MIMOS SG COVER

4IR technologies: Alive and well in Malaysia?

SHARE/GUIDE’s 4th member hosting session was recently conducted by MIMOS, the national applied R&D centre. Titled “Enabling domestic industry growth through 4IR technologies,” Director of AI, Analytics and Blockchain, Ng Kwang Ming, shared a laundry list of projects MIMOS is currently working on.

Well-known solutions in the industry that MIMOS has successfully spun off into commercial endeavours, include Jaring, the nation’s first Internet service provider, and Digicert, a local digital certification provider.

Kwang Ming briefly described MIMOS as currently working in tech to support the United Nation’s Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), notably SDG 9 which focuses upon industry innovation and infrastructure, and SDG 12 which emphasises responsible consumption and production.

He also answered the question that was probably topmost on many attendees’ minds: what is applied research?

“Basically, we build components and we build platforms to enable productisation. Universities would have basic blue sky research and to productise their research, they need to do applied research of their concepts.”

This is where MIMOS comes in, by working with industry players to build out proof-of-concepts. “Research is useless if there are no real-life problems. So, we enable joint experimental research. We won’t know if it works till we try to do a prototype and get it into an industry setting.”

Of all the projects Kwang Ming shared, a few stood out. These are:

Digitalisation in healthcare – This involves the health data warehouse (MyHDW), which collects data from private and governmental healthcare institutions (3211 government clinics, 338 private

hospitals, and 154 government and army hospitals).

From this huge collection of data, reports are generated for more efficient and optimal resource planning. This is also currently being used by the Ministry of Health.

Another interesting healthcare solution is the non-invasive meter for glucose levels. Since last year, the solution has reduced its footprint into a that of a handy mobile device and Kwang Ming shared MIMOS hopes to have It ready for use by hospitals at the end of 2020.

A smart city application with behavioural analytics:

Minding the inmates

This solution is being used in a prison facility in Jinjang with 270 prison cells and 7 wardens. It greatly helps with management of the large prison population.

Product testing time optimisation

This is a deployment at a factory in Ipoh that makes OEM Bluetooth devices for Japanese and American companies. Every product is tested at least twice. Removing products from being tested the second time, if they do not meet testing requirements of the first round testing, helps this manufacturer reduce testing time as much as 40-percent.

Investment assistant

This functions as a smart directory for potential investors. Tapping into a shared pool of data from government agencies and/or industry associations, foreign investors may find alternative sources of supply in Malaysia to support their business supply chain.