From 12 to 14 November 2025, the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (SSHSPH) welcomed representatives from the National Institute of Public Health (NIPH), Cambodia, for a series of engaging and productive dialogues. Led by the Director of NIPH His Excellency Professor Chhea Chhorvann, the visit marked a significant step towards strengthening the partnership and collaboration between NIPH and SSHSPH, fostering the MOU recently signed in April between our institutions.
Postgraduate programmes in public health
The delegation from NIPH engaged in insightful discussions with representatives from SSHSPH Education Office where Dr. Te Vannarath, Head of the School of Public Health (NIPH), shared about the postgraduate programmes offered at NIPH. Representatives from the two institutions shared insights and lessons learnt about designing postgraduate programmes and developing public health professionals; both institutions agreed to explore opportunities to collaboratively support PhD students.
Digital transformation for institutional management systems
After listening to Associate Professor Liow Chee Hsiang, Vice Dean (Education), share about institutional management systems at SSHSPH, the NIPH team shared their visions for digital transformation of their academic and administrative management systems to support research at the institutional level. Afterwards, the team met with Assistant Professor Swapnil Mishra, joint appointment at SSHSPH and Institute of Data Science, Department of Statistics and Data Science to explore research collaborations and capacity-building activities in data analytics and data science.
On 14 November, the NIPH team visited the National University Health System (NUHS) campus where the NUHS team led by Dr. Ling Zheng Jye, Chief Medical Informatics Officer, shared their experience in the digital transformation of the hospital management systems and health analytics.
The NIPH team also met with Associate Professor Danny Poo, Founding Director of the Centre for Health Informatics, NUS, to gather insights and explore possible collaboration in setting up postgraduate programme in health informatics at NIPH.
Research collaboration and capacity-building
Potential research collaborations were discussed in the meeting with Associate Professor Müller-Riemenschneider Falk, Vice Dean (Research), and Associate Professor Kavita Venkataraman, joint appointment at SSHSPH and NUS Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine.
The NIPH team also met with Dr. Priya Balasubramaniam, Director – Strategy, External Collaborations and Growth to learn about the Leadership in Antibiotic Discovery and Development (LEAD) Programme – a peer-to-peer exchange fellowships on AMR stewardship and open science drug discovery.
The NIPH, through its School of Public Health, is committed to advancing education, research, and innovation to strengthen Cambodia’s public health system. We are excited to continue building strong partnership with NIPH and looking forward to transforming the ideas from this visit into reality!