SINGAPORE – 22 APR 2026
1. The NUS–SYNAPXE–IMDA AI Innovation Challenge 2026 concluded on 11 April 2026 with AI-enabled solutions for cardiac patient monitoring, personalised health intervention for elderly adults and streamlined workflows for clinicians taking home the top prizes.
2. Jointly organised by the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business Analytics Centre and various industry partners since 2014, the Challenge aims to drive innovation and create impactful solutions for communities. The 12th annual edition of the competition welcomed 880 students from 18 institutes, including universities, polytechnics and junior colleges across Singapore, forming 181 teams to develop AI-powered solutions for chronic conditions such as diabetes, hypertension and high lipid levels, which affect about 1.8 million people in Singapore.
3. Team ASSURE, comprising six students from the NUS Master of Science in Business Analytics programme, won the top prize of $10,000 for AssureCare Suite, a comprehensive AI-enabled home monitoring platform for elderly heart patients recovering between clinical visits. The platform features AssureBot, a voice-enabled AI companion that conducts daily check-ins, captures symptom updates and vital readings through natural speech, and provides medication and routine care reminders. This is complemented by a Caregiver Portal offering a centralised view of patient status, trend summaries, and escalation alerts.
NUS-SYNAPXE-IMDA AI Innovation Challenge 2026
4. Launched in January 2026, the Challenge culminated in March with eight finalist teams receiving two weeks of personalised mentorship from industry and public sector experts across multiple organisations to refine and strengthen their solutions.
5. This year also marked a milestone for the Challenge, with Junior College students participating for the first time alongside universities and polytechnics. The expanded reach reflects the Challenge's growing role in nurturing a new generation of problem-solvers across Singapore's education landscape, bringing fresh perspectives to some of healthcare's most pressing challenges.
6. To ensure that their solutions are both practical and relevant, students were encouraged to use the MERaLiON and SEA-LION Large Language Models (LLMs) (see Annex B (71.74KB) for details). These models, developed under the National Multimodal Large Language Model Programme (NMLP) supported by IMDA and the National Research Foundation (NRF), are designed to handle the complex language-switching communication styles and cultural nuances common in local settings. The models reflect Singapore’s and Southeast Asia’s diverse cultures, languages, and values.
7. By understanding local languages and context, the models can enable AI‑powered healthcare solutions that are not only linguistically accurate but also empathetic and culturally sensitive. This supports the development of more personalised, inclusive, and accessible healthcare in Singapore.
8. The MERaLiON and SEA-LION models were widely used by the students, including the top eight teams, to develop their solutions for this Challenge.
Four Student Teams Clinched Top Prizes with Innovative Healthcare Solutions
9. Hosted at Synapxe’s Terrarium, the final round of presentations was evaluated by a distinguished panel of industry experts from the public, healthcare and academic sectors, who assessed the strategic and creative use of AI, as well as each prototype’s potential impact, feasibility and relevance to real-world healthcare needs.
10. Team SilverGait from NUS and Team Med-SEAL from NUS received the second and third prizes of $7,000 and $5,000 respectively. SilverGait's multimodal, agentic AI system supports frailty detection, risk stratification, and personalised intervention for elderly adults in the community through continuous monitoring via computer vision and wearable data. Med-SEAL's AI-powered diagnostic support platform streamlines clinical workflows by automating preliminary reporting for clinicians while providing patients with clearer, culturally relevant explanations of their medical results, built on interoperable healthcare standards and multilingual capabilities within Southeast Asia.
11. The NMLP Special Award and a cash prize of $5,000 was awarded to NUS’s Team Wait For A Name on the most effective and innovative use of the SEA-LION and MERaLiON large language models. Their solution, VitalSense, is a privacy-first, browser-based multimodal AI wellness assessment platform that enables users to complete a structured health screening in under five minutes using only a standard webcam, microphone, and self-reported vitals, without requiring a clinic visit.
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