Speech by MOS Chee Hong Tat at the Opening of the Centre for Healthcare Innovation Conference, 21 Oct 2016

Distinguished guests,

Colleagues & Friends

Good morning.

1.           I am delighted to join you today at the Inaugural Centre for Healthcare Innovation (CHI) Conference, held in conjunction with the National Seminar on Productivity in Healthcare.

Challenges and Opportunities in Healthcare

2.           Healthcare is undergoing rapid change. There are challenges posed by an ageing population with higher and also different demands for care and in Singapore’s case we are facing slowing domestic labour force growth.  So with these challenges, there are changes to be made to our healthcare sector, and we cannot continue business as usual. At the same time, there are exciting new opportunities because data and technology can be game changers.  The advancements in different fields – data analytics, precision medicine, robotics, tele-health – will redefine patients’ relationship with healthcare providers, change the way care is delivered and most importantly enhance the value that healthcare professionals can provide to their patients.  However, the potential of science and technology cannot be unlocked without our healthcare workforce being able to use the tools and be able to innovate new models of care. So we are not pursuing technology for its own sake. Technology is a tool, it is an enabler, but the pursuit of technology is not the end goal. The focus at the end is on how we can improve the sustainability of our healthcare system and bring greater value to our patients.

3.           I am happy to announce today the launch of the Centre of Healthcare Innovation Co-Learning Network. This is an open network for like-minded practitioners and innovators to come together to drive value through healthcare innovation and workforce transformation. It is a follow up to the recommendation by the Healthcare Productivity Expert Advisory Panel. 

4.           This network will start off with 21 strategic partners from local and international innovation centres, enabling agencies and academia. We expect more partners to come on board over the next few years. The focus of the network will cover three strategic thrusts to drive healthcare innovation.

5.           First, the network seeks to build thought leadership in healthcare innovation through co-learning and co-creating. This entails the public, private and people sectors coming together to innovate and co-design a sustainable healthcare system. We need to learn from one another and work together to design strategies that lead to better care for our patients.  So I think the learning and collaboration needs to take place across different healthcare institutions and providers – both the public sector and private sector and people sector. But also, going across different sectors, beyond healthcare, because there are good practices in other sectors like hospitality and manufacturing that we can learn from. Good ideas that are being used in other sectors that can benefit healthcare – I think we should be open. We should be open to new ideas, new ways of doing things because ultimately our focus is to create a sustainable healthcare system.

6.           An example is how our hospitals have come together with industry partners and government agencies to co-design future hospitals and care facilities to be more productive, in the face of manpower and cost constraints. The CHI Co-Learning Network will use the Product Preparation Process and Lean Thinking to design hospitals to optimise space planning, facilitate flow and improve patient care.

7.           Work has already started on co-designing the upcoming National Centre for Infectious Diseases (NCID), Sengkang General Hospital, Woodlands Integrated Health Campus and other healthcare facilities. The Product Preparation Process is used to plan the flow of patients, staff and supplies between Tan Tock Seng Hospital and the future NCID across the road. Operational support will be integrated, thus reducing cost and duplication. As part of spatial planning, key critical care services such as Emergency, Operating Theatre, Intensive Care and diagnostic equipment are co-located for swift and timely care. So the first important area is to build thought leadership and to also be open to ideas across institutions, different sectors, and across geographic boundaries. This is why we are very happy to have our speakers, our guests from overseas, to share with us their experiences. We face common challenges to provide good quality, sustainable care for our patients. I think this is something which all countries face. But together, we learn from one another, we work together, I think we can help each other.

8.           Second, the network will focus on transforming the healthcare workforce for the future. We will do this through three important levers: care redesign, technology and job redesign. In care redesign, we will develop new models of care to address population health needs and integrate care for our patients across the acute and community care sectors. This will involve the review of existing policies and rules, to ensure they can support the new models of care.  The use of technology, from IT to Robotics, will help streamline processes so that healthcare workers can focus on higher value-added tasks that deliver better patient outcomes. So what we want to do is to empower our workforce so that they are able to spend less time on processes and steps that we can automate and simplify, and spend more time on things which add value to our patients. And there are, especially in healthcare, many things that we cannot completely automate and we still need the human touch. But this is about helping our workers to prioritise to spend time on what matters and spend less time on the steps that can be simplified.

9.           So in job redesign, we aim to create better jobs and career progression pathways. I think this is important if we want to attract more people to join the healthcare sector. Yesterday, Minister Gan Kim Yong talked about the need for us to attract more Singaporeans to join the healthcare sector. We are growing the sector because of our ageing population but we need to grow it in a sustainable way. And we need to develop it in a way which enables our patients, our healthcare workforce, our providers to work together to achieve those positive outcomes together. The CHI network will focus its efforts on both the formal and also informal workforce, where we work with families and patients as wellas community volunteers to partner us to deliver better care. This is important because we actually benefit a lot, especially for the people sector (VWOs), a lot of the hard work and outcomes we are able to achieve is due to them. Our pool of volunteers is an important resource, we should work with them to see how best to support them.

10.       Our hospitals are implementing job redesign efforts to enable healthcare workers to practice at the top of their licence competencies. For example, Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) has implemented a workforce strategy to enable “Nurses to go beyond Nursing, and Nursing to go beyond Nurses”. Today, about 1,100 nurses at TTSH co-lead multidisciplinary teams in ward rounds. There is also a Ward Resource Nurse to oversee discharge planning and coordinate the continuing care for patients. At the Singapore General Hospital, such nurses are called patient navigators.  The name does not matter, it’s what they do that matter. SingHealth has also trained 155 resident nurses to take on junior doctor roles, such as assessing and taking patient history, ordering investigations and performing procedures. As you can see, both TTSH and SGH, and I am sure at many of our other hospitals as well, are trying different ways to empower different group of healthcare workers to practice at the top of their license competencies. The National University Hospital (NUH) has introduced Basic Care Assistants to take on patient care and support roles, to free up nurses’ time to focus on other more complex tasks. Through the CHI Co-Learning Network, we can learn from one another and hope to spread best practices across our healthcare institutions. So this second area is about transforming our healthcare workforce to be ready for the future.

11.    Third, we need to train our workforce differently so that they have the knowledge and skills to support the shift from hospital care to community care – our people will be ready for this change.  Healthcare professionals have to work across different disciplines to address patients’ needs. So we need to change the way we view our relationships with patients and our partners. As Minister mentioned at the Committee of Supply debate earlier this year, moving beyond hospitals into the community. So we should not see our role as only looking after patients when they come to the hospital or when they are in the hospital, but before that, how to help them stay healthy, prevent them from falling ill and after that how to facilitate their discharge into step-down care back home – so it is the whole continuum that we need to look into, from a systems point of view. We also need to train more community care support workers to look after the elderly and enable them to age well and age in place.    

12. Patient needs are diverse and care is increasingly team-based.  Hence, we need to foster engagement and cooperation among our healthcare staff, including at the early stages of their training. The network will develop new training pedagogies and collaborative training programmes to train our workforce to work across the continuum of care from hospital to home.   The National Healthcare Group has started doing this with students from across medicine, nursing and allied health. Such an approach will provide students with a better understanding of inter-professional care.

Centre for Healthcare Innovation

13. The Centre for Healthcare Innovation or CHI will be ready in late-2018. The development will feature innovation spaces, living labs, simulation labs and training facilities. The CHI will be supported also by the Ng Teng Fong Healthcare Innovation Programme, a $52-million endowment fund to drive healthcare innovation and training. We are very grateful to the estate of the late Mr Ng Teng Fong for supporting the programme. This will give us additional resources to be able to train our people, to support innovation projects, to be able to deliver value for our patients.

Conclusion

14. Today’s conference provides a platform for our network partners and the healthcare community to learn and innovate together. I hope the participants will pick up useful ideas from the speakers, and from one another as you share your efforts and experiences in driving innovation and productivity.

15. Thank you, and I wish everyone a pleasant day ahead.