Ong Jing Fang, Chief, Population Health, NHG Health, Singapore

1) How do you use your role to ensure that technology and policy are truly inclusive?

Inclusiveness starts with listening and understanding What Matters to the People.

Our Population Health colleagues in NHG Health, together ground our policy assumptions with community realities across Central and North Singapore through a strong partnership with our community partners, grassroots, general practitioners (GPs), health and social agencies.

The development of our digital interactions and technology is focused on the needs of our residents and partners.

We work with various partners to build digital confidence, especially seniors, by adopting an accessible design, keeping our interface simple and user-friendly.

We also work with the Infocomm Media Development Authority of Singapore (IMDA), community partners to provide training and resources, especially for seniors and their caregivers.

2) What’s a moment in your career when you saw firsthand how technology or a new policy changed a citizen’s life for the better?

Healthcare technology development is mostly focused on patients and healthcare professionals.

With an ageing population and rising complexities, the burden on our caregivers will increase.

CarePal, a one-stop digital platform for caregivers developed by NHG Health’s Tan Tock Seng Hospital, is an example of how technology can alleviate caregivers’ burden and better support them in caring for their loved ones.

CarePal allows caregivers to create a profile of their loved ones and then generates a resource package customised to the needs of the care recipient.

We hope to continue expanding its functionalities and resources in response to the needs of caregivers and their loved ones.

3) What was the most impactful project you worked on this year, and how did you measure its success in building trust and serving the needs of the public?

This year, NHG Health rolled out our NHG HealthBot, a generative AI round-the-clock digital assistant available across all NHG Health institutions' websites, the NHG Health app, and through NHG Health’s WhatsApp Business (+65 6355 3000). 

The NHG HealthBot features advanced generative artificial intelligence (AI) capabilities such as deeper context awareness to better understand users’ questions and enhanced response quality by summarising information from up-to-date sources.

It also serves residents and patients in our four national languages.

Powered by ChatGPT-4 Omni and based on the Retrieval-Augmented Generation (RAG) model, the NHG HealthBot covers a wide range of content from health and wellness advice, services available in NHG Health hospitals and institutions, national programmes such as HealthierSG, Age Well SG and also community programmes and services in the Central and North region.

We have also recently integrated the NHG HealthBot to live chat with our telenurses for residents to have more seamless and greater access to care. 

Although we have only introduced the NHG HealthBot across our various channels since April 2025, we have seen active usage and user satisfaction improvement from 73 per cent to 87 per cent.

We have plans to expand NHG HealthBot’s functionalities in 2026 to address our residents’ needs, such as ease of appointment making.

4) What was one unexpected lesson you learned this year about designing for real people? This can be about a specific project or a broader lesson about your work.

People value the human touch.

Even as we continue to refine, enhance and introduce new functionalities in our NHG HealthBot, we recognise that our residents and patients need the human touch.

Hence, we have catered for the seamless transfer to Live Chat with our nurses, as well as continue to allow residents and patients to call in and speak to our contact centre colleagues.

Our aim is for technology to ease the demand for our colleagues, such that they can cater to the needs of our residents and patients who need the human touch.

5) We hear a lot about AI. What's a practical example of how AI can be used to make government services more inclusive and trustworthy?

Use of artificial intelligence  AI requires data preparation, testing, active feedback and continuous refinement.

We spent an enormous amount of effort to prepare our knowledge base for our generative AI NHG Health Bot so that responses can be accurate and relevant.

Time was spent testing before we launched for public use, and we are still constantly monitoring, gathering feedback, refining and testing.

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While it may seem onerous, we think this is necessary to build public confidence in our AI-assisted services.  

6) How are you preparing for the next wave of change in the public sector? What new skill, approach, or technology are you most excited to explore in the coming year?

Staying plugged in to how AI is being developed and adopted across the world in healthcare, keeping an eye on the emerging risks and ensuring we are up to date in terms of governance and security. I am most excited about our plans to adopt agentic AI in the coming year. 

7) What advice do you have for public sector innovators who want to build a career focused on serving all citizens?

Be bilingual in logic and empathy.

Sit where citizens sit.

Your tech might not be what they want – accept it. Let tech carry the load so humans can carry the heart.

8) Who inspires you to build a more inclusive and trustworthy public sector?

Residents who trust us enough to tell us, “You are wrong, this is not what we need”.

9) If you had an unlimited budget, what would your dream project be?

A technology-enabled physical and virtual care ecosystem which spans wellness, primary care, hospital care, community care, medication and diagnostics - where anyone can gain access to trusted and affordable care with ease and peace of mind.

10) Outside tech, what excites you the most?

I love to play (who doesn’t?)!

Games and sports are great ways to connect people and build shared experiences.

This year, NHG Health launched our 15M Health Games, and it was such a wonderful experience to see how residents of all ages and abilities come together to play.

I am really excited and looking forward to seeing our 15M movement grow through community and resident-led inclusive games.