Improve information sharing and integration of processes

NOTICE PAPER NO. 1021

NOTICE OF QUESTION FOR ORAL ANSWER

FOR THE SITTING OF PARLIAMENT ON 4 MARCH 2022

Name and Constituency of Member of Parliament

Mr Yip Hon Weng

MP for Yio Chu Kang

Question No. 2607

To ask the Minister for Health (a) what are the plans to improve information sharing and integration of processes between the three healthcare clusters to enhance patient experience; and (b) whether the Ministry is exploring the use of a single mobile app for the different healthcare systems so that patients and caregivers need not use multiple apps.

Answer
There are ongoing efforts to improve information sharing and the delivery of digital services to enhance the patient experience.

The National Electronic Health Record (NEHR) system enables sharing of patient summary health records across care providers, including the three public healthcare clusters. We will progressively build up its coverage to include information from more healthcare providers to support care continuity.

A common pharmacy system for the three public healthcare clusters is underway, to allow consolidation of patient information, which allows providers to have a more holistic view of patients’ medications and facilitate the filling of prescriptions. In addition, MOH and the clusters are also developing a national charging and billing system to streamline processes and enable a more consistent experience for patients.

Common digital services across the clusters, such as the scheduling of appointments and bill payments are available on the national HealthHub mobile app and web portal. HealthHub also displays personal health records drawn from national systems, including, for example, COVID-19 vaccination records and COVID-19 test results. These common services are also made available through the clusters’ apps. This reduces the duplication of development effort and facilitate consistent user experience, regardless of the platform a person uses to connect with our healthcare system. Meanwhile, the presence of healthcare cluster-specific applications enable those healthcare providers to customise features tailored to their specific facilities and services, and also to innovate on user-interaction features that could better engage their patients. Over time, some of these new innovations that are well-received and successful in engaging patients can be incorporated as common services that are then made available to all patients in their preferred platform, be it HealthHub or one of the cluster apps.

We will continue to improve our digital services and enhance our offerings to improve the user experience.