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International Physician Update
| PHYSICIAN AND PATIENT SERVICES |
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Hopkins-Style Patient Care in Singapore
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| IMC's medical director Alex Chang chats with a patient. |
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As an oncologist at the Johns Hopkins Hospital, Wen-son Hsieh, M.D., Ph.D, would have steered his patients to the highest level of care offered by his colleagues in Baltimore. Now, as a clinician and researcher in Singapore, he is proud to say that the same level of Hopkins-style care can be found in this small but scientifically burgeoning nation.
The Johns Hopkins-National University Hospital International Medical Centre (IMC), located in a wing of the NUH in Singapore, opened four years ago to offer state-of-the-art inpatient and outpatient care to patients with cancer.
“This partnership between the NUH and Johns Hopkins gives us access to Hopkins excellence right here in Southeast Asia,” says Hsieh, who is spending three years at the Hopkins patient care facility, seeing patients and conducting research on the Epstein-Barr virus. The E-B virus triggers certain lymphomas that are rare among U.S. patients but deadly in Asians.
IMC operates as a private hospital located within NUH, offering local and international patients the latest cancer care and clinical protocols. All physicians and nurses at IMC meet Hopkins’ School of Medicine credentials. A member of the Cancer Therapeutics Research Group in Singapore since November 2002, IMC became the first Singapore facility to be awarded three levels of ISO (International Organization for Standardization) certification.
With 18 inpatient beds and outpatient chemotherapy chairs, and 20 credentialed and practicing physicians from Hopkins and NUH, this facility provides a platform for physicians to merge ideas, technologies and research, says Lawrence Patrick, M.H.A., director of operations at IMC. “Now, some patients who would have traveled abroad for care have the option of going to IMC, either because they are local patients or because of difficulties in traveling to the United States,” he says. Currently, the patient population at IMC is almost equally split between local and foreign patients.
“We are seeing more patients from the Middle East and other countries. Besides offering excellent care to our patients, we understand their cultures and can provide culturally sensitive service,” says Alex Y. Chang, M.D., professor of oncology, and CEO and medical director of IMC.
The partnership between Hopkins and NUH extends to research. Through an active clinical trials program, IMC offers the latest treatment protocols in cancers specific to Asian populations.
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