This story has been amended to correctly state the party awarding the contract to Nova MSC Bhd.

KUALA LUMPUR (Sept 7): Nova MSC Bhd’s indirect subsidiary EyRIS Pte Ltd has bagged a five-year contract from Singapore’s Integrated Health Information Systems Pte Ltd (IHiS) for the deployment of SELENA+, EyRIS’ first artificial intelligence (AI)-based product.

In a statement released today, Nova MSC said SELENA+ will be part of Singapore’s national screening programme and is expected to deliver a “tremendous” recurring income for the group over the long run. However, no value was disclosed for this newly awarded contract.

Nova MSC said SELENA+ cuts the time needed to spot signs of diabetic eye diseases, namely diabetic retinopathy, glaucoma, and age-related macular degeneration.

SELENA+ was jointly developed by a research team from the Singapore National Eye Centre’s Singapore Eye Research Institute and the National University of Singapore’s School of Computing.

EyRIS is 42% owned by novaHEALTH Pte Ltd, which in turn is wholly-owned by Nova MSC.

“There are more than 415 million diabetics in the world today who require annual eye check-ups to prevent vision impairment,” said its group chief executive officer Lai Teik Kin.

“With this intelligent deep learning system by SELENA+, it can perform automated image analysis of retinal images with results in mere seconds, much faster than the best trained human graders. Moreover, there is always a chance of human error, which can be prevented with SELENA+,” he added.

Expected to go live in November 2020 as part of Singapore’s national screening program, Lai said SELENA+ will initially be deployed to screen 120,000 patients annually.

“For a start, we do not focus solely on the profits that can be generated from these patients as we aim to leverage on this track record to work with other partners globally.

“For context, if we were to capture 1% of the diabetics in the world, there would be more than 4 million patients that will benefit from this technology and along with that, tremendous recurring income opportunities,” Lai added.

Lai said this award is not only a milestone for Singapore but is also the world’s first in showcasing real world adoption of an AI-based medical device in a national screening programme.

“It is our mission to introduce practical and proven technology to chronic care management and work with relevant authorities and organisations to develop screening programmes and protocols. Such initiatives will address the need for ever increasing manpower to tackle retinal complications resulting from diabetes, the world’s fastest growing chronic disease,” Lai said.

Nova MSC’s shares closed unchanged at 11 sen today, valuing the company at RM103.42 million.