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Medical Highlights

2022

  • The Singapore Integrated 24-Hour Activity Guidelines for Early Childhood is launched to set a strong foundation for healthy lifestyle behaviours and good long-term health outcomes in young children under seven years of age, and improve national health.
  • The KKH Children’s Blood and Cancer Centre is launched to advance research, education and clinical care for patients in Singapore and the region. It is one of the largest paediatric blood and cancer centres in South-east Asia, and brings expertise in childhood blood and cancer diseases under one roof.
  • The KK Women’s Health and Wellness Centre (WHWC) is officially launched. Run by multidisciplinary teams, the WHWC is a one-stop centre providing comprehensive and confidential sexual health services.
  • KKH is part of a study indicating that a substantial proportion of children studied no longer engaged in outdoor play, one to three months after the COVID-19 circuit breaker in Singapore. They were observed to have accumulated more body mass one year on. The findings highlight the importance of sustaining healthy lifestyle behaviours in children, in order to achieve good long-term health outcomes.

2021

  • The Singapore Integrated 24-Hour Activity Guidelines for Children and Adolescents is launched to improve health and promote adoption of healthy lifestyle habits for children and adolescents aged seven to 18 years of age.
  • KKH and SGH launch FertStart, a research study supported by the Prime Minister’s Office. It investigates strategies to improve fertility knowledge and parenthood intentions in couples, with the aim to encourage young couples to start their family early and boost birth rates.
  • KKH launches the one-STop Obstetric high RisK (STORK) Centre to provide integrated care for women with complex and high risk pregnancies, to meet the increasing demand for holistic tertiary-level obstetric care.
  • KKH opens the Musculoskeletal Centre and Eye Centre - one-stop facilities that deliver early and preventive care, and management of orthopaedic and spine as well as eye conditions.
  • KKH and other institutions, with collaborators from Cambridge University, identify live microbes across fetal organs that stimulate activation of fetal T-cells during the second trimester of gestation. This has broad implications on the establishment of immune competency and priming before birth.

2020

  • KKH launches Singapore's first set of guidelines on physical activity and exercise during pregnancy, to improve health outcomes of mother and child.
  • KKH offers teleconsultation to medically eligible patients as an effort to continue provision of care during COVID-19.
  • KKH Infectious Disease Service find that a generally well infant with COVID-19 can contaminate the environment, in particular, the surfaces closer to the child’s bed with the virus. Findings were published in the Annals of Internal Medicine.
  • A research study collaboration by KKH’s Department of Reproductive Medicine; with scientists from A*STAR’s Singapore Immunology Network (SIgN) and researchers in China, have debunked the assumption that immune system cells in the body are of the same origin during fetal development. The findings of this study have been published in the scientific journal, Nature.
  • KKH Department of Emergency Medicine publish an article on the Emergeny Department’s (ED) experience with adapting to the unique challenges of COVID-19. The article was published in the Emergency Medicine Journal.
  • KKH-developed novel clinical protocol to screen and triage women with threatened miscarriages, is published in Scientific Reports. This safe and effective protocol revolutionised the management of women with threatened miscarriage, and is readily adapted for use with only a single blood test.
  • A multidisciplinary team at KKH devise the SMART (Skin Mark clipped Axillary nodes Removal Technique) surgical technique to enhance the safety and cost-effectiveness of lymph node removal for women with advanced stage breast cancer.
  • Researchers and clinician-scientists from KKH and collaborating institutions identify a pivotal “fetal-like” reprogramming of the tumour ecosystem, where liver cancers adopt a fetal-like environment to escape immune surveillance and grow more aggressively.
  • KKH and collaborating institutions discover that mothers can pass allergies to offspring while they are developing in the womb. The finding is reported in Science, and hints at why infants exhibit allergies early in life, and suggests possible interventions.
  • The Singapore Obstetrics and Gynaecology Research Network (SORN), is established by KKH, SGH and the National University Hospital (NUH) to improve health outcomes of future generations of women, children and families in Singapore.