Image credit: NUS
The Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS Medicine) today launched Singapore’s first integrated nursing-informatics degree programme. This new Concurrent Degree Programme (CDP) combines the Bachelor of Science (Nursing) (Honours) with the Master of Science (Biomedical Informatics).
The Alice Lee Centre for Nursing Studies (NUS Nursing), based at NUS Medicine, offers this 4.5-year full-time programme. It is designed to prepare nurses for expanded professional and leadership roles in a healthcare landscape increasingly shaped by electronic health records, data analytics, artificial intelligence (AI) and digital health technologies. The inaugural cohort of approximately 20 students will begin their studies in August 2026.
The programme was launched at the opening ceremony of the East Asian Forum of Nursing Scholars (EAFONS) 2026, an international conference held in Singapore and organised by NUS Nursing. With the theme, “Advancing Nursing Excellence in the Digital Age”, the conference gathered over 1,700 nursing scholars, educators and healthcare leaders from over 40 countries to examine how informatics, data and technology are reshaping nursing practice and healthcare delivery.
Responding to the Growing Importance of Nursing Informatics
Rapid advancements in healthcare information technology, such as Singapore’s National Electronic Health Record (NEHR), which integrates data across public and private healthcare institutions, have made digital health systems central to clinical care across hospitals and community settings. As healthcare becomes increasingly data-driven, nursing informatics has gained significant prominence, with nurses now playing an expanded and crucial role in designing, implementing and optimising of digital tools that directly support clinical decision making, enhance patient safety and improve care coordination.
Concurrently, the growing use of AI in nursing practice is reshaping care delivery. AI-enabled tools are increasingly supporting areas such as clinical decision support, risk prediction, documentation and workflow optimisation. Therefore, preparing nurses to understand, evaluate and ethically apply these technologies is essential to advancing safe, effective and person-centred care in the digital era. In response to these evolving needs, the new CDP equips nurses with strong capabilities in both clinical practice and informatics. Graduates will confidently use complex digital systems, collect and interpret clinical data in real time, and apply these insights in practice. This ensures that technology seamlessly supports clinical workflows and delivers high-quality patient care.
An Integrated and Accelerated Pathway
The integrated curriculum blends professional nursing education with biomedical informatics, covering areas such as data analytics and clinical decision support; health information system design and management; leadership, informatics strategy and change management; as well as ethics, privacy and cybersecurity in digital healthcare.
Unlike traditional pathways where bachelor’s and master’s degrees are pursued separately, the NUS Nursing CDP allows students to complete both qualifications in 4.5 years. This approach saves time and cost, enabling graduates to enter the workforce with advanced expertise. Students may choose from two specialisations—Analytics or Hospital Management—and will learn alongside peers from other fields including Medicine, Allied Health, Computing and Engineering, reflecting the interdisciplinary nature of modern healthcare teams.
Beyond traditional career pathways in clinical practice, education, research and management, nursing informatics significantly expands the range of professional roles available to nurses. Graduates will gain dual expertise in care and technology, enabling them to practise as nurses while also taking on emerging roles such as clinical informatics specialists, digital health project managers, Electronic Health Records implementation consultants, and healthcare data analysts.
Associate Professor Lydia Lau, Deputy Head (Undergraduate Education) at NUS Nursing, said, “As healthcare becomes increasingly digital, nurses must be equipped to not only use technology, but also shape how it is designed, implemented and governed. Nursing education therefore needs to shift its approach from simply training nurses to use digital tools, to preparing them to understand, evaluate and lead digital systems in real-world clinical practice. With the launch of this new Concurrent Degree Programme, we are preparing graduates who can apply technology meaningfully to patient care, contribute to system design, and respond confidently to the evolving demands of healthcare practice.”
