Medicon Village represented in Singapore, a fast-growing market for Swedish life science exports
Swedish life science exports to Singapore have surged by 2610% over the past decade, reflecting the city-state’s growing importance as a market for innovation. During Sweden’s first state visit to Singapore, Medicon Village joined a key delegation exploring healthcare collaborations, aiming to drive cutting-edge advancements.
Singapore is increasingly becoming an important market for Swedish life science. According to Vinnova’s latest report on the life science sector in Sweden, Swedish life science exports to Singapore grew by a staggering 2610% from the previously reported period 2011-2014 to the current period 2019-2022, representing an increase from 0.8 billion SEK to 20.9 billion SEK in the respective four-year periods. Despite its small size of 6 million people, Singapore has now grown to become Sweden’s eighth largest export market.
It was thus timely that the Healthcare Innovation & Thought Leader delegation was in Singapore last week. Organised by Swecare, Business Sweden, and Vinnova, the delegation visit brought together health and life science actors from across Sweden to explore collaboration opportunities with their Singaporean counterparts. Sarah Lidé, Deputy CEO of Medicon Village Innovation, was among the 30 delegates representing health and life science companies, public sector organisations, hospitals, and universities.
Over four days between 19-22 November, the delegation visited the three national health clusters of Singapore – SingHealth, National University Health System (NUHS) and National Healthcare Group (NHG) – and were given insight as to how they engaged with healthcare innovation through living labs and innovation centres. They also met with research institutions such as the Genomic Institute of Singapore, the Diagnostics Development (DxD) Hub, the Experimental Drug Development Centre (EDDC), and the Advanced Cell Therapy and Research Institute, Singapore (ACTRIS).
Common themes that emerged from these visits were a focus on shifting the centre of gravity away from the acute care hospital towards the community, with a focus on delivering appropriate care in the right setting, to manage rising healthcare challenges driven by an ageing population and increasing healthcare costs. This was expressed in various examples of how healthcare systems in Singapore are letting general practitioners (GPs), polyclinics and community hospitals play a larger role, while allowing hospitals to focus on specialist care or emergency cases. There was also a focus on how to implement and scale validated health and life science innovations in the Singapore healthcare sector, that would allow companies to have a robust reference customer when expanding to overseas markets, as well as robust discussions on the pathway ahead for the use of artificial intelligence and cell and gene therapies in healthcare.
The delegation visit coincided with Sweden’s first-ever state visit to Singapore, led by King Carl XVI Gustaf. The state visit aims to strengthen cooperation between the two countries in trade, innovation, investment, and the green transition.
To underline the commitment of both countries to further collaboration, during the state visit a government-to-government Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) on healthcare innovation collaboration was signed by Sweden’s State Secretary for Healthcare, Ms Miriam Söderström, and Singapore’s Permanent Secretary for Policy and Development, Ms Wei Lin Lai.
“There is a clear common ground between Singapore and Sweden, given that both are relatively small countries and global innovation leaders, they share a strategic interest in health and life science, and they experience common health challenges that need to be addressed through more preventive and population health efforts and new ways of delivering care. I am keen to see how Medicon Village can build on this visit to play a role in concrete initiatives and collaborations, particularly within areas such as oncology, cell and gene therapies, neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s, and digital health, that will support the aim of the MoU in strengthening both countries’ innovative capabilities within health and life science,” says Sarah Lidé.