Marcus ONG Eng Hock
MBBS, FRCS (A&E) EDIN, MPH (VCU)
Professor and Director
Health Services and Systems Research (Signature Research Program),
Duke-NUS Medical School
- Senior Consultant and Clinician Scientist, Dept of Emergency Medicine
Singapore General Hospital - Director, Health Services Research Institute, SingHealth-Duke NUS
Academic Medical Center - Director, Health Services Research Center, SingHealth Services
- Director, Unit for Pre-hospital Emergency Care, Ministry of Health
- Senior Consultant, Ministry of Health, Prehospital Emergency Care
- Vice-Chair, SingHealth Duke-NUS Emergency Medicine Academic Clinical
Programme (EM ACP)
Prof Ong is a Senior Consultant, Director of Research, and Clinician Scientist, at the Department of Emergency Medicine in Singapore General Hospital. He is also the Director of Health Services Research Center (HSRC), Singapore Health Services; Professor and Director, Health Services and Systems Research (HSSR), Duke-NUS Medical School. Prof Ong also serves as Medical Director, Unit for Prehospital Emergency Care (UPEC) and Senior Consultant, Ministry of Health, Hospital Services Division. He is also Chairman, Pan Asian Resuscitation Outcomes Study (PAROS).
Prof Ong has obtained more than S$47 million in research grants for his studies, which include geospatial diseases mapping, clinical drug trials, resuscitation and cardiovascular sciences, pre-hospital emergency care, and biomedical engineering. He is the Principal Investigator for an international, multi-centre cohort study of out-of-hospital cardiac arrest across the Asia-Pacific. This clinical research network has published more than 36 articles in peer-reviewed journals since 2009. In total, Prof Ong has published more than 250 articles in international and local journals, such as Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, American Journal of Medicine, Critical Care Medicine, Resuscitation, Annals of Emergency Medicine, and etc.
In 2014, Prof Ong started a Data Science team at SingHealth Health Services Research Centre (HSRC) and was appointed Head of Data Science at SingHealth. He is the SingHealth Co-Principal Investigator of the AI Singapore Grand Challenge addressing diabetes, hypertension and hyperlipidemia. He is considered a leading proponent of Data Science in Healthcare in Singapore. He is also a Scientific Advisor for Global Healthcare, a start-up company providing medical cooling solutions and TIIM Healthcare, an AI start-up.
Research Interests
- Health Services Research
- Big Data Analytics
- AI in Healthcare
- Geospatial Modelling
- Physiological Data Modelling
Research Highlight
Prof Ong’s research studies focus predominantly on pre-hospital emergency care, medical devices, data science and health services research. His research has addressed acute issues such as out-of-hospital cardiac arrest (OHCA), acute myocardial infarction, overcrowding in emergency departments (ED), environmental health, resource allocation and deployment of emergency medical services (EMS), etc. He is a leading researcher in Health Services Research and use of Data Science in Healthcare.
In Singapore, the survival rate of OHCA has improved over the years from 11.6% to 23.4% between 2011-2016, owing to research into several PEC interventions such as telephone cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR), firebike first responders, community CPR training and first responder Apps on a national level. Results from such research were translated into national policies and the interventions implemented as standard of care. At the international level, Prof Ong’s OHCA research network, the Pan-Asian Resuscitation Outcomes Study, has increased research capacity and improved the EMS systems of participating low-middle income countries through training workshops, development and provision of research and interventional tools and packages, etc. Apart from his extensive work in OHCA, using geospatial mapping and system status management techniques, Prof Ong’s studies have aided the Singapore Civil Defence Force in implementing dynamic deployment strategies for their ambulance service to better meet increasing population’s demand for prehospital emergency care. Prof Ong has also patented inventions using Heart Rate Variability for risk prediction of acutely ill patients and cooling solutions for therapeutic hypothermia for OHCA patients and for management of heat injuries. Heart Rate Variability is currently being developed into bedside triage devices that can help in risk stratification of critically ill patients for triaging of patients in the ED for better resource allocation.
Research Team
| Eileen Aw
Senior Executive
gmseakc@nus.edu.sg |
 | Koh Zhixiong, Garion
Senior Executive
garion.koh@duke-nus.edu.sg |
 | Rossiter Binte Mokhater
Executive (PA to Prof Marcus Ong)
rossi73@duke-nus.edu.sg |
 | Maeve Pek Pin Pin
Senior Research Associate
maeve.pek@duke-nus.edu.sg |
 | Stephanie Fook
Senior Research Associate
stephanie.fookchong@duke-nus.edu.sg
|