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Ministry of Health
Speeches

SPEECH BY DR JANIL PUTHUCHEARY, SENIOR MINISTER OF STATE, MINISTRY OF HEALTH, AT THE OPENING CEREMONY OF THE AOCNR SGCR-WIRES 2023, 18 Aug

18 August 2023

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Dr Tchoyoson Lim, Organising Chairman

Distinguished Guests

Ladies and Gentlemen

  1. There is a need for us to do more with less, including here in Singapore. So we are here together collaboratively, professionals, experienced academics, researchers, practitioners and we have to find a way to set in place the structures, processes, products and services.

  2. One example is AimSG, the AI enabled Medical Imaging Platform. It is an example of a collaborative effort involving government agencies, industry partners, healthcare professionals, looking to see how we can harness the potential of artificial intelligence (AI) in medicine. We know that it can significantly augment diagnostic capabilities and improve our efficiency and workload.

  3. Some people are concerned and worried about what the impact of AI is going to have on jobs and roles, but the history of these types of technologies has always been in the other direction where it has brought us more efficiency. The use of such techniques can help deploy more accurate models of assessment. As a vendor-neutral platform, we hope AimSG will allow the kind of business process innovation and agility in our thinking and operations that will deliver solutions faster. These capabilities are important. They streamline the diagnostic process and make things faster, leading to early interventions and improved patient outcomes.


  4. The ACUITy or “Appropriateness Criteria for Use of Imaging Technology” project saw the Ministry of Health and medical community coming together to develop evidence-based recommendations for the appropriate use of technology in clinical care. Radiologists and other experts from relevant specialties representing the Colleges under the Academy of Medicine Singapore, collaborated with the Agency for Care Effectiveness (ACE), MOH, to publish a series of ACE clinical guidance (ACGs).


  5. This is always how we have worked as a community, as a practice that the Ministry of Health and regulators are informed deeply by practitioners and continue to work on a day to day basis and in collaboration. We are one community and the COVID-19 pandemic has demonstrated the extent to which the healthcare ecosystem in Singapore can come together.


  6. The use of these technologies will require an approach towards ethics-based security, the case being privacy. We will have to take into account the opportunities as well as the risks. Simplistically, you depend solely on AI at your peril. You do need a human assessment and oversight. This responsible use of AI requires us to think about how we deal with issues around patient privacy. For many years, healthcare data and data in general have been managed by different types of legislation and regulation. We will have to think through how this would work and issues of transparency and explainability will come to the fore.


  7. Whether in radiology or across the public sector, the ability to understand and explain the output of AI empowers clinicians to make well-informed decisions based on AI recommendations. In order to drive trust, from our patients, from our institutions and from the public. We can do so, as a community, leveraging a number of core principles and doing so we will find ways to improve the use of technology.


  8. The last point I want to make is that we do have to think of the next generation. As we embrace this technology-driven AI future, you as experienced clinicians and radiologists need to prioritise the training of the next generation. As we think about the training of next generation, we do have to adapt the knowledge base we call upon, which almost by definition will be different from what we have learnt and what we practise on a day to day basis. We, as a community of trainers, mentors, and academic leaders require a certain intellectual humility that what we do today may not be what is best for next generation. How to adapt our thinking in order to drive their success. We will enable them to discover novel approaches, make breakthroughs with technology, and perform groundbreaking research that we have yet to imagine.


  9. Thank you very much to the organisers of the conference for their dedication and hard work. Thank you very much to all of you who have come to Singapore to share your knowledge and experience and provide us an opportunity to embrace and learn from what you have done. Let us all collaborate and innovate together.


    Thank you.