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| Benedict Tan, center, group chief digital strategy officer and chief data officer at SingHealth, Singapore's largest healthcare group that includes the country's flagship hospital Singapore General Hospital, speaks during a press conference at Singapore General Hospital, Thursday. Korea Times photo by Baek Byung-yeul |
By Baek Byung-yeul
SINGAPORE ― Singapore General Hospital has been looking to build a smart medical center by adopting digital technologies, a transformation that has accelerated due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The state-run hospital said Wednesday that it is aiming to provide more inclusive health care service through telemedicine and accurate patient health analytics using emerging technologies such as AI and machine learning.
"COVID-19 basically was a wakeup call. That's basically pushed, especially for health care, has pushed us into tapping on digital technologies before that effect. We are all trying to explore and find to evangelize the use of digital technologies," Benedict Tan, group chief digital strategy officer and chief data officer at SingHealth, said during a press conference at Singapore General Hospital.
"Perhaps one of the areas that we have convenient, all of us are familiar with this in the era of telehealth. When COVID-19 struck, then we ever did not know patients would come to the hospitals, so we had to push up video consultation of telehealth very, very fast and the uptake was great. So at the end people became comfortable with telehealth," the executive said.
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| Seen is the exterior of Singapore General Hospital. Courtesy of Singapore General Hospital |
SingHealth is a cluster of public and community hospitals in Singapore that was formed in 2000. The group is the largest health care organization there and includes the country's flagship hospital, Singapore General Hospital.
Established in 1821, Singapore General Hospital is the country's largest, with 50 clinical specialties, with over 33,000 employees.
Tan said Singapore's health care organizations, including SingHealth, are aiming to achieve Healthcare 4.0, in which its citizens are healthy, with health care technology. This shift is driven by a holistic transformation of the health system from curative and reactive care to prevention and wellness.
"Healthcare 4.0 is basically an amalgamation tapping on all our capabilities, new technologies to develop smart health, including artificial intelligence and machine learning," he said, presenting an example of how SingHealth and Philips have been collaborating in improving health care management efficiency using the Dutch company's AI image reading technology.
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