​The National Heart Centre Singapore, now bursting at the seams, is about to get a new $165 million home by 2012.

Tenders have been called for a building three times its current size, a stone's throw away from its present premises in Outram.

The centre's spokesman said the extra space would allow for new facilities such as areas for day surgery and pre-admission testing of patients.

It will have state-of-the-art equipment, including ultra-fast CT scanners and better three-dimensional scanning, she said, so doctors can get a more accurate picture of patients' problems.

There will also be rooms for clinical trials and 'patient-oriented' research, in line with Singapore's push to get more early clinical trials done here.

Researchers, now housed at the nearby School for Nursing, will be able to move over to work with clinicians under one roof.

Last year, Health Minister Khaw Boon Wan described the 11,500 sq m centre as 'really chock-a-block'. 'Every nook and cranny is being made use of,' he said.

The waiting area outside the clinics is so small that patients sometimes have to stand while waiting their turn to see a doctor. The centre saw half of the 200,000 outpatients with heart ailments here last year.

Heart-related illness is the second-biggest killer here, after cancer, and accounts for about one in four deaths.

By 2015, the number of heart patients is expected to jump to 320,000.

Associate Professor Koh Tian Hai, the centre's medical director, said that while the centre is 'still able to cope with patient care in a safe and effective manner, we anticipate that it will be increasingly more challenging within the next few years'.

Mr Antoine Nathan, 77, who accompanies his wife for her regular check-ups there, hopes the additional space will also mean more doctors and shorter waiting times. The centre's spokesman said more doctors will be recruited to add to the current 78.

According to the tender documents, the Health Ministry wants a place with a 'calming and tranquil environment'.

While it did not make foreign involvement in the centre's design a requirement, it was 'strongly' in favour of companies tapping 'a wider pool of international expertise in designing a cardiac care facility'.

Like all newer hospitals, the building has to be energy-efficient, given the rising cost of electricity.

The ministry had put several planned projects - amounting to $2 billion over the next eight years - on hold because of the construction crunch.

Asked why it decided to go ahead with building the new heart centre, the ministry spokesman said that space was so tight at the current premises that it had been given priority.

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