NUS Dentistry students no longer have to shuttle between lecture theatres at their faculty for lessons and the dental clinic at the National University Hospital for their clinical training. With the newly opened National University Centre for Oral Health, Singapore (NUCOHS), they will simply need to take an elevator. NUCOHS consolidates the NUH University Dental Cluster, NUS Dentistry and research facilities in a single location, allowing dental specialists, professionals, students, faculty and researchers to draw on each other’s strengths to bring about better clinical care, high impact research and education.

At the official opening ceremony of NUCOHS on 5 July, Minister for Health Mr Gan Kim Yong said, “The new Centre will be a place for the meeting of minds for academics, research scientists and clinicians from dentistry, medicine, allied health and the behavioural sciences. I believe NUCOHS will catalyse the growth of a broad range of collaborative research that can be translated into real-life practice, making a tangible difference to Singapore’s population health and wellbeing.”

With the integrated facilities, NUS Dentistry undergraduates can look forward to more personalised learning through the innovative use of educational technology to complement conventional methods of training and education. Some examples of these include the use of eye tracker devices to understand the way students review and assess radiographs, as well as virtual learning and haptic technology to train them in the delivery of local anaesthesia and in carrying out dental extractions and operative dental procedures.

The new facilities will allow the Faculty to raise its annual undergraduate intake from 60 to 80 by 2021 to meet the growing demand for dentists. Additionally, the Faculty will be increasing opportunities for further training through the development of continuing education and advanced graduate diplomas to train the future specialist workforce.