| 23 January 2007
Singapore's healthcare powered by Infocomm (ST Digital Life, 23 January 2007)
Healthcare is undergoing a major transformation around the world with high-tech healthcare becoming the norm in the 21st century. Research has shown that the innovative use of IT results in a more efficient and effective operational work flow in hospitals. It also delivers better personalised patient care. “In today’s world of medicine, we recognise that technology is a critical platform that allows for the delivery of high quality, integrated and multi-disciplinary healthcare” said Mr Fong Choon Khin, Group CTO, Singapore Health Services (SingHealth).
Healthcare Innovations at a glance
Remote monitoring of patient’s vital signs
Where & What: This new system will be piloted in Changi General Hospital where doctors and nurses can monitor patient’s vital signs in cardiac ward from anywhere in the hospital.
How it works: The patients are fitted with light wireless body sensors which transmit information directly to the hospital’s computer servers. Doctors and nurses can then access the information from just about any authorised PC terminal in the hospital.
Why it’s cool: This system saves time and improves the accuracy of medical readings as it eliminates human errors from measuring and recording the information.
Patient monitoring at their own homes
Where & What: Called Telecare, this SingHealth system empowers patients of chronic illnesses to self measure their health indicators from their homes. Clinicians can then remotely monitor their health and intervene when necessary.
How it works: Telecare enables patients to remotely submit via web or SMS their clinical measurements, allowing clinicians to remotely monitor the patient’s medical condition and when necessary, conduct early intervention.
Why it’s cool: One of the first regional tele-monitoring systems that enables remote monitoring of patients with chronic diseases, even when they are overseas.
High-tech digital ward of the future
Where & What: SingHealth’s digital wards with high-tech innovations
How it works: Wireless laptops on mobile trolleys are used for anytime, anywhere access and recording of patient information. A motorised triple LCD X-Ray light box enables display of patient records and radiology images across multiple screens. Wireless integrated system allows remote monitoring of patients’ blood pressure, pulse, and other vital signs.
Why it’s cool: With the various innovative mobile digital platforms, doctors are able to view and discuss their test results with their patients at their bed-side. The wireless monitoring system minimises disruption to patients’ rest, reduces inaccuracies from human errors and reduces human contact for contagious diseases.
Automated bed monitoring system with RFID
Where & What: Tan Tock Seng Hospital exploits RFID technology to monitor patients’ whereabouts in wards and better manage beds allocation.
How it works: RFID technology has been incorporated into the patients’ wrist identification tag that sends data to an online dashboard system indicating bed availability.
Why it’s cool: It provides hospital staff with real-time status of bed availability in their wards hence reducing in-patient registration and admission processing time.
Integrated dental and medical management system for schools
Where & What: Developed by the Health Promotion Board, the system enables all school children in Singapore to have their medical and dental records stored in a central repository with an integrated clinical management system.
How it works: The system enables capturing of students’ medical and dental data, whereby records can be retrieved from any clinics and hospitals, including through the ubiquitous 3G networks.
Why it’s cool: The first of its kind in Asia, it eliminates paper records, reduces manual data entry work, minimises human error and halves waiting time for clinic appointments.
Integrated lab information and automation system
Where & What: National Healthcare Group (NHG)’s integrated lab information and automation system.
How it works: The lab information system shares lab results taken across 13 labs in NHG. This minimises the need for patients to repeat lab tests, and enables healthcare workers to have access to results in sister institutions. It is also linked to robotic arms that move blood samples from the track to instruments for analysis of lab tests.
Why it’s cool: The automation increases efficiency and is estimated to save about $10 million over seven years in testing costs.
Computerised ordering of lab and radiology tests
Where & What: This computerised ordering of lab and radiology tests system has been launched at all NHG polyclinics and is being used progressively at the National University Hospital and Tan Tock Seng Hospital.
How it works: The computerised order system is integrated to patient’s drug allergy information. Coupled with direct barcode printing for labs, samples can be immediately tagged and traced.
Why it’s cool: Computerised orders improve patient safety by reducing human errors from manual entries and transcription errors. More importantly, this ensures complete traceability and results can be accurately routed to the staff for action, eliminating missing results cases.
The people that make it happen
A group of professionals involved in medical informatics play a vital role in making these projects happen. Medical informatics is an interdisciplinary science that deals with the management of information in the practice of medicine.
There are numerous challenges in medical informatics. Mr Linus Tham, CIO of the National Healthcare Group, said one key area is that of change management – how to facilitate our clinicians who have been working in one way for a long time to adopting computers. So what is it like to be involved in medical informatics? Here’s what some of them have to say.
Dr Low Cheng Ooi, Chief and Senior Consultant of Orthopaedic Surgery Department, Changi General Hospital
Cheng Ooi belongs to the generation of clinicians who handled the very first PCs in the final year of medical school. He was fascinated to discover that he could input clinical data into a rudimentary database on his PC to analyse trends and results without using punch cards and huge mainframes.
Being the chairman of the SingHealth’s Electronic Medical Records Steering Committee, he is also an advocate of the various medical informatics initiatives and spends extra hours to help fellow clinicians understand and use the new applications.
Cheng Ooi sees the need to have full time medical informatics professionals. In ensuring good outcomes for their patients today, clinicians are now increasingly dependent on their computers and PDAs as much as their stethoscopes and surgical knives. Medical informatics is increasingly becoming one of the specialties in Medicine.
Dr Chow Yuen Ho, Principal Medical Informatics Specialist, Singapore General Hospital
Yuen Ho was a medical officer when he realised that technology could improve healthcare delivery. In those days, the development of healthcare systems was mainly driven by IT professionals.
“The problem was that IT professionals then might not be familiar with the medical domain, and conversely, doctors at that time were often unfamiliar with IT systems. There was a huge disconnect,” said Yuen Ho. “Doctors ended up having to work hard to fit into the system, when the system should have been developed at the outset to fit into the doctor’s needs,” he added.
Yuen Ho felt that he could make a difference, with his domain knowledge as a doctor and his personal interest in IT, and made a switch to medical informatics. He has never looked back since and has played major roles in many medical informatics initiatives.
Ms Tan Ming Chu, Deputy Director, IT Applications, National Healthcare Group
Ming Chu is one of the pioneers in the local medical informatics scene. Her background was in nursing but she entered medical informatics in 1997 when the opportunity came about. She has since spearheaded various medical informatics implementations at NHG and at the national level.
From her experience, she feels that it is necessary to have an appreciation of the clinical processes as well as IT technology.
“My nursing background allows me to comprehend the clinical users’ requirements and exposure to the various IT industry technologies, helped in delivering appropriate IT solutions implementation,” she said.
Mr Neo Wee Ming, Assistant Manager, ITD-Clinical Applications, National Healthcare Group
He came face-to-face with his own creation when he fell sick. Wee Ming had a suspected drug allergy to an anti-biotic prescribed by a GP recently and went to the hospital to have it checked. The doctor entered his information into a drug allergy reporting system that Wee Ming had helped to develop, and it really helped him see the significance of his work from a patient’s perspective.
“Personally, I would like to see more healthcare professionals move to medical informatics or more IT-related fields. I think it is already happening now, especially when we see positions like IT Pharmacist being setup and recognised in our healthcare institutions,” said Wee Ming, who is a pharmacist by training.
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