Featured Stories | Singapore Economic Development Board

CREDIT: Affymetrix

Global Manufacturing Site for Research Instruments

Singapore offers strong engineering capabilities that enable companies to do product reengineering and scale up their manufacturing operations. We have built up a strong base of 30 medical technology manufacturers that employ more than 8,300 skilled workers in Singapore. Today, Singapore is one of the world’s leading manufacturing sites for research tools and diagnostics instruments, supplying more than 70 percent of the world's micro-arrays and 40 per cent of the global demand for mass spectrometry instruments. Global leaders such as Affymetrix, Illumina, Applied Biosystems and Bio-Rad have opened world scale manufacturing facilities in Singapore.

CREDIT: Fluidigm

Global Leaders' Choice Location for R&D

Singapore presents a one-stop location for companies who seek to address regional and global healthcare needs with innovative systems and solutions. Companies are able to tap on innovative ideas from partnerships with public-sector researchers and clinicians, leading technologies provided by global industry leaders and test-bedding infrastructure in hospitals. Global leaders in medical devices have invested in Singapore to develop products that can be customised for the regional and global markets.

Companies such as Becton Dickinson and Siemens Medical Instruments have established corporate R&D centres and are staffed by over 50 researchers. In 2009, Hill-Rom expanded their R&D operations in Singapore to include two new R&D centres, focusing on emerging market product development for patient support systems and respiratory care. In 2011, Vela Diagnostics, a newly established diagnostics company, established their molecular diagnostics R&D centre in Singapore.

CREDIT: ST Microelectronics

CREDIT: Institute of
Bioengineering and
Nanotechnology

Homegrown Innovation

Homegrown companies and research institutes have received global recognition for their innovative research and medical devices. They include HealthSTATS International, Quattro Vascular and the Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology.

Singapore's Institute of Bioengineering and Nanotechnology (IBN) succeeded in developing an all-in-one rapid gene diagnosis device that enables polymerase chain reaction (PCR) gene detection within 17 minutes, which is radically faster than conventional laboratory methods. IBN is actively exploring commercialization opportunities for this highly promising product. This device can also be adapted for other infectious diseases such as SARS, HIV and Hepatitis B, by extracting nucleic acids from other body fluids such as blood, urine or saliva. The research was published in Nature Medicine in October 2007. In November 2008, MP Biomedicals signed an agreement with A*Star to commercialise the device.

Quattro Vascular, a subsidiary of TriReme Medical, received FDA approval for their medical device, Chocolate percutaneous transluminal angioplasty (PTA) balloon catheter. This is the first implantable device developed in Singapore to be approved by the FDA. Chocolate is designed to reduce strain and trauma in vessel walls during dilatation using a novel modular constraining structure. It will be marketed and distributed through TriReme Medical which is based in the US and Singapore.

In 2010, HealthSTATS International, a Singapore-based bio-monitoring device company, received with FDA approvals for two of its products CASPal and CASPro (CASP – Central Aortic Systolic Pressure). Both products are non-invasive blood pressure monitoring systems which is designed to measure the Central Aortic Systolic Pressure (CASP) and additional arterial pulse waveform related indices based on arterial tonometry at the radial artery of the wrist.