SPEECH BY DR JANIL PUTHUCHEARY, SENIOR MINISTER OF STATE, MINISTRY OF DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT AND INFORMATION & MINISTRY OF HEALTH, AT THE OPENING CEREMONY OF SINGHEALTH DUKE-NUS EDUCATION CONFERENCE 2024 ON 27 SEPTEMBER 2024, 9.00AM AT ACADEMIA

Mr Cheng Wai Keung, Chairman, SingHealth 

Mr Goh Yew Lin, Chairman, Duke-NUS Medical School Governing Board

Professor Ng Wai Hoe, Group CEO, SingHealth

Associate Professor Shiva Sarraf-Yazdi, Vice Dean of Education, Duke-NUS Medical School

Associate Professor Marianne Ong and Professor Fernando Bello, Co-Organising Chairpersons of the Conference, and your teams who have put together today’s conference. 

1. Thank you all very much for this partnership, the list of persons, boards and group represents, that we have in the medical school, the clinical faculty, the participation from the members of our community on the boards and governance. The ability to bring all that together around the important issues for medical education - this SingHealth Duke-NUS Education Conference 2024.

2. What all of us do around advancing healthcare through education requires continuous improvement, commitment to innovation and an understanding of the importance of how we can incorporate technology into what we do. We enhance our teaching methods, we incorporated the latest technologies into healthcare curricula, not just to maximise the opportunities for our learners, but also for educators, and to know what the possibilities of technologies are. And all this enables to build on their foundational competencies which are important and meet the challenges of today as we anticipate the needs of tomorrow. 

Expanding Healthcare Capacity Through Technology

3. The needs of tomorrow are often focused, in our context, on ageing. The number of people aged 65 and older around the world is rising fast and is estimated to double to 1.6 billion within 30 years. Singapore too is on the path to becoming a super-aged society by 2026, with over a fifth of our population aged 65 years and above. Healthcare systems around the world are already feeling the impact from the increased patient load , as well as the expected increase as a result of complexity and increased length of stay associated with the needs of older patients. This combination of complexity and increase length of stay puts an additional strain on our resources and we are no exception – we are already starting to feel that strain on our healthcare capacity and our healthcare workforce. 

4. What are we doing to address these challenges and prepare for the future? We have shifted our focus towards the use of technology, particularly artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics, automation of processes and services, and the expansion of healthcare capacity and the enhancement of our workforce capabilities. AI presents significant opportunities to deliver safe, clinically efficacious, and cost-effective healthcare across various domains. 

5. SingHealth has embraced this technological shift, having made significant strides in telemedicine amongst other areas. As of August 2024, more than 69,000 video consultations have been conducted through the Video Consultation Platform across SingHealth’s hospitals and polyclinics, and this includes both acute-on-demand telehealth and chronic care patient appointments. This is more than double the number from about a year and a half ago. That pace of increase is not a side gig. This is something that’s going to transform the way we do our service delivery, and it’s going to transform the patient experience. This adoption of technology extends to future planning as well. While the upcoming Eastern General Hospital Campus will only be fully operational by around 2030, but we are already planning for innovative solutions to be implemented to further extend care in the  region that the hospital serves. The hospital intends to start operations by running virtual wards in 2026, four years ahead of it becoming fully operational. Healthcare teams which will be temporarily based in various SingHealth hospitals such as Changi General Hospital, will deliver care to the community through tele-consultations and remote monitoring. This will enhance and expand SingHealth’s reach in providing care to residents in the east. 

6. Other clusters have incorporated technology into their work processes to improve patient care and clinicial outcomes. The National University Health System (NUHS) has combined AI and mixed reality as part of their HoloMedicine project, using several mixed reality tools which have been developed to assist physicians in a variety of scenarios. For example, helping patients better visualise their upcoming surgical procedures, to superimposing scan images onto the patient during surgery through holographic visors, allowing the surgeons to locate tumours more easily. This type of technology can be patient-facing. It can be backend. It can help the clinician directly in the delivery of services. And we have to learn how to use these techniques. We have to learn how to engage our patients and our teams to use these techniques. 

7. At Tan Tock Seng Hospital’s Clinic for Advanced Rehabilitation Therapeutics, the use of robotics has been incorporated into rehabilitation programmes, such as the H-man robot. This helps to train stroke patients to regain their hand and arm movements. Another example is the use of a wearable exoskeleton by patients with weak lower limbs to practise walking with support from physiotherapists, using technology to multiply the effectiveness of physiotherapists. This has helped patients walk longer distances while reducing the physical burden on therapists, improving treatment outcomes and productivity at the clinic. Robotics as an extension and augmentation of professional care. 

Elevating Education Through Technology

8. To support all these, it is also important that we think about our healthcare education standards around the use of technology and the use of technology for healthcare education to nurture a steady pipeline of well-trained healthcare professionals and how we can continue to uphold high standards of patient care, even as we use these different techniques. 

9. In January 2024, SingHealth refreshed its e-learning platform, the SingHealth Learning Management System (SLMS), to enhance educational experiences for a very diverse healthcare workforce. The updated SLMS adopts a blended learning approach which provides greater flexibility and greater engagement. Comprehensive video libraries, interactive quizzes, editing tools and course analytics. This dynamic and effective learning environment for clinical staff, ancillary workers, and administrators, is a common educational platform across a very diverse set of need and serving a very diverse set of clients. As of July 2024, SLMS hosts over 4,000 courses, with more than 2,500 new additions since its relaunch. The next phase for the platform will introduce a marketplace feature, extending access to healthcare professionals beyond SingHealth. This expansion aims to increase learning opportunities and facilitate cross-sharing of educational content and knowledge across the broader healthcare community. And so, you have the use of technology on patient, administration, service delivery, but also embedded within the education space. We can use the benefits of technology to improve our effectiveness, and also learn about technology, and learn how we can be better, regardless of what our role is in the healthcare ecosystem to drive better patient and clinical outcomes.

Launch of College of Clinical Pharmacy

10. Healthcare education continues to advance, with significant contributions from SingHealth Academy, NHG College and the NUS Centre for Medical Education. These institutions are committed to providing high quality learning and education for our healthcare professionals, administrators and healthcare leadership. In the past year alone, these institutions together have provided comprehensive and impactful training to over 100,000 healthcare and administrative learners through more than 500 diverse programmes. That’s a huge surface area that we have to think about. The healthcare ecosystem of learners is vast, because there’s just so much to do, and there are so many people involved. And this means that the approach from institutions like this, you need to and you do continue to refine and review the offerings, improve what the faculty does around capabilities, and anticipate future needs.

11. So with that background, it is my pleasure to announce the launch of SingHealth Academy's seventh and newest institution – the College of Clinical Pharmacy. This College is set up in response to the rapidly-changing pharmacy landscape and recognition of the need to deepen competencies for SingHealth’s pharmacy workforce. Its launch marks a new chapter in pharmacy education, and it supports the training and education needs of over 1,400 pharmacy staff to develop them professionally. Some of the training areas will include precision medicine, understanding the pharmacist’s role in supporting population health initiatives and utilising technology to digitise and automate processes for enhanced efficiency and accuracy. 

12. Led by a cadre of established leaders in pharmacy education, the College of Clinical Pharmacy will be well-positioned to develop new education programmes tailored to the professional development of the pharmacy workforce, addressing the challenges of an increasingly complex healthcare environment. The College aims to train 400 pharmacists and pharmacy support staff annually. 

13. I am heartened that our pharmacy community has already made significant strides in the implementation of innovative educational programmes that utilise many of the emerging technologies that I already spoke about. These initiatives have the potential to develop capabilities and enhance the learning experience at the same time. They have an example which is called Project VRx, an innovative Virtual Reality Simulation Programme embedded within the training process for pharmacy, enhancing knowledge and skills in medication safety.

Closing

14. This morning, we will also be awarding and I would like to congratulate the 55 recipients of the Academic Medicine Education Institute Golden Apple Awards 2024. These awards recognise and honour educators and staff from the SingHealth Duke-NUS Academic Medical Centre for excellence in teaching and their passion and commitment towards inspiring learners.

15. Beyond the 55 recipients, I would also like to recognise all educators here today for your commitment to advancing healthcare education. In the healthcare space, education is an inherent part of the process. It is assumed as soon as you are working as a healthcare professional, whatever your role, whatever your discipline, wherever you are deployed, that there is a component of what you do, which is education. Every one of us, as practitioners, you have to actively contribute to education in one way or another, and we do – whether formally in schools, or as mentors, supervisors or role models. At the very least, each of us has to also educate our patients and our clients as an intrinsic part of the healthcare process. The leadership and excellence demonstrated by the outstanding educators whom we celebrate today are a shining light, an example and role model for all of us, and a whole series of best practices that we can only hope to emulate as we try to improve what we do every day in the healthcare space for the benefit of our colleagues, our society, and ultimately our patients 

16. I wish everyone a fulfilling time at the conference. Thank you.