Faculty members Teo Hock Hai and Tan Chuan Hoo’s co-authored paper wins China’s Ministry of Education Research Award

A 2022 paper co-authored by two NUS Computing faculty members has received the Youth Achievement Award at the 10th Ministry of Education Award for Outstanding Scientific Research Achievements （第十届教育部科学研究优秀成果奖）– one of China's most significant national recognitions for research in the humanities and social sciences. 

The paper, "Rural-Urban Healthcare Access Inequality Challenge: Transformative Roles of Information Technology," was published in MIS Quarterly in 2022 by a team led by Yu Tong of Zhejiang University, with co-authors including Provost’s Chair Professor Teo Hock Hai and Professor Tan Chuan Hoo from the Department of Information Systems and Analytics, alongside collaborators from City University of Hong Kong and Southeast University.

The research looks at the divide in healthcare access between rural and urban China, where hospitals cluster in cities and rural residents often rely on village clinics or long journeys to reach proper care. The team examined how effective health information technology has been in narrowing that gap, and argued that the issue reaches beyond logistics into the social fabric of these communities: unresolved frustration among rural patients has, in some cases, spilled into protests, damage to medical facilities, and harassment of healthcare workers.

Getting to those findings meant fieldwork most researchers would shy away from. Data collection was done manually, with the team travelling to rural and urban sites directly and working through extensive policy documentation to understand the regulatory landscape shaping healthcare delivery on the ground.

This is the second honour for the paper, which previously received the Information Management Research Award from the Chinese Economic Society in 2024. That earlier recognition underscored the paper's relevance to universal access to quality healthcare, and its implications for how policymakers design and roll out healthcare initiatives.

The Youth Achievement Award sits among four award categories in this MOE scheme and recognises research led by early-career scholars at Chinese universities, drawn from 206 winning papers selected out of a national pool this year.

Congratulations to Prof Teo, Prof Tan and the full research team on this recognition!