The first Industry Advisory Board (IAB) meeting for Centre for Digital Health & Health Informatics (CDHHI), School of Medicine, IMU was inaugurated on 22 September 2023. The meeting was attended by all 5 distinguished IAB members who were appointed by the university, namely
– Dr Raymond Choy (Chief Executive Officer of Doc2Us)
– Dr Mohd Aizuddin (Head of Unit, Digital Health Research & Innovation Unit (DHRi) of Institute for Clinical Research)
– Freddy Loo (Director of Customer Engagement AI and Analytics of Fusionex International)
– Dr Tan Lay Kim (Senior Research Officer, Sector for Biostatistics & Data Repository of National Institutes of Health Malaysia)
– Dr Shaun Kuan (former Chief Product Officer of MyBiomark)
The event was officiated by Prof Winnie Chee and graced by other distinguished members of the Senior Management team including Prof Ian Symonds, Prof Sharifah Sulaiha, Prof Gnanajothy, Prof Chin Beek Yoke and Mr Mohammad Ridzuan.
The team from CDHHI (Prof Patrice Boursier, Prof Zaharin Yusoff, Dr Tan Ee Xion, Dr Yam Wai Keat, Dr Chuah Tong Kuan and Dr Fong Pui Kwan) attended the entire IAB meeting together with the 5 IAB members.
The IAB meeting was conducted in two different sessions with each session focused on a specific programme.
First Session
Focused on Postgraduate Studies in Health informatics and Analytics (PgHIA) which comprises 3 tiers of degree – Postgraduate Certificate, Postgraduate Diploma and Master.
This section of the meeting was chaired by the Programme Director, Dr Yam Wai Keat
Second Session
Focused on Bachelor in Digital Health (Hons)
Discussion was led by Dr Tan Ee Xion, the Programme Director.
The IAB members proposed various areas to be included in the programmes to enhance job skills and employability for our students. These include emerging technologies and Artificial Intelligence (AI) topics such as prompt engineering to keep up with generative AI; scientific communication and design thinking skills; various relevant data standards and coding such as ICD-10/ICD-11, data security, data and AI ethics and health data exchange.
The discussion also encouraged creating relevant digital health research together with the industry and ministry partners to address real questions from the healthcare users. It is expected that the exploration of ready datasets from the partners would speed up health informatics & analytics research.
The IAB members also proposed partnering with industry to create start-up projects as incubators and eventually lead to spin-off companies. This would create opportunities for student internships while promoting the exchange of ideas from both industry and university to foster and build a strong foundation of collaborative support and communications.
In the topic of using the Body of Knowledge (BOK) in the MQA Computing Standard as a guideline, the team was advised to ensure the computing knowledge is applied into healthcare industry to make it relevant to the needs of the programmes. All IAB members also unanimously agree to be more involved at IMU in capacity building on an annual basis.
Reported by Dr Yam Wai Keat
