Speech by Mr Gan Kim Yong, Minister for Health at the 8th National Health IT Summit, 20 May 2016

Good morning, colleagues, and distinguished guests,

War on Diabetes and Information Technology’s role in supporting it

1.         Last month I declared the ‘War on Diabetes’. The strategies entail prevention of diabetes through a healthy lifestyle and diet, screen for early intervention and control for better disease management. We will mobilise everyone to join the war and we will support the war efforts with key enablers such as technology. Today I would like to share how with the aid of technology we can better fight this war.

2.         To prevent diabetes, we need to promote a healthier lifestyle. We need to provide our population with the tools to take charge of their health and make healthier choices for themselves and their families. Technology has already begun to offer us some promising solutions. Ongoing programmes such as National Steps Challenge and Healthy 365 app are some of the tools that help individuals track their activities and make changes to their lifestyle.

3.         An initial release of HealthHub was launched in October last year. It aims to eventually become a one stop digital healthcare companion for every citizen. We had taken user feedback and are finalising the design of the enhanced version which will be rolled out by the end of this year. For example, some seniors have told us that they would like their children to help keep track of their medical appointments and also as a reminder to their children to bring them to these appointment. The enhanced HealthHub will enable patients to grant their caregivers access to their health records and medical appointments. Patients will also be able to conveniently view the details of their medications and known side effects, alongside the capability to set reminders to take medication on time. HealthHub will engage the citizens deeper through personalised content, to help them better manage their health, and to enhance their overall experience. It will empower Singaporeans to take greater ownership of their health and wellness. Later in this Summit, you will hear more details about the new ‘features’ that HPB and MOHH will be adding into HealthHub.  

4.         We also want to Screen and identify those at risk to prevent diabetes from taking hold. We hope to help individuals understand their risk of having diabetes. We envision these processes to support community and workplace health screening efforts. Users will be able to access their screening invitations and screening results conveniently through HealthHub. Furthermore, we will nudge people in making changes to their lifestyles, prompt appropriate follow-ups with family GPs, so that GPs can help individuals manage their conditions better.   

5.         Telehealth will be one of our weapons deployed to support better disease control.  We are consolidating our various Telehealth initiatives to develop a common platform. The platform will be integrated with HealthHub to provide a seamless experience for our population to track their vital signs and do self-monitoring with support from their care team. For proper disease control we should be able to manage the disease adequately in all settings be it hospitals, community, or the homes. We can accomplish this through our Care and Case Management System (CCMS) and National Electronic Health Record (NEHR) System which will allow appropriate patient information to flow beyond hospitals to care professionals at community settings to enable proper diagnosis and management of patient condition. As of February this year more than 23,000 patients were enrolled under various programmes and 170,000 interventions had been managed through CCMS. I would like to commend MOHH and the healthcare clusters for their effort in deploying CCMS at the national level.

Connected Healthcare

6.         We intend to fight and win this war by better connecting our troops and sharing information. To strengthen connectedness, care providers across all settings need to be digitised to enable information flow. For primary care, we see GPs playing a critical role in helping our patients especially those with chronic diseases manage their conditions within the community. We recognise that many of our GPs have limited IT resources; hence we have ongoing efforts with GPs to co-create a solution that will help digitise their operations and give them better access to patient information. GPs can in turn get to improve their clinic’s efficiency, but more importantly, they will be able to provide more informed and continued care for our patients near where they live.  

7.         Another programme in the primary care sector is SmartCMS. SmartCMS helps staff avoid manual claims, by enabling their IT systems to electronically send claims to MOH. Today, over 20% of CHAS clinics are already enjoying this convenience by submitting their claims directly through SmartCMS. I encourage GPs who are not yet on board our SmartCMS to upgrade your CMS and sign up for SmartCMS soon. 

8.         Besides our primary care sector, we are also strengthening and connecting our Intermediate And Long-Term Care sector so that they can be able and equal partners in the delivery of care. For community hospitals, I am glad to announce we have deployed the Community Hospital Common System (CHCS) to all 5 community hospitals in 2015. This is made possible through the hard work and commitment from Ang Mo Kio Thye Hua Kwan Hospital, Bright Vision Hospital, Ren Ci Community Hospital, St Andrew’s Community Hospital, St Luke’s Hospital, MOHH, and IHiS. Through Nursing Home IT Enablement Programme (NHELP) we have also provided IT capabilities to 10 Nursing Homes. We hope to roll out to more nursing homes over the next two years.

Smart Health

9.         I had just shared IT’s role in combating diabetes but healthcare is not only about diabetes. We operate as part of a Smart Nation and connected healthcare lays the foundation for Smart Health, enabling us to look at smart ways to address our population health issues. Smart Health aims to make healthcare more Proactive, Integrated, Personalised, and Empowered (PIPE) for both our citizens and care providers. In this regard we already have a number of Smart Health projects which contribute to our Whole of Government Smart Nation initiative. An ongoing effort is the ‘Elderly Monitoring System in Yuhua’ which is a cross agency effort to bring smartness to everyday living in homes. More of such smartness like Tele-rehabilitation and vital signs monitoring for chronic disease management will be introduced so that care can go beyond hospitals and into the comfort of people’s homes. In the coming months we are going to share more about these Smart Health projects so please keep a look out for these announcements on how they will bring greater benefits to our citizens.

Special Acknowledgements

10.      The health IT journey that accompanies our overall healthcare transformation can be very trying. I applaud the spirit of all the healthcare clusters to have come together so far to make this work and I commend MOHH for taking leadership in driving ground breaking national and cross cluster projects. IHiS has also been instrumental in supporting MOHH projects and clusters’ operations, particularly in our recent new facilities opening involving Ng Teng Fong General Hospital, Jurong Community Hospital and Yishun Community Hospital.

11.      I would like to give special mention to the IT team led by Mr Lim Soo Tong and Adjunct Associate Professor Gamaliel Tan for ensuring the successful hospital opening of JurongHealth facilities last year. We look forward to IT to reap the benefits in terms of efficiency, staff productivity, and better patient outcomes in the new facilities.

12.      I would also like to commend the relentless effort and commitment from the MOH Infocomm team in supporting the successful launch of Medishield Life on 1 Nov last year. It is the culmination of over three years of hard work effecting extensive enhancements to MOH and hospitals’ systems while involving partners from CPF Board, IDA and numerous data contributing agencies and healthcare institutes. Tremendous effort and commitment had gone into implementing our first nation-wide household check exercise so that subsidy could be automatically and correctly computed. The team also worked within a very tight project timeline to implement a Premium Check eService in end Oct 2015 to allow citizens and PRs to query on their eligible subsidies and premium payable for Medishield Life coverage. We are proud to have developed the most comprehensive and updated household database in Singapore.

Conclusion

13.      There have been many commendable and impactful health IT efforts in our system which was why we inaugurated the Health IT Excellence Award last year, where we learnt about and honoured many worthy projects. I am glad that this year too we have a number of innovative projects to select from. In line with our vision to recognise the contributions of the private sector we have a new category of award this year to recognise our private sector peers’ contribution to our nation. I hope these awards continue to stimulate and encourage innovative ideas from our stakeholders. These awards also represent our appreciation for the hard work and passion that the teams have put in for the betterment of our system and for that you deserve to be recognised.

14.      I hope that in the coming year we will see even more transformative efforts honoured that will lead us Towards Better Health, Better Care, and Better Lives for our people.

15.      On this note I wish you a fruitful summit today.