By Duke Medicine News and Communications

OUTRAM, SINGAPORE -- A groundbreaking ceremony held here today marked the beginning of construction for the Duke-National University of Singapore Graduate Medical School, a collaboration between the two institutions aimed at educating future physicians and promoting biomedical research.

The Singapore government will provide $310 million over seven years to establish the new school, which will have a curriculum patterned after that of the Duke University School of Medicine. R. Sanders Williams, M.D., dean of Duke's medical school, will serve as dean of the new institution.

In his remarks at the ceremony, Tony Chew, chairman of the governing board of the new medical school, said the school is expected to be completed in the summer of 2009 and will include 75,000 square feet of space for labs, classrooms and administrative offices. "The architectural consultants for the job have done extensive work at Duke University and have drawn inspiration from both the American and local contexts," he said.

The new medical school is being built on the National University of Singapore's Outram campus. The facility will be adjacent to Singapore General Hospital (SGH), the tertiary-care teaching hospital affiliated with SingHealth, one of the country's two main health care delivery systems.

"The physical proximity will facilitate close synergistic efforts between investigators at the school and the doctors and physician-scientists already on the SGH campus," said Williams. "This collaboration will be further enhanced by existing partnerships between the National University of Singapore and other world-class researchers."

Shih Choon Fong, president and professor of the National University of Singapore, said, "The school's faculty, researchers and students will, over time, increase Singapore's talent base and complement Singapore's ongoing efforts to become an education hub in the region."

Scientists from Duke will be encouraged to conduct research at the new medical school, as well as to collaborate with academic and private research groups at Singapore's Biopolis, a $300 million city-within-a-city that will house academic research institutes, life science companies and pharmaceutical research labs, The Singapore government is funding the construction of Biopolis as part of its $4.4 billion commitment to accelerating development in the biomedical sciences. The government also is offering incentives to lure companies to the country, and is funding research institutes devoted to genomics, bioinformatics, bioengineering, nanotechnology, molecular and cell biology, and cancer therapies.

Singapore, with an economy and health system similar to the United Kingdom and France, has a population of 4.2 million people. Singapore's two health care systems care for about 80 percent of the island's residents. The National Health Group is made up of four hospitals and two research centers. SingHealth comprises three hospitals and five research centers.