The United Nations’ projections for the period between 2019 and 2050 anticipate a rapid rise in population aging in Eastern and South-Eastern Asia. With such population aging often comes a disease burden in the form of chronic diseases, such as diabetes and cardiovascular diseases. In the context of Singapore, we examine the role of a national biobank called Health for Life in Singapore (HELIOS), which positions itself as aiming to improve the health and lives of future generations of Singapore. HELIOS’ aims and actions inform on the anxieties, desires and ambitions of the Singapore state and its healthcare system in the context of its changing population demography. We argue that HELIOS propagates a “sociotechnical imaginary” of what we call “generational medicine,” that posits a crucial role for biobanks in tackling the societal challenge of an aging population.
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Sociologists and public health researchers have long understood that the “greying” of the nation poses a major challenge, as an ever-larger segment of the population exceeds working age and a smaller pool of citizens remain responsible for their care. In the Global North, aging is often framed as one of the “grand challenges” as it is believed to be an economic and health burden of the state (Muller and Samaras Citation2018).Footnote1 Projections by the United Nations for the period between 2019 and 2050 suggest that Eastern and South-Eastern Asia will witness the fastest population aging in the world.
Singapore comes second in the list after South Korea in this projection (United Nations Citation2019) as the median age of the residents of Singapore has been rising steadily: In 2018 it was 40.8 years. In 2018, Singapore’s resident population above 65 years of age was 13.7 per cent (Singapore Department of Statistics Citation2018). This means that in the decades to come, Singapore will face a dwindling young population and a steadily growing older population.Footnote2
