Dr Jade Kua, Senior Consultant, Emergency Medicine Department, KK Women and Children’s Hospital, Singapore

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

I’m the director of the DARE (Dispatcher-Assisted First Responder) programme that teaches laymen to cooperate with the emergency dispatcher to start CPR and use an AED until the ambulance arrives. We have incorporated it into the official primary & secondary school curriculum. Last year, we launched an app that allows anyone to learn this from home.

What has been the most exciting thing that you worked on in 2019?

In 2019, I expanded the programme to include teaching CPR & AED for child and infant victims. This is interesting as a community programme because we have always focused on adult victims.

What is the best thing you have experienced in your career this year?

The best thing I’ve experienced in my career is working with large teams of doctors, nurses and communications departments. The collective experience we have has helped to shape my own clinical acumen.

If you were to share one piece of advice that you learned in 2019, what would it be?

Dream big and collaborate outside your department, your institution and even your country. In global collaborations, the collective experience helps many more people.

What tool or technique particularly interests you for 2020?

Enhancing the human connection across space and time is interesting to me, such as how telemedicine or audio e-books can enhance the patient-doctor and learner-educator experience. I’d love to incorporate the human connection into my IT projects.

What are your priorities for 2020?

My priority as a working mother is my family. In any case, they inspire me when I create curriculum for educating kids or treating kids so it makes sense for me to spend more time with them!

What is one challenge you would like to take on in 2020?

We have strong ties with the ASEAN community and I would like to maintain those and create similarly good collaborations with the rest of the international community. I believe there are many lessons we can learn from other smart cities and even smart villages.

What has been your fondest memory from the past year?

My fondest memory in 2019 was my kids pointing out AEDs everywhere we go. It’s wonderful how involved they are in my community projects. It makes me love what I do even more.