Culture first and foremost at NHG’s digital innovation office

Associate Professor Matthew Chua places culture at the same, if not on higher, pedestal than technology.   

Speaking to GovInsider, Assoc Prof Chua says that a great amount of time and effort has been invested to drive change and adoption of new technology. 

He is a member of the Digital Innovation Office (DIO), whose mission is to collectively drive digital transformation with the various National Healthcare Group (NHG) institutions.

The inaugural ‘Rock and Heal Challenge’ hackathon by DIO recently brought together over 70 participants from all three healthcare clusters in Singapore to prototype artificial intelligence (AI) products for healthcare use cases. 

“A significant lesson learnt from experience so far would be that culture is almost, or more important, than the technology itself.” 

Without culture enablers like hackathons, workshops and roadshows, he says that “technology [alone] will end up as a white elephant”. 

To subscribe to the GovInsider bulletin click here. 

Innovation in action 

A living testament to DIO’s innovation culture is its citizen development initiative.  

“At DIO, we actively nurture and support staff in forming communities that explore and build with no-code and low-code tools,” Assoc Prof Chua shares. 

He explains that frontline staff have an intimate understanding of unique pain points and are well-placed to drive innovations. 

A solution created through this initiative includes the EmpathIQ that uses AI-generated scenarios to train healthcare staff in communication skills. 

The tool empowers medical professionals to refine their interactions with patients by providing real-time feedback on tone, empathy, and nonverbal cues, he adds. 
 
“The impact of citizen developers has been significant as we have witnessed a boost in staff engagement and a sense of ownership. Furthermore, it has increased responsiveness to problems on the ground on a scale never seen before,” he says. 

Citizen developers are further supported with training and mentorship to build technical confidence, funding support through a Digital Prototyping Budget (DPB), and a sandbox environment to leverage on a matured ecosystem of services and tools. 

However, pioneering ground-up initiatives aren't without challenges. 

Some of the common barriers included navigating cybersecurity and compliance concerns, especially when dealing with sensitive patient data, he says. 

This also affects sustaining momentum beyond the prototyping phase since innovators need to seek appropriate platforms to deploy and scale their prototypes. 

According to Assoc Prof Chua, another ongoing challenge is to help staff balance their operational workload with innovation efforts. 

“We’re seeing a transformation - not just in the solutions, but in the mindset of staff, who now see themselves as contributors to healthcare transformation, not just recipients of it. 

“We simply provide the enabling ecosystem for their ideas to take flight,” he adds.  

Driving a culture for innovation 

Under NHG's Centre for Healthcare Innovation (CHI), DIO empowers healthcare transformation through AI, digital solutions, and human-centred innovation. 

NHG serves the healthcare needs for over 1.5 million residents in Singapore through an integrated network of primary, acute, community, and specialty care centres. 

Assoc Prof Chua explains that DIO does this through three main functions.  

“We see ourselves as enablers of system-wide change, working across the full spectrum of ideation, enablement, and execution.” 

First is supporting digital enablement and adoption, where the office rolls out commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) products that improve day-to-day operations.

This includes Robotic Process Automation (RPA) tool that saved substantial man-hours on repetitive and manual tasks. 

The second is innovation prototyping and acceleration, which seeks to support ground-up innovators by providing a sandbox-prototyping platform through its Digital Innovation Studio, a cloud-based healthcare innovative platform. 

Some projects deployed under this function include “smart wards” that leverage digitalisation, robotics and AI technologies to change the way that staff works and cares for elderly patients, overall helping to optimise manpower resources. 

Lastly, DIO provides evaluation and wayfinding of new technologies.  

He explains that this is achieved by supporting innovators with the framework, governance, and resources to pilot and scale ideas.  

“This includes support for cybersecurity reviews, ethics approvals, and the use of our Digital Transformation Playbook to lower barriers and streamline the innovation process,” he says. 

Together, these functions help transform how care is delivered and experienced in a future-ready public healthcare system, he adds. 

Sustainable innovation at scale 

With the ground floor culture in place, next comes the complex task of scaling innovation across a large system like NHG’s network.  

Assoc Prof Chua employs a structured approach to navigate through this “rigorous innovation lifecycle” emphasising progressive stages from “proof of concept (POC) to proof of value (POV), to scale-up". 

To this end, DIO’s Hospital without Walls 2.0 (HoW2.0) framework harmonises the inpatient and outpatient journey. It does so by integrating both incubation and acceleration efforts to ensure early clinical and operations co-design. 

This integration also helps build buy-in and usability from the outset. 

To overcome resistance in scaling innovation projects, he says that DIO deploys “green lane” pathways for lower-risk digital projects, as well as communication and storytelling to share success stories across the cluster. 

Another deliberate strategy for DIO is to stay future-ready, by constantly engaging in horizon scanning and co-developing solutions with industry, academia, and government.  

He shares that DIO has been experimenting with an emerging technology known as Retrieval Augmented Generation (RAG)-based chatbots, which can be used for various productivity-related use cases like application form screening.  

Sharing his advice for advice for agencies embarking on their own digital transformation journey, he urges that people “smart small, build fast, and stay grounded in purpose.” 

“The future of healthcare is not just digital - it is deeply human-centred. At DIO, we believe in building an innovation ecosystem that empowers every staff member and patient to co-create that future.  

“Change happens when people feel supported, trusted, and inspired.”