Dr Ivy Ng flashes a shy smile as she poses in the reception area of KK Women's and Children's Hospital (KKH).

'That,' says one of her patients, Ms Victoria Menas, 'is going to be a fantastic picture.' The 31-year-old media executive from Jakarta, who is passing by, bounds over to Dr Ng, and both hold hands warmly.

Ms Menas suffers from thalassaemia, a hereditary blood disorder, and has been seeing Dr Ng for over a year.

She says: 'Dr Ng's very informative, very caring and very easy to talk to. I can ask her many questions and she replies to all of them, even by e-mail.'

Like the best in her profession, Dr Ng has a comforting and personable bedside manner.

This is the geneticist's first media interview since she took over from Dr Jennifer Lee as chief executive officer in July.

She agreed to talk to The Sunday Times because today is KKH's 80th anniversary.

Soft-spoken and articulate, Dr Ng smiles at attempts to compare her with her predecessor, who is a Nominated Member of Parliament and president of the Singapore Council of Women's Organisations.

'We are different individuals. I am a clinician CEO and was chairman of KKH's medical board first before becoming CEO. It's a different trajectory.'

Dr Lee, on the other hand, is a doctor with an MBA and an administrative background. She was chief operating officer at Singapore General Hospital before becoming KKH's CEO in 1991.

Dr Ng continues: 'The advantage that I bring to the position is clinical experience, particularly in research and direct patient care.'

Indeed, the doctor, who still runs a genetics clinic, wants to position KKH at 'the forefront of research in diseases affecting women and children'.

As Singapore's only integrated women's and children's hospital, KKH delivers 14,000 babies each year and sees more than 70,000 patients in its 24-hour children's emergency ward.

The hospital, she says, will remain strong in traditional areas such as obstetrics and gynaecological services but will grow sub-specialities such as urogynaecology and gynaecological oncology in the light of the falling birth rate and an ageing population.

Having delivered more than 1.3 million babies since 1924, the hospital will continue to do its part to help arrest the falling birth rates through public workshops and forums.

Dr Ng, who will be delivering commemorative gift packages to the first three babies born in KKH today, says: 'We will play a bigger role in educating the public and helping them to recognise they do need to have their families at an appropriate time. There is a certain biological fitness that decreases when you grow older.'

She concedes, however, that marriage and parenthood are complex issues.

'Many distracting things - education, career - can absorb people so much that they put off having children.'

She highly recommends parenthood though.

Dr Ng, who met her husband, Manpower Minister Ng Eng Hen in medical school here and married him in 1982, says: 'If you have the opportunity and if you have found the right partner, embrace it.

The mother of four children, aged between 10 and 20, adds: 'Children add a tremendous depth and perspective to life that nothing else can.'

She adds: 'It's an experience that really develops a person as well.

'I don't think there is any similar type of relationship that goes the way that having a child does - having the baby being fully dependent on you, nurturing it and then having the bigger challenge of raising the child right.'

She laughs at suggestions that she is a supermum.

'I give all the credit to my parents who were very supportive in bringing up their grandchildren. And I think my children gained from the wisdom and experience of their grandparents who nurtured them.'

For as long as she can remember, she has always wanted to be a doctor.

She is the youngest of four children of a businessman and a housewife.

'I remember our family doctor, and the comfort derived whenever I went to his clinic when I was sick.

'He had the ability to comfort and heal me and I always was sure that I wanted to be like that.'

It explains why the geneticist, who is also the director of the National Thalassaemia Registry, prefers to dwell on the positive aspects of working with the sick.

'Fifteen years ago, people with thalassaemia major were unlikely to live beyond the second decade. Today, they can hope for a normal life span and even look forward to marriage.

'Ten years from now, we will have even better preventive methods and treat these patients even better.

'I am very excited about the possibilities. That's why I am never down.'

And that's why she is so focused on research.

'Research means better care, better ability to understand the diseases of women and children, better ability to treat, diagnose, prognosticate conditions in a holistic way.'

'That would be how I can see KKH making an impact.'