CARDIO4Cities in Brunei: First Milestones in a National Cardiovascular Disease Programme
BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, 8 June 2026 – The Ministry of Health, Brunei Darussalam has reported the first milestones in Cardio4Cities — a national programme to strengthen the prevention and management of chronic diseases, delivered with the Novartis Foundation and EVYD Technology.
Cardiovascular disease is the leading cause of death in Brunei. Much of that burden traces back to four risk factors that often go undetected until they cause harm: high blood pressure, diabetes, obesity, and high cholesterol. The programme is built to find that risk earlier, and to act on it more systematically than fragmented, condition-by-condition care allows.
What has been achieved so far
In its first phase, the programme has focused on the groundwork that determines whether later interventions succeed. Three milestones have been completed:
- An intervention prioritisation exercise with key stakeholders across the health system, to decide where early effort will do the most good rather than spreading it thin.
- Monitoring and evaluation tools to track programme outcomes — so that what works, and what does not, can be measured rather than assumed.
- Health data prepared for evidence-based planning, giving care teams a clearer view of where cardiovascular risk concentrates across the population.
None of these are headline interventions on their own. Together, they are the foundation that makes targeted, measurable cardiovascular care possible at a national scale.
Why the approach matters
Most chronic disease programmes do not fail for lack of awareness. They fail because care teams lack a shared, current view of who is at risk and whether interventions are working. CARDIO4Cities is designed to close that gap — pairing a globally tested population health model with the data infrastructure to run it locally.
CARDIO4Cities is a global initiative led by the Novartis Foundation that helps countries and cities improve chronic disease prevention through early detection, data-driven planning, and targeted interventions. It brings together healthcare providers, policymakers, and technology partners around shared, measurable goals.
EVYD’s role
EVYD Technology supports the programme through BruHealth — Brunei Darussalam’s national health platform — and its data and analytics capabilities. A central aim is to bring prevention closer to the public: through BruHealth, the programme is designed to help residents engage more directly with their own health, from screening and early risk identification to guidance on healthier choices.
The same data foundation gives healthcare teams the means to identify individuals at higher risk and direct interventions where they can have the greatest impact — so that improvements in cardiovascular health are measurable, and felt by Bruneians themselves.
What comes next
The completed groundwork sets up the programme’s next phase: putting prioritised interventions into practice and tracking their effect through the monitoring tools now in place. As a programme grounded in real-world data, its direction will be shaped by what the evidence shows.
About EVYD Technology
EVYD Technology is a Southeast Asia-based healthcare technology company with a vision to build a future where everyone can access better health. We leverage our deep expertise in healthcare data processing and AI to enable our partners to gain insights for informed decision making in healthcare and implement personalized health promotion, risk assessment and chronic disease management programmes at scale to improve population health outcomes.
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