SINGAPORE — The adoption rate for technologies offered by the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) has exceeded expectations, with small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as well as start-ups collaborating more with the agency.

This was shared with the media yesterday during a review of A*STAR’s projects that were part of the Government’s Research, Innovation and Enterprise 2015 plan to boost Singapore’s research and development (R&D) strategies from 2011 to 2015.

The agency has seen more than 1,800 technology adoptions through the Technology Adoption Programme launched in July 2013, which helps start-ups gain access to technology more easily, linking companies that lack such know-how with service providers or A*STAR’s research institutes.

Over the past five years, 1,030 licences were signed with companies, of which more than 70 per cent were taken up by SMEs and start-ups. This is more than four times the 221 licences signed under the Government’s previous Science and Technology 2010 plan from 2006 to 2010.

One such start-up was Juvo, which was developing a product to monitor sleep patterns and quality of sleep, and found a non-intrusive and more cost-effective way of doing it.

A fibre-optic mat placed under a mattress can pick up vital signs such as a person’s heart rate and breathing, while an accompanying sensor device regulates the temperature or light intensity of the room.

Juvo’s co-founder Lionel Sim said: “A*STAR provided us the core technology to help us better understand how pressure sensors can pick up vitals and translate that into usable data.”

Over at Neeuro — another homegrown start-up that was developing games and a wearable headband to measure a user’s brain activity — its founders used material from A*STAR to develop parts of the headband.

A*STAR chairman Lim Chuan Poh said: “Our simplified licensing model removes the complexity from intellectual property rights agreements, making it easy for SMEs to adopt new technologies and attain productivity gains.”

In the past five years, close to 9,000 industry projects were undertaken — an almost six-fold increase from the 1,547 projects under the 2010 plan — and more than half of the projects this round were with multinational corporations, contributing to almost 90 per cent of the S$1.6 billion R&D spending.

A*STAR was unable to provide a comparison with the previous five years because it took a more “differentiated approach” this time.

Mr Lim said that the agency has observed Singapore companies “increasingly recognising the importance of R&D and innovation in improving productivity, and developing new products that will enable them to be more competitive on the global stage”.

In January, the Government announced that a record S$19 billion will be put aside for public spending on research, innovation and enterprise from 2016 to 2020.

Going ahead with the 2020 plan, Mr Lim said A*STAR would continue to build a robust and diverse research base and a workforce dedicated to making innovations happen, while also supporting SMEs in becoming more productive and competitive, just like it had with Trilogy Technologies.

The SME did not have any R&D workers before, but with A*STAR’s support, it built up in-house R&D capabilities in mobile applications and wireless devices, and now has a team of four R&D employees.