Scientists, diplomats and policymakers met in Singapore last week to discuss the importance of technological breakthroughs to solve global challenges.
The event, hosted by GESDA and the Swiss Embassy at the Swiss Club Singapore, provided guests with a deep dive into GESDA’s mission to use science anticipation to build an inclusive and sustainable future. It was also the culmination of a two-day conference organized by GESDA that saw more than 30 global experts from the fields of sleep science and longevity medicine come together in Singapore to discuss how augmenting sleep could slow down biological ageing.
The audience was introduced to GESDA’s Science Breakthrough Radar, which identifies the research trends that could reshape our societies in the next 5, 10, and 25 years. And a panel of experts discussed how to harness public policy and the private sector to ensure scientific breakthroughs improve the lives of all.
In his welcome speech, the Swiss Ambassador to Singapore and Brunei Darussalam Frank Grütter, outlined GESDA’s commitment to improving communication between the worlds of science, technology, diplomacy, and civil society, but highlighted that this needs to happen at an international level.
“We live in complicated times, and many of the assumptions we have taken for granted need to be revisited because the geopolitical plates are shifting,” he said. “This dialogue cannot only happen in Switzerland or in Geneva it has to take place everywhere in the world. And this is the reason why GESDA has come to Singapore tonight.”
GESDA does more than just foster conversation though, said Professor Tan Eng Chye, President of the National University of Singapore (NUS), and a member of GESDA’s board. He highlighted the organisation’s development of a global curriculum for anticipatory leadership, aspects of which are being integrated into NUS courses and executive training.
“This ecosystem is not just a forum for dialogue, but a rich breeding ground for actionable initiatives that have potential to transform our societies,” said Prof Tan.
This was one of the goals of the two-day conference organised by GESDA at the Singapore-ETH Centre, a collaboration between ETH Zürich and Singapore’s National Research Foundation. The meeting brought together experts in sleep and longevity medicine – two fields that have often operated in silos despite significant overlaps.
“Even though there are a lot of links between the fields and as a scientist I can smell that there is really very important research at the interface between the two fields, until now we haven’t really done it,” said Professor Nici Wenderoth, director of the Future Health Technology Programme at ETH-Singapore who co-organized the conference. “So the last two days we spent mainly deciding where is an interesting interface and what are the most important questions.”
Prof Wenderoth highlighted how despite dramatic increases in lifespan over the past century, the amount of time spent in disease and disability at the end of our lives is actually increasing. The field of healthy longevity aims to close this gap by targeting the underlying processes of ageing that drive many of these conditions.
This is done using a variety of interventions including drugs, supplements, lifestyle changes and even augmenting people’s environments. But it is also known that sleep plays a huge role in cognitive and physical health, said Prof Wenderoth, and a lack of it has been associated with various conditions including cardiovascular disease, obesity and dementia.
This prompted the conference organizers to ask whether finding ways to improve sleep could be a crucial tool in efforts to boost healthy longevity. “We have now a much better understanding of how sleep maintains our body,” said Prof Wenderoth. “And it enables us to tap into these mechanisms to improve ageing in humans in new ways, and probably in ways that we can’t yet imagine.”
How to translate this kind of interdisciplinary research into solutions that can impact the lives of everyone, was the subject of the expert panel that followed Prof Wenderoth’s talk.
Prof Tan Chorh Chuan, Singapore’s Permanent Secretary of National Research and Development, highlighted the importance governments are placing on increasing healthy lifespan, both to reduce load on public services and take advantage of the “longevity dividend”. This refers to the economic and social gains expected from increased lifespans, including higher well-being and people remaining productive later into life. Achieving this will require policy makers to think outside the box, said Permanent Secretary Tan.
“We shouldn’t think just about medical interventions or therapeutic interventions,” he said. “We have to really look at the wider social determinants of health and how that may affect an individual’s health for the long term.”
Turning scientific breakthroughs into actionable solutions will also rely on the private sector. But investors need to think beyond simply providing money, and also work to nurture talent, raise awareness and build communities around cutting-edge science fields, said Dr Jui Lim, CEO of SGInnovate, a government-owned innovation platform that invests in startups.
“We think a holistic approach is required, because very often with some of these new technologies, there isn’t even an industry waiting for them out there,” he said.
Its also crucial to start considering the ethical implications of new technologies early on in the development process, said Effy Vayena, Professor of Bioethics at ETH Zürich. Historically, these concerns have only come to the fore when something goes wrong, but there is a growing effort to start considering potential problems much earlier in the research process. This could be particularly important for efforts to improve sleep.
“If we do have this type of possibility, can we see these technologies then being mandated in the workplace?” said Prof Vayena. “Do we want this kind of thing happening? The whole idea of having the discussion is to debate this ahead of time, not when we have a product.”