Singapore to boost use of technology for better healthcare delivery
Singapore is ramping up the use of technology to improve healthcare delivery for patients nationwide.
Health Minister Gan Kim Yong has recently announced that by the end of the year, all Singaporeans will have access to a new application that will allow them to call a nurse and order home care supplies.
The app, called Health Market Place, was one of several technology-driven initiatives mentioned by Gan in his speech at the annual National Health IT Summit held at the Singapore Expo on May 30.
Now in its pilot phase, Health Market Place will be scaled up by the end of the year. Singapore General Hospital (SGH) and KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH) are among the healthcare providers currently participating in the pilot.
According to the hospitals, the app currently matches a nurse to a patient according to location. For example, a nurse can head to a patient’s house to do a wound dressing or change his or her urinary catheter on her way to and from work. The nurse then keys in her observations in the app, so other nurses who care for this patient are aware of the person’s condition.
About 140 nurses from SGH and KKH are on the program and have completed close to 75 patient visits since April 2016, the hospitals said.
The Health Marketplace is just one of the many projects the Ministry of Health (MOH) will be ramping up under its Health IT Master Plan.
With funding support from the National Robotics Programme, the Health Ministry will support the trial use of robotics in healthcare, Gan said.
“We intend to develop prototypes of smart wards integrated with smart logistics for what we hope will be hospitals of the future. In line with the shift beyond hospitals to the community, we will also look into robotics-assisted home care.”
Another area the authorities are looking into is enabling more productive telehealth service delivery models, the health minister said.
In addition to the recently rolled-out national platforms for video consultation and tele-rehab solutions, a vital signs monitoring platform will also be launched later this year. This will allow the remote monitoring of patients’ vital signs such as blood pressure, blood glucose or weight of patients with conditions such as hypertension, diabetes, and heart or pulmonary diseases.
Patients can, in turn, receive more timely advice and intervention to manage their conditions without having to schedule an appointment to visit the hospital, according to the Health Minister.
“As a whole, the use of the vital signs monitoring platform can enable more regular monitoring, improve patient management and reduce hospital visits and re-admissions,” he said.
In his speech, Gan also renewed calls for private healthcare providers to digitalize their records to join the National Electronic Health Record (NEHR). At present, more than 760,000 patient record searches are made monthly, he said, adding that there was a need “to go further and faster”.
The health minister said there is a huge potential for harnessing health data for research, more effective policy and program development, better targeted care interventions and treatments, more productive practices, and expanded outreach.
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