The Ministry of Health (MOH), Brunei Darussalam and EVYD Technology, a healthcare artificial intelligence (AI) and Big Data company, have officially opened the MOH Intelligence Hub at EVYD Campus in Jerudong recently.
The opening of the Hub is part of the ministry’s efforts to strengthen the resilience of Brunei’s healthcare ecosystem. The co-located Hub will house the nation’s Epidemic Intelligence and Response Unit (Disease Control Division), functioning as a surveillance centre to monitor the nationwide spread of diseases; the Climate Change Adaptation and Resilience Unit; and the Digital Health Unit. In the future, more government health units could be housed in the Hub, including the Behavioural Insights Programme, the National Clinical Research Unit and the Non-Communicable Disease Unit.
The MOH Intelligence Hub is a physical symbol of the ministry’s strategic vision and forward planning. It evinces MOH’s courage to embrace and adopt new technologies, as part of its commitment to demonstrate Brunei’s leadership in digital health transformation. This is but the latest initiative to improve Bruneians’ health. The ministry will continue to proactively leverage technology to further propel the world-leading digital optimisation of Brunei’s healthcare ecosystem.
The Epidemic Intelligence and Response Unit Surveillance Centre leverages on a recently developed automated communicable disease surveillance system linked with clinical and laboratory data from Bru-HIMS to track and monitor the emergence and spread of over 50 infectious diseases in real-time.
At the opening ceremony, the MOH and EVYD Technology also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) with the National University of Singapore Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health in a cross-border collaboration to strengthen health systems. The MOU entails building the research ecosystem and infrastructure to conduct research relevant to policy-making, organising and participating in joint academic and scientific activities, and identifying opportunities for knowledge transfer, capability building and joint research and development in areas of mutual interest.
This will include:
- Building the research ecosystem and infrastructure to conduct research relevant to policy-making.
- Organising and participating in joint academic and scientific activities; and
- Identifying opportunities for knowledge transfer, capability building and joint research and development (R&D) in areas of mutual interest.
The MOU will be effective for two years initially and will renew automatically for successive periods of two years after each contract period unless terminated by any of the three organisations.