NCCS Pharmacy team takes lead in AI solutions at national healthcare hackathon

The National Cancer Centre Singapore’s pharmacy team won the 1st prize at a national healthcare hackathon in July 2025 

The National Cancer Centre Singapore’s (NCCS) Pharmacy team recently emerged as champions at a nationwide healthcare hackathon with their proposal to use artificial intelligence (AI) to manage high-cost oncology pharmacy inventory. 

The inaugural Rock and Heal Challenge 2025, organised by Centre for Healthcare Innovation and Amazon Web Services, saw 50 teams across Singapore participating to showcase innovative solutions aimed at transforming healthcare.

Team NCCS clinched the top prize with their tool, PRISM (Predictive Reliable Inventory & Supply Management). 

But why does pharmacy inventory in cancer centres require innovation? And what can AI do that pharmacists can’t? 

The challenges faced by oncology pharmacists   

Behind the scenes at the NCCS Oncology Pharmacy, where the team works hard to ensure cancer drugs are available for patients when they need them.

Cancer drugs contribute to overall healthcare spending. In Singapore, cancer drugs make up 35% of drug spending in the public healthcare sector. Between 2017 and 2021, spending increased by 90% to reach $275 million, and costs continue to rise. [1]  

Managing cancer drug supply is very different from other drugs. Cancer drugs are complex and often carry a cytotoxic load that kills cancer cells. In addition, patients’ treatment plans are highly personalised and can change depending on their condition and how they respond to treatment over time. As a result, pharmacists often need to stock and dispense a wide variety of drugs from different suppliers to meet the demand.  

For pharmacists, one of the main goals is to ensure that the right medicines are available when patients need them. However, cancer drugs are expensive and have a short shelf life so when they expire, unused, they must be discarded. This has both a financial and an environmental cost. 

Currently, when planning inventory, oncology pharmacists rely on manual ordering processes, which take into consideration historical usage data, physician notes, supplier updates, and scientific literature. But these manual methods cannot keep pace with rising costs, fluctuating supply chains and the everchanging needs of patients. 

From workshop idea to AI prototype

This challenge motivated Miko Thum, Head of the Department of Pharmacy at NCCS and her team to explore how technology could help. 

“There were two things that were important– that my team felt empowered and confident in their decision making, and that they could stop working late nights and go home to their families!” 

Pharmacists need oversight of physician’s notes, patients’ tolerance and response, drug collection patterns, published studies, treatment guidelines and drug availability in order to plan inventory.

After attending workshops on Amazon’s PartyRock, a no-code AI platform, Miko began prototyping a tool that could make recommendations to optimise drug inventory and reduce wastage. She built it to incorporate information from systems that pharmacists access to plan inventory, with data points from physician’s notes, patients’ tolerance and response, drug collection patterns, published studies, treatment guidelines, and drug availability. 

She shared the concept with Lim Tau Lee, Senior Pharmacist at NCCS, who expanded and refined the tool by incorporating more data points and drugs for validation, including supplier information on potential shortages and geopolitical issues. 

“We used it to mimic the brain of a pharmacist, with input from physicians, literature and vendors. This allowed us to build a model that could go far beyond what one single pharmacist could achieve, and make recommendations that could revolutionise oncology drug inventory,” shared Tau Lee. 

The team enhanced the prototype using engineering techniques learnt from the workshops, enabling it to simulate both human-thinking and statistical models. This allowed the tool to deliver clear, context-aware justifications for its recommendations. 

Meet PRISM 

NCCS’ Pharmacy Team at the Rock and Heal Challenge 2025 (Clockwise from top left, Miko Thum, Lim Tau Lee, Afidah Bte Manaf and Assoc Prof Lita Chew)

The NCCS team led by Tau Lee, with Miko Thum, Afidah Bte Manaf, Senior Principal Pharmacist at NCCS, and Associate Professor Lita Chew, Group Chief Pharmacist of SingHealth, entered their AI-powered inventory tool, PRISM into the Rock and Heal Challenge. 

Their video pitch was selected as one of the top entries and the team advanced to the semi-finals where they competed with five other healthcare teams.   

The five teams of semi-finalists who presented different AI innovations to transform healthcare at the Rock and Heal Challenge 2025. 

In their final presentation, the NCCS team highlighted how PRISM delivers a powerful “triple bottom line” impact of helping people, profit and the planet. 

People – By ensuring that medicines are in stock when patients need them while reducing workload and stress on pharmacy staff.

Profit – By reducing unnecessary wastage and saving costs for the healthcare system.

Planet – By minimising overstocking, the amount of expired, hazardous and cytotoxic drugs that may cause environmental harm is reduced. 

These compelling points propelled Team NCCS to win the top prize.

“I am so proud of what the team has achieved to take real life challenges and use adaptive problem solving to propose a solution that could completely revolutionise how our pharmacists work,” said Prof Lita Chew. 

A catalyst for change in pharmacy 

The NCCS Pharmacy team is now working with SingHealth’s Office of Digital Empowerment to refine and integrate PRISM into existing hospital systems. As PRISM moves beyond its proof-of-concept stage, the team is building an in-house version to ensure data security and compliance, especially since the app requires sensitive data such as patient and physician information. 

This win has also inspired a wave of innovation across the department. The Pharmacy team is exploring the potential of other AI applications, such as an AI-powered calculator to help patients understand out-of-pocket drug costs, smart medication delivery systems and AI-powered bots to automate and handle repetitive tasks. These innovations would free up pharmacists to focus more on patient education and counselling, enhancing quality of care and improving patient experience.  

“We know that with increased patient load, we can’t keep working the same way we did before. Innovation is not optional, it is our responsibility to patients and future generations of pharmacists to improve how we have been doing things,” said Miko. 

A culture of innovation 

NCCS pharmacy staff have embraced their roles as “citizen developers”, using their day-to-day experience to identify challenges and apply creative solutions. 

Now frontline pharmacy staff like Tau Lee, Afidah and others have embraced their roles as “citizen developers”, using their day-to-day experience with patients to identify challenges and apply creative solutions. By combining clinical insight with digital tools, they’re helping to shape smarter, more responsive systems that improve care delivery and empower pharmacy teams.

On 28 September 2025, the NCCS Pharmacy team with colleagues from the SingHealth Office for Service Transformation, emerged winners of the healthcare hackathon SGHackITRx2025 - for their project on a Chemotherapy Assistance Reminder and Empowerment + (CARE+) platform.

[1]Khoo, D. (2022, June 18). Balance needed between allowing liberal use of cancer drugs and affordability. Ministry of Health Singapore. Retrieved from https://www.moh.gov.sg/news-highlights/details/balance-needed-between-allowing-liberal-use-of-cancer-drugs-and-affordability