The Singapore Eye Research Institute (SERI), an arm of the Singapore National Eye Centre (SNEC), aims to be one of the world’s top five eye research institutes in five years.

As Asia plays a growing role in worldwide economic growth, the same thing will happen in research, says SERI director Wong Tien Yin.

“Asia is a very important part of the equation and Singapore has the ability to lead it,” he says. “SERI prepared the ground for this for about 15 years before bio-medical research was identified in Singapore as a useful engine for growth.”

SERI is one of the largest eye and vision research institutes in the Asia-Pacific in terms of staff numbers, grant income, the number of research initiatives and the output from such projects, according to Prof Wong.

For instance, SERI is collaborating with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*Star) on a project dubbed Singapore Advanced Laboratory for Ocular Research (Sailor), which can analyse eye images to identify diseases such as glaucoma.

Sailor, which may be in use at polyclinics in the next one to two years, could also be picked up by private GP groups and eventually, marketed in the region, Prof Wong said.

One area in which Singapore has an edge over other Asian countries is its multi-ethnic population, he reckons: “Therapeutics and diagnostics that have been tested in the West may not be directly applicable (to Asia).”

While bigger and emerging markets such as China and India offer lower costs, there are other issues to contend with in these countries, such as regulatory and legal framework and protection of intellectual property (IP) rights, he says. Singapore, on the other hand, is known for clear government guidelines and strong IP protection.

“We are more cost effective for a pan-Asian market because we have the ability for the industry to test diagnostics and therapeutics in one city with three major ethnic groups,” Prof Wong says. “We have positioned ourselves as a laboratory for the whole Asian market.”

The number of patients from the region visiting SNEC has increased to almost 15,000 a year, as travelling to Singapore instead of the West is cheaper.

More foreign patients are also going to SNEC for complex eye and vision procedures, which is a step in the right direction for Singapore’s medical tourism industry.

“The way medical tourism has started in Singapore, the model cannot be sustained in the next 10 years,” Prof Wong says.

Singapore has to lift its game by offering advanced techniques so it can stay ahead of the curve as other countries in the region also boost their capabilities, he says.