ATx Summit 2026 • Harness AI for Public Good

The ATxSummit 2026 commenced with Singapore President Tharman Shanmugaratnam serving as the Guest-of-Honour at the Opening Gala Dinner held at Gardens by the Bay. This year's ATxSummit gathers government leaders from Asia, the Middle East, and the United States, alongside international organizations such as the World Bank, the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), and the International Telecommunication Union (ITU). Industry and academic figures include Denise Dresser, OpenAI’s Chief Revenue Officer, David Zapolsky, Chief Global Affairs & Legal Officer at Amazon, Jane Sun, CEO of Trip.com Group, William Dally, Chief Scientist at NVIDIA, Professor Yoshua Bengio from the University of Montreal, a pioneer in deep learning, and Professor Dawn Song from the University of California, Berkeley, known for her work in AI security and trustworthy machine learning. 

ASEAN’s Youth Present AI-Driven Solutions for Society 

The highlight of this year’s Gala Dinner was a new exhibition of 11 youth projects from the inaugural AI Ready ASEAN Youth Challenge. With AI adoption in the region reaching 85% in 20241, these projects showcased how the next generation in ASEAN is already developing practical AI solutions for societal benefit. Selected from over 600 team submissions across all ASEAN Member States, the 11 projects covered themes such as healthcare, education, social inclusion, and agriculture, all aiming to enhance lives and strengthen communities throughout the region. 

President Tharman awarded the top three prizes to teams from Brunei, Cambodia, and Myanmar. The three winning teams presented innovative applications aligned with the Challenge’s focus on knowledge, skills and learning, scientific advancement, and stronger communities. Brunei’s ΣHAI, the overall winner, created an AI-driven dementia care platform utilizing speech, language, and video analysis to aid in early detection of cognitive decline, offer personalized caregiver guidance, and improve dementia care coordination across ASEAN communities. Cambodia’s Voha.ai used AI to assist hearing-impaired children in enhancing their pronunciation through real-time speech recognition and visual mouth-tracking technology. Future Flux from Myanmar developed an offline AI education platform powered by edge computing to provide rural students with access to digital learning, adaptive lessons, and AI tutoring in areas with limited internet connectivity. These winners received cash prizes of USD 5,000, USD 3,000, and USD 1,000, respectively. 

Koo Seng Meng, Director of Talent & Ecosystem at AI Singapore, stated, "We aim for our AI Ready ASEAN initiative to inspire future generations to not only understand AI but also recognize its significance, appropriate applications, and potential to enhance lives." “With Sahabat-Care, our goal was to tackle the increasing challenge of dementia detection and caregiver support in Southeast Asia. This platform has allowed us to investigate how AI can provide caregivers with timely insights, personalized guidance, and improved decision-making for elderly care.” 

The AI Ready ASEAN Youth Challenge is a regional ideathon organized by AI Singapore (AISG) in collaboration with the ASEAN Foundation, supported by Google.org, and in partnership with the Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA). It is a component of the AI Ready ASEAN initiative, aiming to equip 5.5 million individuals with foundational AI knowledge and skills. Centered on the theme “AI for an Inclusive and Sustainable ASEAN,” the Challenge invited youth aged 18 to 35 to create AI-based solutions in three key areas: knowledge, skills and learning, scientific progress, and stronger communities. Each proposal had to demonstrate practical applications, including outreach to at least 1,000 community members. 

AI-Powered Healthcare Research and Solutions 

Earlier in the day, two Memoranda of Understanding (MoU) were signed at the SingHealth AI in Health Symposium held at Capella, Singapore, a pre-event of ATxSummit 2026. These MoUs aim to advance AI-driven healthcare research and expedite practical solutions for patients and health systems. They highlight the urgent need for scalable solutions due to ageing populations, increasing chronic disease burdens, and unequal access to care, which are putting pressure on healthcare systems across Southeast Asia.

They also illustrate how AI is increasingly addressing these challenges by enhancing clinical decision-making, supporting healthcare workers, and extending quality care to more patients: 

SingHealth and the Gyalpozhing College of Information Technology (GCIT), Royal University of Bhutan, signed an MoU to develop and implement innovative initiatives that promote the responsible use of AI in healthcare, focusing on creating localized solutions for emerging healthcare systems. Central to the collaboration is an AI-assisted Chest Radiograph model powered by MerMED-FM, a multimodal, multi-specialty medical imaging foundation model developed through a partnership between SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medicine Centre and A*STAR's Institute of High Performance Computing.

Published in The Lancet Digital Health, the model has shown strong performance in detecting pneumonia, tuberculosis, hepatic masses, and colorectal cancer. Trained on Bhutanese data and scheduled for deployment in 2027 across Bhutan's Gelephu Mindfulness City Healthcare Hospitals, the model provides specialist-level diagnostic capabilities to rural communities where geographical barriers and a lack of radiological expertise are significant challenges, signaling SingHealth's broader ambition to transform diagnostic care across the region. 

Singapore General Hospital (SGH), the flagship hospital of SingHealth, Singapore's largest public healthcare cluster, also signed an MoU with the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR)’s Diagnostics Development Hub (DxD Hub) to accelerate the transition of AI-enabled and multimodal precision diagnostics into market-ready solutions.

This partnership aims to rapidly develop commercially scalable diagnostic tools, from combating antimicrobial resistance infections to detecting early memory loss in seniors, with the goal of creating investable companies that deliver sustainable health and economic impact to Singapore and beyond. 

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