The Cambridge Centre for Advanced Research and Education in Singapore (CARES), the University of Cambridge’s research center in Singapore, announced BloodCounts! with the National University Health System (NUHS) and SingHealth on October 26.

The project will be formally launched on October 29.

BloodCounts! aims to develop AI models from routine complete blood count tests for earlier disease detection and prognosis.

NUHS will provide anonymised blood-count and clinical data.

NUHS and SingHealth are the first Singapore members of the BloodCounts! consortium.

The Cambridge research program is hosted at CARES’ Centre for AI in Medicine. The consortium, which includes scientists from NHS Blood and Transplant, won a 2021 Trinity Challenge prize for infectious-disease detection.

Singapore’s National Research Foundation supports the project through its S$120 million (US$93.9 million) AI-for-Science program, which has backed other research collaborations.

A review has found promising retrospective results for AI using routine blood tests, but limited prospective validation and limited routine clinical use.

Under Singapore privacy guidance, sufficiently anonymised data is generally treated as non-personal data, but organizations must still manage the risk of re-identification.

🔗 Source: Cambridge Centre for Advanced Research and Education in Singapore (CARES)