Adjunct Associate Prof Ranjana Acharya, Senior Consultant, Department of General Internal Medicine, Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH), Singapore

1. How do you use technology/policy to improve citizens’ lives? Tell us about your role or organisation. 

As the Patient Education (PE) clinical lead of my organisation (TTSH/NHG) when Covid-19 hit, the PE team sprang into action with a frenzied urgency to digitalise PE materials and make them available on TTSH website in order to be freely accessible for our patients and their caregivers.

The journey towards the use and impact of technology (especially in healthcare) started there and continues to be an ever rapidly expanding, shifting and transformational process with the emergence of healthApps, Telehealth, LLMs and now AI. 

I am a medical doctor and senior consultant in the department of General Internal Medicine, TTSH, and a medical educator and faculty in both the undergraduate medical schools (NUS YLL and NTU LKC), and NHG postgraduate medical residency training program. 

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2. What was the most impactful project you worked on this year? 

The opportunity to conceptualise and co-create a Mobile Application Learning journey on Active Ageing (to understand and take action to prevent frailty) has been a meaningful and relevant project especially as Singapore rapidly ages.

This app is found freely within the NHG Cares App (NCA) and allows users to self-score their frailty status and embark on a personalised, customised learning journey. (complete with infographic, plain language quizzes presented multimodally) 

3. What was one unexpected learning from 2024? 

The realisation, understanding and embarking on (rather hesitantly) on Implementation and Behavior science, in order to understand/study facilitators and barriers of desired health behavior change and how to implement complex interventions such as mobile health application into an already complex system (health).

This area of work is poorly researched and needs to be rigorously studied to be understood in different socioeconomic and cultural settings. 

4. What’s a tool or technique you’re excited to explore in 2025? 

What affects and changes behaviors? Especially positive health related behaviors in multicultural Singapore and its diverse socioeconomic and cultural population?

I hope to use the COM-B framework/tool within the Behavior Change wheel (BCW) model to study how current varied and widely accepted online platforms can be harnessed to impact health related behaviors.

I quote “Interventions that are underpinned by theoretically driven behavior change models are more successful and lead to longer lasting changes.”  (Mitchie & Abraham, 2024). 

I also hope to understand and study best implementation frameworks and strategies for better health outcomes. 

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5. Everybody’s talking about AI today – give us your hot take on AI and what it means for the public sector.

AI in healthcare is a double-edged sword and can have phenomenal benefits and impact on the one hand, and yet on the other hand (especially in fields where the human interaction cannot be automated – eg mental health and counselling) could be challenging and an impedance.

Sound policies, good governance and ethical issues need careful consideration even as we dive into AI’s murky ocean. 

6. What are your priorities for 2025? 

a) To be able to study the impact of various patient education efforts in improving health literacy and health activation. 

b) To partner and collaborate with creative and innovative experts in the IT and behavioral sciences sectors to explore best digital strategies for better health outcomes.  

7. What advice do you have for public sector innovators? 

Collaboration and collective expertise/ brainpower should be intently sought to brainstorm and todays pressing issues especially societal, education and health. 

8. Who inspires you today? 

Being a deeply religious person, ultimately The LORD God Almighty is my inspiration and the source of all wisdom and knowledge.  

This feature was made possible in partnership with Centre for Healthcare Innovation (CHI).