HIMSS Analytics Asia – Press Conference and Awards Presentation

14 Jun 2011

By Ms Yong Ying-I, Permanent Secretary (Health)
Venue: Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society (HIMSS) Analytics Asia

I am delighted to be here today to help celebrate the inauguration of HIMSS Analytics Asia and the achievement of our hospitals which have reached Stage 6 in their Electronic Medical Record adoption.

2. First, let me say how pleased the Singapore Ministry of Health is to see HIMSS launch the Asian leg of HIMSS Analytics. The Analytics effort plays a crucial role in growing capabilities of healthcare systems players to optimise their IT deployment and IT spend, by collecting and analysing data related to IT processes and management, purchasing trends and measurement metrics amongst others.

3. I know that this may sound like an esoteric subject to the media, and indeed it is. Healthcare IT is a particularly complex genre of IT, with its own specialist experts, its own language and coding standards. It matters to you and me because its goal is to support effective healthcare delivery, and everyone wants to see that goal achieved. The complexity of medicine means that doctors benefit from medical data on the patient being stored and analysed, this data can come from any number of machines in a hospital and lab tests, as well as the doctor’s own diagnosis of the patient. The complexity of care delivery involving teams of professionals (doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and more) across many locations means that this data needs to be shared meaningfully by all team members involved in the care of the patient, but its confidentiality must also be protected from others. This makes it difficult to implement successfully and it is common to hear of  implementation failures. Hence, organisations like HIMSS formed of members who are all trying to tackle the same challenges and see the benefit of coming together to share their knowledge and experiences.

4. Hospitals and healthcare systems in many countries in Asia are joining in the effort to develop electronic medical records. It is timely that HIMSS Analytics Asia is launching. We think Singapore is a good location for this as we are very strong globally in e-Government systems and we have been developing and using electronic medical records for some time. Since 10 years ago, we progressed from hospital departmental systems to integrated electronic orders, online radiology imaging, closed loop medication management, clinical notes and clinical decision support. Our public sector hospital EMRs talk to each other through our own EMR Exchange. This has been upgraded to the Next Generation National Electronic Health Records, which soft-launched last month. The new NEHR will contain much more information than the earlier EMR Exchange, and its data will be searchable and analysable.

5. Our vision for this was stated simply by my Minister a few years ago, “one patient, one medical record” across Singapore. In other words, integrated care across care settings and providers for patients in Singapore, made possible by seamless exchange of health information via IT. The simple vision is of course challenging to implement because it means using common architecture and standards to enable interoperability of systems across private sector GPs and hospitals, with long-term care institutions as well as with our public sector polyclinics and hospitals. The NEHR within the public sector will gradually bring on board more and more institutions over the coming months. We are building a national GP IT system, a medical records system for the community hospitals to use and we will eventually bring onboard the nursing homes and community care providers. The private sector hospitals are discussing with us how they can join in. I believe that the vision of “one patient, one medical record” is achievable.

6. The next leap forward will be patients and families being able to actively participate in managing their health. One of the thrusts we are working on is developing a personal health management national architecture and platform that enterprises, interest groups can create applications and services on. We are beginning our work to conceptualise what this could look like. Another thrust is clearly the rapidly developing area of telehealth where healthcare services can be delivered remotely or patients monitored in their homes. This will greatly increase convenience and access to timely advice. This will be exciting.

7. The road ahead remains challenging but I am confident that we can make it happen. This is because we have recognised that healthcare is complex, and big bang approaches are not the way to proceed. We have therefore implemented systems gradually, learning on the way as we use each generation of system, and we have brought healthcare professionals on board the journey, so that they are intimately involved in designing the IT they will be using. As we expand our IT systems beyond the hospitals, and indeed, draw in patients, we will also draw the broader group of stakeholders into the design and development of our systems so that we build what they need and will use.

8. In this step by step, “wave-upon-wave” graduated approach, it is not surprising that our public sector hospitals who were the first to use electronic medical records in Singapore, have led the way towards reaching Stage 6 in the adoption of EMRs. This is a substantive achievement. I congratulate SGH, TTSH, NUH, KKH, as well as IHIS which has supported you, in achieving the Stage 6 award. You are amongst a tiny percentage of hospitals worldwide which have achieved this, and it is laudable bearing in mind that you are significantly larger than the average US hospitals with some 500 beds. While people have been excited about the hospitals being film-less and to a large extent, paper-less, scripless and so on, I am excited by how this achievement will help us ensure better clinical outcomes and enhance the patient experience. The growing sophistication in our IT enables us to lower the incidence of medical errors, reduce administrative errors, and save time, therefore helping to keep healthcare costs in check. We will also be able to expand clinical data analytics, which will translate to improvements in medical outcomes. This could be through better decision support when the doctor is making his diagnosis and entering clinical notes into the system, or through analysing quickly and easily the effect of treatments and drugs on different archetype groups of patients.

9. I look forward to other institutions in Singapore following in the footsteps of our leading public sector hospitals, as it will benefit patients. I am also happy that through our work with HIMSS, we can share our experiences and challenges with other countries in Asia and the world which are on the same journey. We will learn much in this sharing process.

10. Thank you very much.