MOH honours top doctor-researchers
By Chen Huifen and Joanne Chiew
The Business Times
27 March 2008
Page 10
DOCTORS looking to pursue a career in research today would probably find the going much easier than their pioneers did.
As some of this year's winners of the inaugural National Medical Excellence Award lamented, many of them were clueless when they started doing research over a decade ago.</p><p> 'We had no money, no idea how to do research,' recalled Singapore Eye Research Institute director Donald Tan. 'So we did everything from scratch.'
A recipient of the National Outstanding Clinician Scientist Award, Prof Tan, who is also deputy director of the Singapore National Eye Centre, started doing research 18 years ago. Back then, research was viewed as a sidekick to clinical practice, with no proper laboratory set-up and little or no funding support to speak of.
But he and his peers were motivated by the desire to come up with better treatments for patients.
'There was nothing on paediatric nephrology when I went in,' said National University Hospital's (NUH) paediatric nephrology head Yap Hui Kim. 'But I saw all these children coming in and dying - in those days being diagnosed with renal failure, for a child, was a death sentence. So we started from scratch. We had to do research. There was nothing, literally nothing at all. Research was the only way to begin, to find a cure.'
Prof Yap is a recipient of the National Outstanding Clinician Award.
With Singapore's growing emphasis on research, clinician-scientists like Prof Tan and Prof Yap can look forward to greater support. As part of the island's second phase in biomedical sciences drive, there is a need for more clinician-scientists, or doctor-researchers, in order to facilitate translational research to bring scientific discoveries to useful therapies or applications for the patients.
And steps are being taken to encourage the breeding of such talent. The National Medical Research Council (NMRC) disburses more than $60 million in grants a year for hospitals and tertiary institutions to carry out research.
That's not counting the $125 million over five years committed by the National Research Foundation to carry out translational and clinical research in cancer, cardiovascular/metabolic disorders, neurosciences, infectious diseases and eye diseases.
And there are also other avenues such as the regular grant calls by A*Star where clinician-scientists can compete for funding.
'My first research grant was $8,000,' said NUH senior orthopaedic surgery consultant Lee Eng Hin. 'Now we have grants in the millions.’
Prof Lee, a recipient of the National Outstanding Clinician Mentor Award, also lauds the Clinician Scientist Investigator (CSI) Award as a useful support scheme.Introduced by the NMRC and A*Star's biomedical research council, the CSI award includes a research grant and compensates the doctor for the time lost in seeing patients.
There are also numerous other scholarships and support programmes, including more space being planned for new laboratories and integrated research facilities near the NUH and the Singapore General Hospital.
The start of the National Medical Excellence Awards by the Ministry of Health is also one of the initiatives to encourage more doctors to explore research.
Apart from Prof Lee, Prof Yap and Prof Tan, others lauded for their clinical and scientific work are: National Cancer Centre of Singapore founding director Soo Khee Chee (National Outstanding Clinician Mentor Award), an early psychosis intervention programme team from the Institute of Mental Health and a perinatal team from the KK Women's and Children's Hospital (both for National Clinical Excellence Team Award).
'There are many opportunities for doctors who really want to pursue this line,' added Prof Lee.
