OPENING REMARKS BY MINISTER FOR HEALTH MR ONG YE KUNG AT THE UNITED KINGDOM-SINGAPORE HEALTH DIALOGUE IN LONDON, 3 DECEMBER 2025

Secretary Streeting

Friends, colleagues, partners

         I thank the Secretary and the Department of Health and Social Care (DHSC) for the warm welcome and for hosting this inaugural Dialogue. Delighted to have the opportunity today to learn from one another and deepen this collaboration and relationship.

Shared Heritage and Strong Linkages

2          Through this dialogue, I am reminded of the shared heritage and the close linkages Singapore and the United Kingdom (UK) have built over the years, including in healthcare.

3          I am reminded of that every day when I go to work. I work in the College of Medicine Building (COMB), which started off in 1905 under a different name. In 1913, it became the King Edward VII Medical School, which then grew into the National University of Singapore. It shifted campus, but the old building stayed with some conference rooms, an auditorium and my office.

4          15 years ago, when we started a third medical school, it was at the Nanyang Technological University (NTU). We partnered Imperial College London. The NTU medical school curriculum was largely based on Imperial College’s and since then, the two institutions have developed a long and fruitful relationship. We have since graduated, and so we are now running the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine in NTU by ourselves, but that relationship with Imperial College continues.

5          Health and biomedical research is another area where we actively collaborate on. Last year, our research funding agencies issued a joint call for collaborative proposals focused on infectious diseases with epidemic or antimicrobial resistance potential. We have built on this momentum with three additional partnership agreements spanning genomic medicine, health data science, and health security cooperation between Singapore and UK agencies. Beyond these formal agreements, I understand that our colleagues are also exploring opportunities to partner on healthcare innovation and translation that would be applicable to both the UK and Singapore. So I look forward to all these very exciting frontier collaboration areas.

6          In regulation, I should mention this – our Health Sciences Authority has really evolved over the years, and the UK Medicines and Healthcare products Regulatory Agency, they have started to regard each other as reference agencies. Together with Canada, Australia and Switzerland, they are in the Access Consortium, which I think is a very strategic, very important initiative. It is a work-sharing arrangement where we collaborate and work together to streamline review and approval of therapeutic products across participating countries. I think in this era of tariffs and trade restrictions, such collaboration in regulatory approvals can really open up markets, sometimes in way that is much more important than removing tariffs.

Common Journey in Healthcare

7          More importantly, what binds us together is an alignment of fundamental beliefs—that citizens should have access to healthcare, regardless of their  backgrounds, their income levels and their economic status. We share common challenges and opportunities. I will list a few major issues, and I think these issues are why healthcare has become probably the biggest political issue in most developed countries.

8          First, we have similar demographic profiles, and both of our populations are ageing. People are living longer, but longer lifespan does not always translate to an equally longer health span. On average, Singaporeans are spending about 11 years with illnesses or disability in the later part of their lives. Somore than lengthening lifespan, which is an old Key Performance Indicator of health ministries, I think today what we want is to narrow the gap between health span and lifespan. Singaporeans’ lifespan, on average, is already 83. Even if we do not live any longer, just by pushing up health span, I think it is a big achievement, and it is what we should be aiming for.

9          Second, because of an ageing population, patient volume is rising, and we face a capacity crunch in both our countries. In Singapore, public hospital bed occupancy rates are high - 95% is common in the busiest hospitals. The UK similarly faces probably even more daunting challenges.

10        Third, these challenges present an unprecedented opportunity to transform healthcare and a burning platform. We need to focus on keeping people healthy, and not just treating illnesses. We are reforming care models, delivering as much care as possible in the community and residential homes, away from acute hospitals. I was just mentioning to the Secretary, actually, that is the biggest productivity improvement, much more than better medicine, robotic surgery or Artificial Intelligence (AI). Just right siting patients alone improves productivity. Polyclinics, General Practitioner (GP) clinics, Community Health Posts, Active Ageing Centres (AACs) and home nursing collectively form a core pillar of our healthcare system today. And we must harness technology, such as telehealth and AI, to raise productivity and augment service delivery.

11        Fourth, in the next two decades, there is a one-in-three chance that we will face another global pandemic like COVID-19, which will break out again.  And we are co-operating closely on pandemic preparedness.

Looking Forward

12       So our countries have both embarked on significant healthcare reform programmes as a result of these challenges. 

13        In Singapore, we have the Healthier SG movement, which seeks to shift our healthcare system towards a stronger focus on preventive care. We have another national movement called Age Well SG. Essentially, it is to develop a network of community centres to support seniors to age actively, healthily, and connect themselves socially in the community.

14        In the UK, the DHSC published a 10-year Health Plan for England earlier this year with transformation across three critical dimensions: from hospital to community, from analogue to digital, and from sickness to prevention. The NHS also released in 2023 a long-term workforce plan to address workforce shortages.

15        Ageing is the most consequential social development today, in many countries, with profound and long-lasting fiscal, economic, health and social impact. Singapore and the UK, we are amongst the most
forward-looking and active governments in tackling these challenges head on. And therefore, there is immense scope for deeper collaboration between our countries.

16       Our colleagues will spend the rest of the morning examining these opportunities in greater detail.

17       I wish all of you a fruitful and productive conversation, and I hope you can continue this conversation. So I would very much like to invite  Secretary Streeting to come back to Singapore again next year, if not later, so that we can continue these important conversations. Thank you.