individuals, families and communities. There is much we can do to close existing gaps and adopt a proactive approach to give people a better chance at ageing well, with clarity, purpose and hope."
"Our vision is to empower every individual to take charge of their brain health. Through accessible, personalised tools and actionable insights, we aim to inspire and enable people to actively care for their brains, making brain health a lifelong priority."
About the National University Health System (NUHS)
The National University Health System (NUHS) aims to transform how illness is prevented and managed by discovering causes of disease, development of more effective treatments through collaborative multidisciplinary research and clinical trials, and creation of better technologies and care delivery systems in partnership with others who share the same values and vision.
Institutions in the NUHS Group include the National University Hospital, Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, Jurong Community Hospital, Alexandra Hospital and the upcoming Tengah General and Community Hospital; three National Specialty Centres – National University Cancer Institute, Singapore (NCIS), National University Heart Centre, Singapore (NUHCS) and National University Centre for Oral Health, Singapore (NUCOHS); the National University Polyclinics (NUP); Jurong Medical Centre; and three NUS health sciences schools – NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (including the Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies), NUS Faculty of Dentistry and NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.
With member institutions under a common governance structure, NUHS creates synergies for the advancement of health by integrating patient care, health science education and biomedical research. As a Regional Health System, NUHS works closely with health and social care partners across Singapore to develop and implement programmes that contribute to a healthy and engaged population in the Western part of Singapore.
For more information, please visit www.nuhs.edu.sg.
About the National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Office
The NMRC Office is hosted within the Division of Research and Innovation under MOH Holdings Pte Ltd. It supports the NMRC in the administration of research funding from the Singapore Ministry of Health. Its vision is to translate research for better health and achieves this by promoting excellence in translational and clinical research, nurturing a vibrant research community of clinicians and scientists, and enhancing knowledge translation for better health and economic outcomes.
Novel initiative in Asia integrates predictive AI with personalised health coaching to empower early action and prevention
SINGAPORE, Aug. 27, 2025 /PRNewswire/ -- Dementia remains a hidden epidemic in Singapore, with slightly more than half of all cases going undiagnosed. According to the Well-being of the Singapore Elderly (WiSE) 2023[1] study, 51.5 per cent of dementia cases remain undetected. This is a troubling figure given that an estimated 45 per cent of dementia cases are preventable through early lifestyle interventions[2].
In an effort to close this gap, a multidisciplinary research team from the National University Health System (NUHS) has been awarded SG$2.33million, which is supported by the Singapore Ministry of Health through the National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Office, MOH Holdings Pte Ltd under the NMRC Healthy and Meaningful Longevity - Cognition Grant Call.
The team's project, titled "Innovative Methods for Proactive Risk Optimization and adVancEment in Cognitive Health (IMPROVE-COG)" brings together the power of artificial intelligence, community partnerships, and global expertise to shift the paradigm from late-stage diagnosis to lifelong brain care.
"In the local context, dementia may go unnoticed. Many older adults and their loved ones believe memory loss is simply part of ageing, and may not realise that help is available," says Principal Investigator Dr Tan Li Feng, Senior Consultant, Division of Geriatric Medicine, Department of Medicine, Alexandra Hospital (AH). "With smaller family sizes and more older adults living alone, it can be harder to gather the corroborative observations that help us recognise the early signs of cognitive decline. This means opportunities for early support and intervention are sometimes missed."
Undercoding and missed diagnoses
Studies overseas show that in up to one-third of hospital admissions involving persons with dementia, the condition was not recorded accurately as a diagnosis[3]. Undercoding and limited clinician awareness are significant contributing factors to the underdiagnosis[4].
"Even when symptoms are present, they can be overlooked," explains Co-Principal Investigator Dr Benjamin Tan, Consultant, Division of Neurology, Department of Medicine, National University Hospital (NUH). "For example, a patient admitted for pneumonia may have been showing signs of cognitive decline that are flagged in social workers' and therapists' reports, but not formally assessed."
"Relevant patient information may also be scattered across various healthcare encounters, resulting in fragmented data and missing pieces of the puzzle."
Harnessing AI and real-world data
To counter these blind spots, the research team, including the Health Services Research & Analytics team at Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, will develop an AI-powered large language model (LLM) trained on anonymised real-world data from NUHS's DISCOVERY AI platform[5]. The screening and surveillance tool will analyse diverse clinical documentation to identify individuals at risk of mild cognitive impairment (MCI) and dementia, offering a scalable and cost-effective solution for risk stratification and population health surveillance.
"This project leverages the robust NUHS data infrastructure ecosystem that allows anonymised patient data visualisation, enabling earlier detection and identification, and improvements in clinical care delivery," says Dr Andrew Makmur, Group Chief Technology Officer, NUHS. "Ultimately, we hope that the LLM will make the process of diagnosing dementia more accurate, efficient and cost-effective."
Following the development of the LLM, the research team will work with Co-Investigator Professor Teo Hock Hai and his team from the NUS School of Computing to leverage Geographic Information System mapping and spatial analysis to explore the relationship between environmental (e.g., exposure to green spaces) and social factors and cognitive impairment and thereby guiding more effective and equitable healthcare interventions.
Launching Asia's first digital brain care tool
In line with the Healthier SG programme and recognising the precious window of opportunity for early intervention, the research team will also deploy Asia's first digital Brain Care Tool, a culturally tailored application that integrates two key innovations:
- The Brain Care Score (BCS): A holistic score that helps individuals track their brain health across physical, lifestyle, and social-emotional domains, from blood pressure and sleep to social engagement and stress. By evaluating 12 modifiable risk factors, the BCS provides a bird's eye view of overall brain health, which also covers pertinent age-related brain diseases including stroke and late-life depression.
- The Brain Care Coach: A next-generation AI-powered behavioural interventional tool that delivers personalised nudges, tracks progress, and motivates users to adopt brain-protective behaviours such as exercising, improving diet, and quitting smoking.
Originally developed and validated by the Brain Care Labs at Mass General Brigham and Harvard Medical School, the BCS is now a cornerstone of the Global Brain Care Coalition, which aims to reduce the global incidence of dementia, stroke and late-life depression by 30 per cent by 2050.
In Singapore, the tool will be localised and designed to incorporate community inputs to ensure cultural relevance and alignment with the population's needs. Individuals will be able to engage with it regardless of age, prior diagnoses or digital literacy. The research team will collaborate with community partners, including the Health District @ Queenstown, St Luke's Hospital, and Yong En Care Centre to pilot and develop the AI-coach. The research team also includes investigators from NHG Health, to scale the AI and digital tools to more hospitals when ready.
"Our long-term goal is to integrate the AI-powered screening and surveillance tool with the digital Brain Care Tool intervention across community settings," Dr Tan Li Feng says. "Dementia and poor brain health profoundly affect individuals, families and communities. There is much we can do to close existing gaps and adopt a proactive approach to give people a better chance at ageing well, with clarity, purpose and hope."
"Our vision is to empower every individual to take charge of their brain health. Through accessible, personalised tools and actionable insights, we aim to inspire and enable people to actively care for their brains, making brain health a lifelong priority."
About the National University Health System (NUHS)
The National University Health System (NUHS) aims to transform how illness is prevented and managed by discovering causes of disease, development of more effective treatments through collaborative multidisciplinary research and clinical trials, and creation of better technologies and care delivery systems in partnership with others who share the same values and vision.
Institutions in the NUHS Group include the National University Hospital, Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, Jurong Community Hospital, Alexandra Hospital and the upcoming Tengah General and Community Hospital; three National Specialty Centres – National University Cancer Institute, Singapore (NCIS), National University Heart Centre, Singapore (NUHCS) and National University Centre for Oral Health, Singapore (NUCOHS); the National University Polyclinics (NUP); Jurong Medical Centre; and three NUS health sciences schools – NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine (including the Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies), NUS Faculty of Dentistry and NUS Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health.
With member institutions under a common governance structure, NUHS creates synergies for the advancement of health by integrating patient care, health science education and biomedical research. As a Regional Health System, NUHS works closely with health and social care partners across Singapore to develop and implement programmes that contribute to a healthy and engaged population in the Western part of Singapore.
For more information, please visit www.nuhs.edu.sg.
About the National Medical Research Council (NMRC) Office
The NMRC Office is hosted within the Division of Research and Innovation under MOH Holdings Pte Ltd. It supports the NMRC in the administration of research funding from the Singapore Ministry of Health. Its vision is to translate research for better health and achieves this by promoting excellence in translational and clinical research, nurturing a vibrant research community of clinicians and scientists, and enhancing knowledge translation for better health and economic outcomes.
[1] Prevalence of dementia in Singapore: Changes across a decade - Subramaniam - 2025 - Alzheimer's & Dementia - Wiley Online Library
[2] Dementia prevention, intervention, and care: 2024 report of the Lancet standing Commission - The Lancet
[3] Under-coding of dementia and other conditions indicates scope for improved patient management: A longitudinal retrospective study of dementia patients in Australia - PubMed
[4] Existing surveillance approaches rely on International Classification of Diseases (ICD) or Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine - Clinical Terms (SNOMED-CT) codes, but these often do not fully capture and reflect the reality of the situation, due to incomplete medical documentation, miscommunication between clinical coders and physicians, and inherent limitations in coding conventions.
[5] Shorter hospital waiting times with artificial intelligence
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
NUHS SPEARHEADS AI-POWERED BRAIN CARE PROGRAMME TO TACKLE UNDERDIAGNOSIS AND IMPROVE PREVENTION OF DEMENTIA
ALULA, Saudi Arabia, Jan. 16, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- Today marks the official opening of Desert X AlUla 2026, the landmark fourth edition of the international, open-air biennial exhibition. Arts AlUla, in collaboration with Desert X, welcomes visitors to experience a stellar line-up of Saudi and international multi-generational artists whose site-responsive earthworks, sculptures, and installations will engage in a powerful dialogue with the awe-inspiring landscapes and layered heritage of AlUla.
As a premier destination rich in ancient history and breathtaking nature, AlUla, located in Northwest Saudi Arabia, solidifies its position on the global stage as a dynamic, emerging land art destination with Desert X AlUla, the region's first public art biennale, and a key highlight of the AlUla Arts Festival.
The 2026 edition of Desert X AlUla brings together 11 acclaimed artists whose diverse works reflect a wide spectrum of ideas, materials, and traditions. From monumental kinetic sculpture to sound-based explorations above and below ground, each commission is deeply rooted in relationships to AlUla's distinctive environment, further cementing Desert X AlUla's reputation as a globally significant platform for site-responsive land art.
Desert X AlUla runs until February 28, 2026, as a cornerstone of the annual AlUla Arts Festival. Curated by Wejdan Reda, Zoé Whitley, with artistic direction by Neville Wakefield, and Raneem Farsi, its fourth edition explores 'Space Without Measure.' Inspired by Kahlil Gibran, the theme fosters contemplation of imagination within AlUla's natural settings. The exhibition, set in the desert canyons of AlUla, serves as a pre-opening programme for Wadi AlFann, offering a pivotal glimpse into AlUla's plans to create a permanent land art 'Valley of the Arts.'
Hamad Alhomiedan, Director of Arts & Creative Industries at the Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU), said: "At Desert X AlUla 2026, audiences will engage with art that deeply converses with AlUla's unique landscapes and rich heritage. These compelling commissions highlight AlUla's dynamic transformation into a major global destination, where ancient and contemporary expressions converge. This exhibition is part of our broader revitalisation of AlUla as a culturally rich destination to live, work and visit and integral to positioning AlUla in the global dialogue of contemporary art and as a precursor to monumental projects like Wadi AlFann."
Participating artist/artworks are:
- Sara Abdu, A Kingdom Where No One Dies: Contours of Resonance
- Mohammad Alfaraj, What was the Question Again?
- Mohammed AlSaleem, The Thorn, AlShuruf Unit, The Triangles, Flower Bud, and Al Ahilla (courtesy of Royal Commission for Riyadh City)
- Tarek Atoui, The Water Song
- Bahraini-Danish, Bloom
- Maria Magdalena Campos-Pons, Imole Red
- Agnes Denes, The Living Pyramid
- Ibrahim El-Salahi, Haraza Tree
- Basmah Felemban, Murmur of Pebbles
- Vibha Galhotra, Future Fables
- Héctor Zamora, Tar HyPar
For further information, please contact:
Sabrine.Shaw@bursonglobal.com
AlUlaArtsFestival@bursonglobal.com
Multimedia gallery:
High-resolution photos of all 11 artists and their artworks can be found here.
About AlUla and Arts AlUla
Located 1,100 km from Riyadh, in North-West Saudi Arabia, AlUla is a place of extraordinary natural and human heritage. The vast area, covering 22,561km², includes a lush oasis valley, towering sandstone mountains and ancient cultural heritage sites dating back thousands of years to when the Lihyan and Nabataean kingdoms reigned.
The most well-known and recognised site in AlUla is Hegra, the principal southern city of the Nabataean Kingdom and Saudi Arabia's first UNESCO World Heritage Site. AlUla is also home to ancient Dadan, the capital of the Dadan and Lihyan Kingdoms and considered to be one of the most developed 1st millennium BCE cities of the Arabian Peninsula, and Jabal Ikmah, an open air library of hundreds of inscriptions and writings in many different languages. AlUla Old Town Village, a labyrinth of more than 900 mudbrick homes was developed from at least the 12th century and has been revitalised as the vibrant hub for visitors and residents.
The creation of Arts AlUla within The Royal Commission for AlUla (RCU) is a commitment to crafting the next chapters in a millennia of artistic creation – celebrating cultural inheritance and shaping a future inspired by artists built be artists. The work of Arts AlUla seeks to preserve this legacy: fuse the old with the new; the local with the international, keeping the arts central to the spirit of AlUla as a place of extraordinary natural and human heritage.
Wadi AlFann, meaning 'Valley of the Arts,' will be a global cultural destination for land art, unveiling from 2028 onwards, where era-defining works by artists from around the world will be permanently sited in the monumental landscape of AlUla, the extraordinary desert region of north-west Saudi Arabia.
** The press release content is from PR Newswire. Bastille Post is not involved in its creation. **
Desert X AlUla 2026: monumental land art exhibition opens in the ancient oasis of AlUla
