SPEECH BY PROFESSOR KENNETH MAK, DIRECTOR-GENERAL OF HEALTH, MINISTRY OF HEALTH, AT THE NUHS@HOME 5TH ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION

Professor Yeoh Khay Guan, Chief Executive, National University Health System 

Professor Dan Yock Young, Deputy Chief Executive, NUHS, and Chief Executive Officer, Ng Teng Feng General Hospital 

Associate Professor Jason Phua, Deputy Chief Executive, National University Health System, and Chief Executive Officer, Alexandra Hospital 

Distinguished Speakers and Guests 

Ladies and gentlemen 

It is a great pleasure and honour for me to join you today to celebrate the fifth anniversary of NUHS@Home. We celebrate this milestone looking back at five years of achievements, but I would tell you that the gestation for NUHS@Home has been much longer than that.  

2.              Some of you know the story, some of you do not. It was Dr Stephanie Ko who pitched this to me much earlier than 2020, and that was the time when she was a Chief Resident in the Singapore Chief Residency Programme. As I was seated at the dinner getting to know the various Chief Residents, she decided to make an elevator pitch to me. She told me about how her passion began, and how, in fact, there were a number of patients who did not actually need to be in hospital – we needed to find an outlet for them, to look after them and find a way in which they could be taken care of out of hospital.  

3.              Dr Ko was not the only one who gave me an elevator pitch. There was actually one other individual from a different cluster who gave me a pitch and also talked about home-based care, and in this case, in the context of heart failure patients, which she and another resident also had a similar passion for.  

4.              But I think sometimes pitches are pitches, and they do not necessarily see operational reality. So it is extremely gratifying, these number of years now, to see not just an idea come to fruition, but also an idea that has gained traction like a seed planted in soil. It has now taken on a life of its own, and it has benefited so many patients beyond just what we could have imagined when we started this out in 2020.  

Our journey from crisis to innovation 

5.              We obviously started this off in a time of challenge. In 2020, as most of you remember, I was barely a few months into the job as the Director of Medical Services. But at that point in time, there was really a concern about hospital capacity. Our concerns about having hospitals potentially overwhelmed, not just with patients with existing medical problems, but also patients with Covid coming in.  

6.              And therefore, the idea began to take root because, now, it had really gained traction among a small group of people who were equally passionate about this possibility of creating a care model that allows for care at home, taking place outside the context of a hospital setting. And I really think that these five years have been a journey full of achievements – it is now an innovative programme that continues to shape what our future can be for healthcare delivery. So looking back from those times, when our bed capacity was stretched with high patient volumes during Covid, creating an unprecedented demand on our healthcare system, it was really during that time that people in the clusters, in the Ministry, all of us on the ground, recognised the need for bold innovation and working with our healthcare partners. It is very gratifying to see that we now can bring acute inpatient care directly into patients’ homes. 

7.              The initial pilot programme described the foundation for what we recognise now nationally as Mobile Inpatient Care at Home, or MIC@Home. But we take particular pride here in NUH, because this programme was birthed here, and we call this NUHS@Home. It is a simple but transformative concept: the hospital walls do not define the boundaries of quality care.  Through this alternative care delivery model that allows for clinically suitable patients to choose to receive hospital-level treatment in the comfort and familiarity of their own homes, it allows their doctors and nurses to visit them as they would in the hospitals, and yet assure that quality care is given, protected, and there are good clinical outcomes.  

Expanding MIC@Home across Singapore 

 8.              As one of the three pioneering sites, NUHS@Home began with a simple vision – just to reimagine how we can deliver acute care.  And while you started small, with a virtual bed number of three beds, you now offer a substantial number of suitable patients, because of the acuity of their clinical needs, that opportunity to receive this quality medical care within familiar surroundings with their loved ones. The care experiences these patients received is comparable to that received in a hospital.  

9.              Where we are now, this care model has become a mainstream service across our public hospitals, and it has, since April 2024, allowed nearly 10,000 patients to receive care in their own homes. As of September this year, we have a total of 265 MIC@Home beds that are provided for across all the public hospitals, and I know that this will continue to increase. NUHS alone has scaled up to 100 NUHS@Home beds since July this year. And as this model continue to mainstream and scale, we will find new ways in which we can extend our reach to allow for more patients to benefit. This is a very significant step as we shift care out into the community, while expanding our system’s capacity to treat more patients who need acute care. 

10.              This is not possible without dedicated healthcare professionals. To all the doctors, nurses, pharmacists, allied health professionals, operations and IT staff, all underpinning the successful work of NUHS@Home and across the cluster, I wish to personally thank you for your courage, commitment and dedication as you pioneer these new models of care here in NUHS. 

11.              I also extend my gratitude to patients and families who trusted this innovative approach and who continue to be our learning partners in this journey on how best to improve care for the rest of our community. They are our partners who continue to support us through pilot programme to established service. 

12.              There are other community stakeholders who have played an equally important role, and I want at this point in time to acknowledge all of them, be they partners and vendors, or those who really have committed to support us in different ways, to flesh out this service journey.  

Continuing our MIC@Home journey  

13.              But our journey is not over. It is far from over. MIC@Home will continue to evolve and expand as we transform our healthcare delivery, shifting more care from hospitals into the community. We want to serve more patients, and we are actively exploring new ways to serve additional patient groups. Some new use cases that we are looking at include broadening conditions treated to cover selected post-surgical outcomes and extending care to paediatric patients. Just yesterday, I reviewed a paper discussing whether we can actually extend hospital-at-home into looking after babies with neonatal jaundice. And I think these are ways in which we can continue to include more patients in our reach, providing care at home. 

14.              This expansion is not easy. Each new use case brings unique challenges that require careful consideration and rigorous planning. We cannot simply extend our care model without thorough preparation because patient safety, clinical governance, and quality of care, all remain absolute priorities and are important to us.  

15.              But I continue to  encourage all of you to continue collaborating with other MIC@Home sites within and across clusters, share your best practices as you already have done, work with your community partners to drive greater adoption, optimise your resources, and leverage technology to make care at home both safer and more effective.  

 
Closing 

16.              Our true success lies not in the volume of patients we serve. It lies in how we reshape healthcare delivery across Singapore for better outcomes. We are anchoring care where it belongs – in our homes, neighbourhoods, and communities. Together, let us continue to build a healthcare system where every Singaporean can receive the right care, in the right place, at the right time. 

17.              Congratulations once again to the team, to NUHS@Home, on your fifth anniversary and thank you very much for this invitation to join you here today. I wish you all continued success in bringing innovative care to more families across Singapore, and have a wonderful celebration today. Thank you.