EmTech Asia 2020 Reveals Today’s Research Impacting the Future of Health Care

6 February 2020, Singapore – At ​EmTech Asia, Asia’s leading conference on emerging technologies, several key speakers will discuss how research today is impacting the future of health care. Co-organised by MIT Technology Review and Koelnmesse, EmTech Asia takes place in Singapore, 25-26 February 2020.

Addressing the Incidence of Cancer with Wearable Technology

With 18 million cases in 2018 and a predicted 30 million in 2040, cancer is a spiralling global public health and economic crisis. It is a leading cause of death and a barrier to improving life expectancy.

Of particular concern to Steven Tucker, co-founder of wearable technology company Re:Mission Health, is a strong association between cancer and the global obesity epidemic. He thinks that younger adults could be disproportionately impacted for this reason and observes that, frighteningly, no country has yet managed to reverse the increase in obesity. At EmTech Asia he will describe the relationship between cancer and obesity and discuss how wearable technology can reduce the risk of relapse in cancer survivors.

Saving Lives by Mapping the Microbiome

Inside our guts live complex ecological systems made up of bacteria, fungi, and viruses, collectively termed the microbiome. Beyond gastrointestinal conditions such as Crohn’s disease and Clostridium difficile infections, the microbiome has been implicated in many other diseases, including autism, Parkinson’s disease, and obesity.

According to Jeremy Lim, modern genetic sequencing and computing tools can help us appreciate the role of the microbiome in human health. Lim is CEO of the Asian Microbiome Library (AMiLi), Southeast Asia’s first and only stool bank library, which serves as a hub for gut microbiome innovation and therapy.

Lim will share how the microbiome saves lives and discuss why Asia needs its own research and discovery.

Healthy Ageing

Across Asia, growth of the health-care industry is outstripping that of GDP, and health-care spending could rise by a factor of 9 in some countries[1]. It is estimated that by 2030, Asia will be home to 500 million people over 65—more than 60 percent of the global population in that age group[2].

Over the past centuries, progress in medicine and sanitation, among other areas, has helped increase the human life span. Yet the age at which most health problems begin has not significantly increased.

Graham Ruby, principal investigator at Google-backed company Calico, will discuss a statistical framework that connects mortality statistics with the biology of ageing, proposed by Benjamin Gompertz in 1825 and still valid today. That framework points to an unusual model species to guide future research on the biology of healthy ageing: the naked mole rat.

In recent findings, through the analysis of more than 3,000 data points, Ruby confirmed the discovered of a non-ageing mammal, and thus an exception for biogerontology. What are the implications of this study?

Register to hear these speakers at the EmTech Asia conference, held on 25-26 February 2020 at the Marina Bay Sands Expo and Convention Centre in Singapore.

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NOTES TO EDITORS

1. Register for EmTech Asia as media ​here.

1. The full programme agenda and speaker biographies are on emtechasia.com

2.Download high-res photos here. All photos should be credited to EmTech Asia 2019.

3.Contact Theodore Woon at theo@pinpointpr.sg to request interviews with these speakers.

END NOTES

[1] Marsh and McLennan and Asia-Pacific Risk Centre (2015), Advancing into the golden years: cost of healthcare for Asia-Pacific’s elderly. https://www.mmc.com/content/dam/mmc-web/Files/APRC...

[2] Temasek: https://www.ecosperity.sg/content/dam/ecosperity/e...