Duke EM Welcomes Marcus Ong as Grand Rounds Speaker

Photo above: The entrance to the Duke–National University of Singapore (NUS) campus

The Duke University Department of Emergency Medicine hosted Professor Marcus ONG Eng Hock, MBBS, FRCS, MPH as our Grand Rounds Speaker at our annual Research Showcase on September 21, 2022. 

Professor Ong holds many titles throughout multiple organizations: 

• Senior Consultant and Clinician Scientist, Department of Emergency Medicine, Singapore General Hospital 
• Director, Health Services Research Center, Singapore Health Services
• Director, Health Services and Systems Research, Duke-National University of Singapore (NUS) Medical School 
• Director, Unit for Pre-hospital Emergency Care, Singapore Ministry of Health
• Vice-Chair, SingHealth Duke-NUS Emergency Medicine Academic Clinical Programme
• Chairman, Pan Asian Resuscitation Outcomes Study (PAROS)

As a researcher, Professor Ong has excelled: he has published more than 360 articles in peer reviewed medical journals, such as Journal of the American Medical Association, Lancet, Critical Care Medicine, Resuscitation, and Annals of Emergency Medicine. He has an h-index of 50 and his publications have been cited over 55,000 times. 

Professor Ong has also collaborated with several Duke University Emergency Medicine faculty to study resuscitation, prehospital care, and applications of machine learning to clinical operations. His accomplishments include a nationwide cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) education program that seamlessly links its graduates into a first-responder alert system that has provided rapid CPR to victims of cardiac arrest. 

Professor Ong has received more than $42 million in competitive individual research grants, studying data science, geospatial diseases mapping, clinical drug trials, resuscitation and cardiovascular sciences, pre-hospital emergency care, and biomedical engineering. He has also patented inventions using artificial intelligence and heart rate variability for risk prediction of acutely ill patients, and cooling solutions for therapeutic hypothermia. The technology is currently being developed into bedside triage devices that can help in risk stratification of critically ill patients. He has spun-off two companies from these inventions.

Professor Ong has been awarded the inaugural Ian G. Jacobs Award for International Group Collaboration to Advance Resuscitation Science in 2014, the Keith Neely Outstanding Contribution to EMS Award in 2015 by the National Association of EMS Physicians (NAEMSP), and the Lifetime Achievement Award by the Asian EMS Council in 2014. Professor Ong received the Public Service Medal (Pingat Bakti Masyarakat) National Day Award in 2016 and was recognized with the Minister for Health Award (2018) for his outstanding leadership and accomplishments. In October 2021 he was ranked among the top 2% of scientists globally by Stanford University researchers.

Duke–NUS Medical School was established through a landmark collaboration between Duke University and the National University of Singapore (NUS), with the objective of providing innovative education and impactful research that enhance the practice of medicine in Singapore and beyond.