SPEECH BY MR TAN KIAT HOW, SENIOR MINISTER OF STATE, MINISTRY OF DIGITAL DEVELOPMENT AND INFORMATION & MINISTRY OF HEALTH, AT THE 26TH SGH ANNUAL SCIENTIFIC MEETING, 17 APR 2026

Associate Professor Ruban Poopalalingam, Group Chairman, Medical Board, SingHealth

Associate Professor Tan Hiang Khoon, Chief Executive Officer, SGH

Associate Professor Too Chow Wei, ASM Organising Chairperson

Distinguished guests, speakers,

Ladies and gentlemen,

Introduction

1.               A very good morning, I am delighted to join you this morning at the Opening Ceremony of Singapore General Hospital’s (SGH) 26th Annual Scientific Meeting (ASM).

2.               The theme for today, “Smart Data, Shared Purpose, Seamless Care” highlights the transformation we are witnessing in healthcare.

Smart Data: Enhancing Healthcare through AI

3.               As healthcare professionals, researchers, innovators, educators, all of you- you are the architects of tomorrow’s healthcare system, turning vision into practical realities that improve patient care.

4.               Technology is central to this transformation. Today, we stand at the cusp of a new era where AI is revolutionising entire sectors, including healthcare.

5.               Our vision is to transform population health and healthcare through human-centered AI.

6.               We are not looking to replace our clinicians and healthcare professionals – all of you are critical and crucial. Rather, we see AI as a powerful tool to augment your capabilities, giving you better information, sharper insights, and more time to focus on what’s important, especially our patients.

7.               AI is enabling a fundamental shift in how healthcare is delivered –one that is personalised, preventive and predictive – helping us identify risks earlier and deliver more timely and targeted interventions across care settings.

8.               For example, SGH developed Diab-Rx, a clinical decision support system, in collaboration with A*STAR. Updated with the latest diabetes guidelines, Diab-Rx provides specific and personalised drug and dose recommendations to clinicians. It can also predict glycaemic control outcomes for patients under different medication regimes and alert patients to potential drug interactions. Early results of this system are promising. Diab-Rx is currently undergoing further clinical validations required for wider adoption. This is one example.

9.               In clinical operations, generative AI tools are powerful assistants for automating repetitive and time-consuming tasks. As mentioned earlier by Prof Too, Note Buddy is a good example, developed by SingHealth. It has successfully supported healthcare workers across all public healthcare institutions and clusters in generating more than 80,000 medical and administrative notes, freeing up time that can be channelled to patient care. These are good examples of how we are leveraging technology to deliver better services, better outcomes.

10.           To realise this vision of transforming healthcare, we need strong foundations, including a seamless data layer and central platforms that can be used across the public healthcare system. At the same time, we need sensible and robust governance and regulatory frameworks to safeguard patient trust and safety.

11.           For the data layer, we have HEALIX, or Health Empowerment through Advanced Learning and Intelligent eXchange. HEALIX is a secure platform that consolidates anonymised clinical and socioeconomic information to develop and refine AI models for healthcare.

12.           For example, using HEALIX, SingHealth and NHG Health have collaborated on HealthVector, a tool that enables clinicians managing patients with type 2 diabetes to identify those at higher risk of developing chronic kidney disease within the next three years.

13.           Users can also use HEALIX’s data science workbench to develop AI models. For example, the National Heart Centre Singapore is developing an AI-powered warfarin titration model that utilises patient-specific data, such as laboratory results, medical history, and lifestyle factors, to predict optimal dosing and maintain patients within a safe therapeutic range. So these are innovations building on a strong foundation layer.

14.           At the same time, I always say you can be a fast car racing to reach the endpoint using technology to enable and augment. But in a fast car, all the more important you need good brakes and good safety belts so that if accidents happen, you can still maintain the trust with passengers. In the healthcare context, how do you maintain the trust with our patients, and their caregivers, and society at large?

15.           And that is where governance and regulatory frameworks come in. We updated the Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Guidelines recently. The guidelines address recent developments, such as Generative AI. It clarifies the responsibilities of and provides practical guidance to healthcare institutions and professionals for AI adoption.

16.           The updated guidelines will facilitate our healthcare institutions in building and implementing clinically safe and effective AI solutions.

17.           A regulatory sandbox has been set up to evaluate AI solutions in real-world settings. The AI-Software as a Medical Device regulatory sandbox enables AI applications developed by one licensed public healthcare institution, or PHI to be deployed across other PHIs without additional manufacturer licensing or product registration.

18.           So this sandbox allows us to expand the innovation footprint across our entire public healthcare system. Innovation tested out in one public healthcare institution can be deployed across the entire healthcare system seamlessly, and with such sandboxes, we want to encourage innovation, but in a safe and effective manner. The regulatory sandbox operates under stringent clinical governance and cybersecurity protocols and post-implementation controls.

19.           With these fundamentals in place, we can make sure the car goes faster, it can better support AI tools that improve patient care, decisions, and outcome.  

Shared Purpose: Breaking Down Silos

20.           True healthcare excellence emerges not from isolated efforts, but from coordinated action across institutions, disciplines and care settings. This drives our approach to healthcare transformation at every level.

21.           Nationally, we have programmes such as Healthier SG and Age Well SG. With these programmes, we are making preventive care accessible to everyone. Our vision of managing population health goes beyond traditional hospital and polyclinic boundaries. And this reality is becoming more and more true in our system because of strategic partnerships with Clusters and community partners. This transformation also reshaped Clusters into "Regional Health Managers" who collaborate with MOH and community organisations, ensuring a unified approach that enhances Singapore's population health.

22.           SingHealth exemplifies the spirit of a shared purpose by partnering Active Ageing Centres and community partners. This commitment to partnership has earned SingHealth the Best Cross-Organisational Collaboration Award at the 30th International Forum on Quality and Safety in Healthcare in Oslo, Norway this year. So very well done, please give yourselves a round of applause. And I look forward to seeing many more of such collaborations, where our clinicians, our professions in healthcare settings, reach out into the community, partnering different organisations, active ageing centres, different social organisations, to deliver care beyond our walls.

23.           At the institutional level, shared purpose manifests through multidisciplinary care models. The SingHealth Duke-NUS Allergic Diseases Centre (SDADC) that will be officially launched at this Meeting is a practical example of multidisciplinary care in action.

24.           Allergic diseases, ranging from asthma, allergic rhinitis, eczema, to food and drug allergies, affect up to one in four Singaporeans. The traditional specialty-based approach often leads to fragmented treatment and resource duplication as patients navigate various specialists. SDADC provides coordinated care across the entire SingHealth cluster, aligning services and research across institutions under common pathways.

25.           This means a child with chronic severe eczema first seen at KKH can seamlessly transition to adult care at SGH, and a patient with multiple allergic conditions can receive integrated treatment rather than navigating various specialties that could span different disciplines.

26.           SDADC will develop an allergy database, empowered by smart data and analytics, to identify high-risk patients, track treatment outcomes and inform evidence-based care pathways. The centre will also develop a drug allergy de-labelling programme, population health and prevention strategies, as well as support research and education, to strengthen specialist expertise and advance translational research.

27.           And this is really seamless care in action, so I commend the team for putting together this centre and for embarking on this very ambitious project. I wish them all the very best.

Seamless Care: Beyond Hospital Walls

28.           As seamless care goes beyond hospital walls, we passed the Health Information Act, or HIA in parliament a few months ago, making seamless care possible across Singapore’s healthcare system in two important ways.

29.           First, the HIA mandates all licensed healthcare providers to contribute to the National Electronic Health Record (NEHR) system whilst providing NEHR access. This ensures that patients' essential health information is accessible to healthcare providers across different care settings. Second, the HIA facilitates non-NEHR health information sharing to support community-based care.

30.           Imagine a patient with high blood pressure, for example Madam Tan. She regularly visits her general practitioner (GP) for routine diabetes monitoring until she moved to a new housing estate, where she visits a new GP. In the past, tests might get repeated and care decisions might be made without complete information.

31.           Today, the HIA changes this fundamentally. Instead of fragmented pieces of information scattered across different systems, her new doctor can see which tests have been done and the medications that have been prescribed. Appropriate tests and medications can then be ordered to better manage Mdm Tan’s health needs. This saves her time and money.

32.           Now imagine the same patient Madam Tan, later suffers a fall and is treated and subsequently discharged from SGH. With the HIA, SGH can share her contact information and health risk indicators with the Agency for Integrated Care, or AIC. AIC can then prioritise engaging Madam Tan in the community, in her home, and arrange care to improve her mobility.

33.           Seamless care like this requires physical infrastructure that supports patient flow. SGH’s new Emergency and National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) building brings together previously scattered services into an integrated care environment that prioritises patient experience and clinical efficiency. Through phased openings that began in 2025, it has consolidated acute medical wards, enhanced radiology and pharmacy support, expanded emergency department holding capacity, and brought together neurology, neurosurgery and neuropsychology outpatient services at the new Neuroscience Clinic.

34.           So with legislation enabling data exchange across our entire healthcare system and into the community, and physical infrastructure bringing together different services to your patients, I think this exemplifies what we have been doing about seamless care and smart data. And these are very encouraging initiatives here in the healthcare system of Singapore, and I encourage all of you to continue on this path as we bring better care to our population.

The Human Element Behind Healthcare Transformation

35.           As I share these developments and achievements, I am reminded every day when I speak to many clinicians, that end of the day, technology systems, physical infrastructure- these are just a small part of our healthcare system. The most important part is all of you, clinicians, healthcare professionals, nurses, allied health professionals, our partners in the community, that provide the care to individuals, to patients, making a difference to our families.

36.           Behind every algorithm, every digital push, every seamless care pathway, there are dedicated healthcare professionals who choose to put patients first. Technology only augments our abilities to do so, but it cannot replace the clinical judgement you bring, especially for complex cases. Data analytics can identify patterns, but they cannot provide the reassurance that comes from a doctor's explanation or a nurse's caring presence. AI can support decision-making, but it cannot substitute the human connection that lies at the heart of healing.

Closing

37.           So “Smart Data, Shared Purpose, Seamless Care” is a very good theme, very timely theme. It enables all of us to deliver better services, better care for the patients that we care so much about. It describes the roadmap for the future of the healthcare system, but fundamentally, at the heart of it is all of you, making these promises, possibilities, into realities and action on the ground. So I thank all of you for the hard work. It is hard work and heart work as well. And thank you so much for all of the care and on behalf of all of the patients and family members and caregivers in Singapore, thank you very much.