SPEECH BY DR KOH POH KOON, SENIOR MINISTER OF STATE, MINISTRY OF HEALTH & MINISTRY OF MANPOWER, AT SINGHEALTH COMMUNITY FORUM 2026, 22 MAY 2026, 1.15 PM, HEARTBEAT @ BEDOK

Professor Lee Chien Earn, Deputy Group CEO (Regional Health System), SingHealth; 

Professor Ng Kee Chong, CEO, Changi General Hospital; 

Friends and partners from the health and social care sectors, 

Ladies and gentlemen, 

         Very good afternoon. It is my pleasure to join you this afternoon at the SingHealth Community Forum 2026. Now as I look around, I see many familiar faces, friends and colleagues from both the healthcare and community care sectors – and that in itself, all of you here today, that in itself is a reflection of how far we have come in caring for our community. All of us contributing our expertise, working together hand in hand. 

2.      Now, let me start with a picture that perhaps many of you will recognise. An elderly lady in her seventies, living alone in a HDB flat nearby in Bedok. Like many of her age, she has diabetes and hypertension. Her daughter who looks after her, who works full-time, worries about whether her mother is eating well, taking her medications on time, and also having enough social interactions. But in recent months, her mother has been becoming a little bit more forgetful. She is not yet at the point of needing institutional care — but without the right support, unfortunately, she could get there faster than any one of us would desire. 

3.      Sounds very familiar, and with an ageing population, I think all of you on the ground will see more and more of such cases. So as I said, this is not an exceptional case. It is going to be increasingly the norm that we will face. More than 21% of our citizens are aged 65 and older, and the largest cohort of baby boomers will enter their senior years over the next five years within this term of government. Now, what this means in practice is that more seniors with more complex, overlapping needs that will cut across health and social domains will be something that we will increasingly encounter on the ground. So in this kind of situation, a doctor's appointment alone will not solve the issue of loneliness. An Active Ageing Centre (AAC) also cannot manage a senior’s chronic disease by itself. Therefore, the texture of need has changed, and our system of care must evolve and change with it. Working in isolation will not solve such complex problems. 

4.      Now, this is why the partnerships that we have in this room, each and every one of you, will matter a lot more in the years ahead, not as a nice-to-have, but as a fundamental necessity. Seniors like the lady I just described will need a coordinated web of support from clinical teams, primary care providers, GPs in the community, community care organisations, volunteers, grassroot organisations, and family caregivers, all of us working together hand in hand. Building that web is the work that is before us, and each of you here today will be an important part of the node that will form this web that we talk about 

Global Recognition of SingHealth’s Leadership in Collaborative Care 

5.      But indeed, this has been an approach that SingHealth has been refining for over a decade now. Changi General Hospital (CGH) and South East CDC started the Neighbours For Active Living Programme, partnering volunteers to support seniors within their neighbourhoods.  

• What started as a very simple initiative has evolved into more than 20 place-based Healthier SG teams across the Eastern Singapore, comprising primary care providers, community nurses, wellbeing coordinators and community partners who deliver holistic person-centric care for residents throughout the different course of their lives.

• Nearly 9000 seniors have directly benefited from the programme, with the Healthier SG teams conducting more than 120,000 care calls and home visits to support seniors in their homes and in the communities.  

• CGH has also scaled up volunteer training efforts, equipping more than a 100 volunteers with essential knowledge in areas such as diet and nutrition, exercise, and mental wellness. 

• Now I share these numbers, but these numbers are not just a measure of scale — they are a measure of what sustained, trust-based partnerships can actually achieve. And with more people coming on board, we can multiply this in a significant way. 

6.      In recognition of its efforts, SingHealth, as you heard, has won the Best Cross-Organisation Collaboration Award in March at the International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare in Oslo, in Norway. Let’s give them a big round of applause, shall we? Congratulations! This is a wonderful effort, that is, getting recognised internationally, something that does all of us proud, something that all of you have played a part in as well. Now, as we celebrate the achievements, the imperative before us now is to press ahead and scale up all these efforts. 

Advancing Age Well Neighbourhoods 

7.      Age Well Neighbourhoods are where we are taking that next step. From a single programme, we are now expanding to neigbourhoods. Rather than require seniors to navigate multiple partners, providers and long-term care services by themselves, and risk the delivery of care falling through the cracks because of a lack of guidance, Age Well Neighbourhoods bring integrated health and social care into the neighbourhoods that our seniors call home. 

8.      SingHealth is a key partner in the development of Age Well Neighbourhoods, in Tiong Bahru-Redhill and right here at Bedok. This exemplifies how regional health systems contribute to translating our national vision into localised action, bringing the care and the support that our seniors need right to their doorstep. 

9.      Building an integrated care ecosystem for our seniors goes beyond improving individual services – it requires partners across sectors and services to work together as a unified system, so that our seniors can age in place with confidence, dignity and independence that they all desire. 

10.      At the heart of this are partnerships. I will share about three different partnership approaches that are transforming care in our communities today and these will continue to shape our collective future together. 

Partnerships between Clusters and Community Care Providers 

11.      Now first, is the partnership between clusters and community care providers, which is integral in the Age Well Neighbourhoods I described. We have intentionally located many of our Community Health Posts (CHPs) within our AACs, Active Ageing Centres. This brings healthcare right into the spaces where seniors already gather, socialise, have their network and feel right at home. 

12.      With Age Well Neighbourhoods, we are taking this cluster-community partnership one step further through enhanced CHPs. Building on the strong foundation of 140 CHPs already serving seniors across Eastern Singapore, SingHealth has rolled out five enhanced CHPs in April - three in Tiong Bahru-Redhill and two here in Bedok itself.   

• Now these enhanced CHPs offer a more comprehensive range of services, which focus on preventive care and chronic disease management.  

• They operate once a week and allow walk-ins as well. Residents can also access services via teleconsultations on days when the enhanced CHPs are not physically open, to enhance accessibility to care.  

• Sited within AACs operated by community partners like NTUC Health and Thye Hua Kwan Moral Charities, these enhanced CHPs show what clusters and community care providers can actually achieve together, ensuring that our seniors receive truly holistic, person-centric care right in their neighbourhoods.  

Partnerships between Cluster and Private Sector 

13.      The second kind of partnerships, beyond the partnerships between clusters and community care providers, we are seeing exciting collaborations between clusters and the private sector - including the technology companies - that are unlocking new possibilities for extending care within our communities. 

14.      The AI-Assisted Tele-rehabiLitAtion System, or ATLAS, co-developed by SingHealth Community Hospitals, Jurong Community Hospital and technology partner Rebee Health, illustrates this well. Let me share. 

• So using a wearable sensor and AI-assisted applications, ATLAS enables physiotherapists to deliver personalised rehabilitation during the inpatient stay while keeping patients engaged in their own recovery. 

• But the care does not stop at the hospital door as the patient continue their rehabilitation remotely via the same application after they are discharged.  

• So together, these efforts show how clinical expertise and the use of innovative technology can combine to make care more personalised, seamless, and ultimately more empowering for the residents as they work towards regaining their independence.  

Partnerships facilitated by Community Care Providers 

15.      Last but not least, community care providers are also stepping up to initiate collaborations themselves – whether with each other or with partners from other sectors. When organisations combine their respective expertise and resources, the result is care that is greater than the sum of its parts. You achieve synergy, you help each other to actually perform your core functions, but together you unlock a lot more possibilities. 

16.      A heartening example of this is the collaboration between Thye Hua Kwan AAC @ Kaki Bukit and Montfort Care Mental Health Community Outreach Teams (CREST) since 2024.  

• The two organisations have come together to co-deliver the Cognitive Stimulation Activities (CSA) Programme - combining cognitive, physical and social elements within early interventions for seniors with mild cognitive impairments.  

• The programme features reminiscence activities centred on familiar local dishes and Singapore landmarks, as well as practical exercises reinforcing daily living skills. Seniors have reported improvements in both physical mobility and cognitive function – a testament to what community care providers can achieve when they come together and combine their strengths. 

17.      Community care providers are also forging partnerships beyond their sector. I would like to congratulate TOUCH Community Services on the recent launch of TOUCHpoint@Tampines 285, which promotes social connectedness, intergenerational bonding and caregiver support.  

• Their Age+ Living Lab – the fourth of its kind, developed in partnership with the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) and SG Assist, brings gerontech education to life in a particularly meaningful way.  

• When I visited Hong Kong recently, I saw some similar showcase of what TOUCH is doing, and I appreciate TOUCH and their partners’ efforts to bring a showcase to seniors here in Singapore. Rather than simply telling seniors and their caregivers about assistive devices and home modifications, seniors can now experience this firsthand in a space that mirrors their own home.  

• This hands-on experience helps seniors understand for themselves how technology can improve and assist them in their daily living, building the confidence to embrace the tools that can help them to live more independently, and also it gives their caregivers greater peace of mind that with the use of technology, the task and the care will not be as daunting as they imagine it to be. 

Call to Partnership and Closing 

18.      So, these partnerships that I described are not isolated efforts. Each partnership has an important part to play in the care journey for our seniors. But together, they point towards something greater: an integrated care ecosystem where no senior falls through gaps, and where their needs are comprehensively met by the collective strength of our partnerships. 

19.      The theme of this forum — 'Empowering Care: Building Healthier and Stronger Communities Together' — captures exactly what we are working towards. The elderly lady in that Bedok flat I described earlier, and the many seniors like her across our neighbourhoods, are counting on all of us here to get this right. Because their independence, their dignity, and their happiness depends on how well we do our work on the ground together. I am confident that when we each bring our unique strengths to the table, there is much more that we can achieve together. So this forum today, is not just about us sharing examples, is not just about us acquiring knowledge. More importantly, it is about all of us getting to know one another, and through the discussions, through the sharing of ideas, hopefully spark something new, bring new partnerships and together when we come back for next year’s forum, perhaps we will have more exciting things to share. So today, other than getting your mental nourishment, I hope you will take the chance as well to build new partnerships and make new friends. With that, let me wish all of you a meaningful, exciting and enriching forum. Thank you very much for having me here.