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EMBARGOED UNTIL AFTER DELIVERY OF MOH COMMITTEE OF SUPPLY DEBATE 2015
RAISING QUALITY, TRANSFORMING CARE
MOH is working towards providing better services and care through: - transforming the sector by building up our regional health systems - developing manpower
- providing smart healthcare (see Annex for background) New initiatives are as follows:
Developing Manpower: Post-Graduate Training in Family Medicine
Doctors can undergo post-graduate training in Family Medicine (FM) to become
Family Physicians (FPs). There are two routes to becoming an FP in Singapore, namely via the FM residency, and the Graduate Diploma in Family Medicine (GDFM). Subsidies for training under GDFM, and under MMed(FM) Programme B, are being offered from 2015 to encourage doctors to undertake postgraduate FM training.
The FM residency is a three-year programme offered by National University
Health System (NUHS), National Healthcare Group (NHG) and Singapore Health Services (SHS) for in-service Medical Officers (MOs), comprising hospital rotations and polyclinic postings. On completion of the residency programme, trainees receive the Master of Medicine in Family Medicine (MMed(FM)) degree.
The GDFM is a two-year, part-time programme offered by the College of Family
Physicians Singapore (CFPS), targeted at practising primary care physicians. GDFM graduates can go on to undertake the MMed(FM) Programme B, and receive the same MMed(FM) degree as those from the FM residency programme.
As part of the Family Physician (FP) development plan, funding support will be
offered for selected candidates, to encourage doctors to undergo post-graduate training in family medicine (FM). This will raise the standards of FM training, and ensure a consistent supply pipeline of capable family doctors.
Smart healthcare for healthy living: HealthHub
One-stop digital platform for personalised health and wellness, to help people
make informed choices about their health and embrace healthy living.
Provides personalised healthcare information, such as from the NEHR
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Users can also access other information, such as hospital fees, health financing schemes, and eventually, waiting times at A&E departments.
Consolidates and aligns currently available content on the websites of the public healthcare family, including the Regional Healthcare Systems and MOH.
We will launch a first release of HealthHub in the second half of 2015. Smart healthcare for healthy living: Healthy living tag & app
Developed to promote a healthy lifestyle, the mobile application uses a motion
detection hardware found in smartphones to monitor an individual’s daily physical activity pattern.
Users can identify nearby physical activity opportunities, such as walking trails and exercise facilities.
The mobile application was introduced as a pilot prototype in November 2014
and is currently being tested at Outram SGH campus, One-North campus, and the Healthy Pathway @ Tampines.
As part of the pilot, the mobile application has included a test on a loyalty programme which translates healthy behaviours – such as participation in physical activity programmes – into loyalty points that are redeemable for rewards.
Those without a smartphone can register for the Healthy Living Tag System. It
uses a small RFID tag that can be conveniently carried by users (as a key-chain or attached to a staff pass) and will be detected by receivers placed at designated checkpoints, or at designated exercise events. A back-end system monitors the RFID transactions and converts them into loyalty points. A weekly SMS is sent to participants to provide feedback on their progress, and nudge them to increase their activity levels.
Smart healthcare: Community Hospital Common System (CHCS)
Enables participating community hospitals to improve patient care and
enhance operational efficiency through the appropriate use of IT.
Serves as a platform for community hospitals to share their best practices and
harmonise processes, as well as facilitate the data collection for policy planning and development.
These are achieved through the implementation of a harmonised Patient
Management and Patient Accounting (PMPA) module that integrates with the Pharmacy and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems of partnering
General Hospitals . In alignment with MOH’s Regional Health System (RHS)
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healthcare providers through systems and process integration between the acute and intermediate and long term care (ILTC) settings. A summary of all patients’ clinical care is sent from the community hospital to the NEHR and contributes to their longitudinal health record.
This integration facilitates the continuity of patient care by providing the community hospital medical staff with appropriate access to patient records, medical conditions and test results from external service providers to review and refine the patient’s care plan. Through the readily available information, patients need not undergo duplicate processes of care like unnecessary lab tests at the community hospitals.
CHCS remains an integral system of the VWO community hospitals. The
system will continue to evolve and cater to future needs and changes, with alignment to their partner General Hospitals.
St. Andrew’s Community Hospital (SACH) has already gone ‘live’ in October
2014, with the remaining four VWO community hospitals will go live during the second half of this year. The four remaining community hospitals are: Ang Mo Kio Thye Hua Kwan Hospital, Ren Ci Hospital, Bright Vision Hospital and St Luke’s Hospital.
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ANNEX: BACKGROUND INFO ON SMART HEALTHCARE
MOH has leveraged on technology to enhance the delivery of healthcare services. Apart from anticipating the needs of consumers and providers, IT also augments the healthcare workforce and enables people to better self-manage their health. This potentially improves effectiveness of our healthcare professionals and brings about greater productivity. We plan to leverage appropriate technologies to support different segments of our population, and to avail the right tools to help our people and their caregivers manage their health.
1. For the well and at risk, we planned for HealthHub to be the one-stop platform to help Singaporeans learn more about their health and accompany them in their healthy lifestyle journey.
2. For those with chronic conditions, smart applications and telehealth solutions would help them better monitor their vital signs so that they can proactively manage their conditions from home.
3. For our seniors, we plan to deploy sensors and response system to help them age in place successfully and giving peace-of-mind to caregivers 4. We are also leveraging Telehealth to bring healthcare services closer to
Singaporeans of all ages so they do not need to travel and queue at the clinics. For example, tele-rehab services are currently under clinical trial to help post-stroke patients recover at the convenience of their homes.
5. We plan to link up providers across all sectors to achieve our vision of “One Patient, One Health Record” so that healthcare professionals can provide better shared care to patients near their home.
Telehealth solutions implemented include the following:
a. Tele-monitoring to enable patients to provide vitals readings and trending to care providers, and enable 24/7 care surveillance with emergency response for elderly patients at home to provide peace-of-mind to caregivers;
b. Tele-support to enable caregivers/ community/ case managers as the first-line responders, to enable healthcare providers to monitor/ follow up on patients’ progress/ compliance and conduct patient education/ caregiver training remotely;
c. Tele-treatment to enable clinicians/ allied health professionals to administer;
d. Tele-collaboration to enable caregivers and care providers to collaborate remotely as one care team for the patient at home and in the community.
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The National Electronic Health Record (NEHR) has been in place since 2011 to establish longitudinal, patient-centric records as the foundation system to support the “One Patient, One Health Record” vision. NEHR enhances care quality and care integration across the care continuum by facilitating the sharing of clinical information (i.e. laboratory and radiology results, medication prescribed and hospital visits) with private care providers from the primary and intermediate & long-term care settings, which previously had no access to data from public healthcare institutions (i.e.
General Hospitals, Polyclinics, Community Hospitals). It makes the patients’
relevant clinical history available at the point of care and support the clinician by providing information they may not have available within their own medical records.
