Five key takeaways from GovInsider Live Healthcare Day
By Si Ying Thian
At the one-day event, Singapore public healthcare speakers shared what makes innovation tick in the highly regulated sector, and how key stakeholders are coming together to achieve population health goals.
GovInsider's inaugural Healthcare Day covered a range of themes, from how precision medicine can support population health, healthtech innovation, the use of GenAI in healthcare, data management, nudging for preventive health to partnerships. Image: GovInsider.
From Synapxe’s new innovation lab to a slew of artificial intelligence (AI) and generative AI (GenAI) use cases popping up in the sector, this year has been an exciting period for Singapore’s public healthcare.
Apart from tech developments, national priorities are pivoting to address the country’s demographic changes, such as a rapidly ageing population, as the public healthcare sector ramps up efforts around preventive care and active ageing.
To tackle the multifaceted challenges of the public healthcare system, the inaugural GovInsider Live Healthcare Day on September 17 covered a variety of themes.
These ranged from how precision medicine can support population health, healthtech innovation, the use of GenAI in healthcare, data management, nudging for preventive health to partnerships.
Amidst the complexities of a highly regulated but innovative sector, one audience member pointed out: “Let’s not take pride in how complex the healthcare system is. Let’s aim for simplification to make all our lives better.”
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1. Focus on the problem – don't be blinded by tech
At a panel titled Picking the right approach: Peek into healthtech innovation, speakers identified
clear problem articulation, long-term planning, integration of innovations into existing healthcare
systems, and change management as essential innovation enablers.
The panel discussed key learnings from failures and what it takes to sustain innovations in the public healthcare sector.
“Don’t fall in love with the solution and really focus on what you’re trying to solve. You don’t want to hold onto your solution and not give it away if the metrics do not show any impact,” said Open Government Products (OGP)’s Lead Product Designer, Samantha Soh.
She added that innovators need to “learn” to forgo tech if it does not work and that the tech should be iterated to support processes, not the way around.
Speakers from MOH Office for Healthcare Transformation (MOHT), Singapore Health Technologies Consortium (HealthTEC.SG), and National University Health System (NUHS) summarised key takeaways in their respective LinkedIn posts here, here and here.
2. User-friendliness, data security top of mind for GenAI
Speakers at the GenAI panel shared about how a platform approach, whether it is through Synapxe’s Tandem or IBM Watsonx, enables the sector to democratise GenAI innovations for clinicians, as well as to achieve data security and governance.
With Tandem, a secure GPT platform, clinicians no longer need to rely on data scientists and engineers, or very specialised, technical tools to develop GenAI innovations for their work, said Synapxe’s Senior Principal Specialist, Data Analytics and AI, Dr Goh Han Leong.
Singapore General Hospital (SGH)’s Chief Data and Digital Officer, Associate Professor Lionel Cheng, shared that ease of use can make or break GenAI in healthcare.
This is especially so when most of the GenAI innovations like ChatGPT are made available on the Internet and public healthcare practitioners are restricted to only using the Intranet.
Early adopters who are excited make up the minority, but the vast majority may not be interested or are too busy to figure out the limitations of these new tools, he explained.
Assoc Prof Cheng and MOHT’s Assistant Professor Dinesh Gunasekeran their takeaways on LinkedIn here and here.
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3. Data sharing, the foundation for healthcare innovation
Contrary to this being a “auditors’ talk,” speakers at the Data management, security and analytics: The next bound of NEHR panel underlined the potential of data to empower the patient’s healthcare journey and achieve public health interventions.
The speakers pointed that Singapore is getting closer to a data-driven healthcare system, as the country pushes for mandatory patient data sharing between public and private healthcare players into a centralised health record.
The next moves will be to tap on AI to transform anonymised data into usable insights for healthcare practitioners and policymakers, they added.
In Singapore, electronic medical and healthcare records are not currently used for AI and GenAI innovations to avoid conflict of interests with commercial partners, said Asst Prof Gunasekeran.
However, novel technologies like blockchain can be used to scale the use of data while incorporating patient consent for future, differentiated use of their data, he added. Open-source data platforms are currently also tapped on for research and development.
4. Community partnerships at focus
Building partners’ capacities, co-creating services, and expanding ecosystem collaboration were among key initiatives highlighted in a partnerships panel.
The panel featured speakers across wide-ranging expertise from clinical research, eldercare, patient and caregiver advocacy to healthcare.
With Healthier SG’s focus on preventive care, community organisations are increasingly important stakeholders to ensure that patients are empowered to live safely and independently at their homes.
Tech can help bridge the gap between healthcare and community care.
To further strengthen linkages, efforts are underway between the Agency for Integrated Care (AIC) and Synapxe to accelerate digitalisation in the community care sector, said the national community care coordination agency’s Chief, Research, Data and Strategy, Ong Yunn Shing.
Beyond Healthier SG and Age Well SG, Grow Well SG is now on the public healthcare agenda as well.
National Healthcare Group (NHG)’s Chief of Population Health, Ong Jing Fang, shared how NHG is working with schools in the Central and North region to incorporate healthy living into school curriculum, and co-opting parents and teachers as role models.
5. Co-design nudges with users
Patients are moving from being merely consumers to co-designers of services, said MOHT’s Director and Head of Behavioral Science, National Improvement Unit, Dr Eunice Wong, in a panel about deploying nudges for preventive health.
Increasingly, behavioral change programmes are adopting a multistakeholder approach instead of being developed top-down by policymakers and scientists for the population.
She cited the MOHT-led Movements for Health (M4H) model as one such ground-up initiative.
Alexandra Hospital (AH) and NUHS’ Head of Healthcare Redesign, Dr Alexander Yip, said that a sandbox environment can incentivise the development of such programmes, as healthcare is otherwise a risk-averse sector.
Nudging can be multilayered and not restricted to an individual or a specific population, Dr Wong added, highlighting the potential of such programmes to be applied at the wider community and national levels.
Panel moderator Centre for Evidence and Implementation (CEI)'s Dr Jean Liu shared her takeaways from the discussion on LinkedIn.