Metropolia Exchange

As a part of the Metropolia UAS and Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) joint project Dosis, we were the lucky ones to have the chance to attend an intensive exchange week in Singapore. There were five of us students and three professors from Metropolia UAS who traveled to Singapore for a one week express exchange. In the Dosis project students from both Universities work together to create scoping reviews on various topics. The express exchange to Singapore was the culmination of our joint article projects and a dedicated time for face-to-face workshops and learning experiences after working together remotely for a year or so. *We met some of the students and the SIT professors earlier in the spring as they were visiting Finland on their behalf. Eventually it turned out that the four months from the approval to attend to the express exchange turned out to pass quite fast, and finally on 12th of August we arrived in Singapore. After the weekend of getting to know our way in Singapore, the actual intensive week started by an introduction to SIT’s Dover campus. We were given a tour of the SIT campus where we got to see our Singaporean fellows’ studying facilities. We also got to see some innovation and learning empowering tech. Later on, we workshopped some focal points of our article manuscripts, expected to be submitted later this year. During the intensive week, collaboration among Finnish and Singaporean health tech enterprises and the participating Universities was promoted to foster the possibilities of new joint projects. Relating to that objective SIT organized a seminar with Finnish and Singaporean enterprises and other health care and technology related keynote speakers. They brought out their views to the current state-of-the-art and future perspectives of advancements in health care digitalization and in health tech. The collaboration between the health tech industry and Universities also included company visits to Phillips's, Siemens Healthineers' and SenseTime's Singaporean headquarters and showrooms. During the visits, the health tech companies demonstrated their visions of developing technological solutions in improving the patients' experiences during treatments and stay in hospital and creating more seamless care pathways from home to hospital and back. The companies presented the possibilities of technologies such as virtual and augmented reality in training the future health care professionals to get acquainted with the technologies before moving on to actual clinical practices. SenseTime provided us with an overview of the use of artificial intelligence technologies centered more to our everyday lives. For understandable reasons the practical demos were focused on the technologies that are already applied, rather than the technological advancements that are possibly emerging in the future. The visits and seminars before and during the intensive week have enlightened us that the scoping reviews and other investigatory work conducted related to the Dosis project is operating at the cutting edge when it comes to advancements in health tech. The project overall has provided us with fair insight to the application of artificial intelligence in medical imaging and other medical applications, that are state-of-the-art or just emerging somewhere in the near or distant future. Cultural exchange Alongside the official project program, we experienced Singapore and its corners through local eyes. The students who visited Finland earlier in the spring treated us with genuine Singaporean hospitality and guided us through experiences we would not have experienced relying only on the typical tourist guides of Singapore.   Singaporean food, sightseeing and souvenirs - our friendly Singaporean hosts shared tips and helped us get the most out of our stay. Thai style steamboat dining experience, best hawker food courts, hipster shopping streets, best underground places to try out Singaporean and Asian specialities such as frog porridge, chili crabs and durian fruit, you name it! We will never forget the hospitality of our Singaporean fellow students, some of them who had already graduated, and still came to meet us, thank you Shawn, Darren, Melissa, Chris and Zhuo and the professors Frank and Cheryl, and other SIT staff (special thanks to Desmond and Charmaine). ❤️ Blog post written by the Metropolia students: Ella Lonka, Janina Saarinen, Arttu Sundell, Emilia Larmala ja Mika Nieminen