Switching to notifications means that you will receive appointment related messages from SingHealth via a special message prompt on your mobile through an alert on your phone. With this, you will thus not receive any such messages from us via SMS anymore.
There are 3 main benefits: 1. Notifications via SingHealth’s Health Buddy app are a safe and secure way to receive all your appointment-related information from our SingHealth Hospitals, Centres and Polyclinics. You can be more assured that messages and any links within are genuine from SingHealth, and thus better protect yourself and your loved ones from SMS scams and links.
2. If you are a caregiver, both you and the patient (your dependant) may choose to receive the message notifications on your own handphones via Heath Buddy app. In addition, if more than one caregiver cares for a dependant, switching to notifications allows multiple caregivers to receive notifications for this dependant. (For SMS, only one person / caregiver can receive dependant’s SMS reminders).
3. You may organize your various messages/notifications by Category and Persons for easy reference on your app. (this is not possible with normal SMS)
**Available for all SingHealth institutions except National Neuroscience Institute (NNI) and SingHealth Community Hospitals
It’s simple! Follow these steps to start receiving notifications:
a. Download and launch the Health Buddy app.
b. Click the ‘More’ tab at the bottom of your screen.
c. Under settings click ‘Notification Preference’.
d. Login via SingPass on Notifications screen.
e. Click ‘Activate My Device’ and you’re all done
Yes, you may switch back at any time. Simply go to your 'Notification Preferences’, and toggle to OFF on the ‘Allow Notifications’ button.
IMPORTANT: Please note that if any of your authorised caregiver or next-of-kin has activated to receive your SingHealth notifications, you will still not receive SMS. You will only receive SMS when NO caregiver is receiving notifications on your behalf, and you have turned off the “Allow Notifications” tab under ‘Health Buddy’ > ‘Notification Preferences’.
Here are the following types of messages that will be sent as notifications, once you activate:
For any other type of messages, you will continue to receive as SMS until we gradually update our systems to onboard to notifications too.
Yes you can! This way, you and your dependant will both be updated of any important appointment-related information at the same time.
Yes, you can nominate up to 10 registered caregivers to receive your notifications. Please approach our counter staff with your caregiver/dependant and present your NRICs for verification to register as authorized caregiver(s). Once registered, your caregiver (s) can open Health Buddy app to ‘activate’ the link to start receiving notifications for you.
If you are the patient, you and your caregiver(s) need to present your NRICs for verification to first register as an authorized caregivers. Once that is done, your caregiver will need to use the Health Buddy app to activate the link.
To ‘activate’ the link and start receiving your dependant’s notifications, follow these steps:
On Health Buddy app, you may view whether your nominated caregiver(s) is receiving your notifications or not. To remove a caregiver from the hospital system, please approach our clinic counters to request for the caregiver link to be deactivated. Once deactivated, this caregiver will no longer receive your notifications.
Before your caregiver or dependant is reflected in Health Buddy, you will need to register the caregiver-dependant link at our hospitals and centres.
Click here to learn more
If you want to be removed as a caregiver, please email [email protected] with these details:• Your Full Name + NRIC (i.e. Caregiver)• Full Name + NRIC (i.e. Dependant(s) to remove)• Name of hospital Dependant(s) was registered as a patient
You (caregiver) will begin to receive notifications for your dependant. Your dependant will no longer receive SMS. Please advise your dependant to activate notifications on Health Buddy app on his own mobile device, so that he will receive notifications as well.
You can tag the identity of each device to ONE unique person/NRIC only. For your security, if there is an attempt to activate an additional NRIC identity to the same phone, an error message will appear.
If you own or have bought a second-hand mobile phone, you will need to factory reset your phone or contact the owner of the other NRIC (original owner of the mobile phone) to remove the device from his/her ‘Notification Preference’.
To view your notifications on all your devices, you will have to activate each device individually. (See question 1)
a. Yes, you can! You can organize them according to:
i. what type of message you receive (i.e. Appointments, Registration, Payments, Medicines, Others), and ii. who it is for (yourself and any personally chosen named identity - eg. Mum, dad, etc).
b. Click on the ‘select’ button at the top right of your list of notification messagesc. Tap on the message and click on ‘Categorise’ icond. Select what the message is about and who it is for then click ‘Done’.
Pro tip! Click on the pencil icon to create more profiles (e.g Mom, dad, son, etc).
If you rename your device (phone) name after activating your device to receive notifications, the device name shown in “Notifications Preference” will become out of sync. To sync the phone name, please deactivate your device and then re-activate it to receive notifications. The device name shown in “Notifications Preference” will be synced (i.e. correct) after re-activation.
For Android, Bluetooth needs to be turned on before reactivating device for the name to be updated.
No, you will not. To receive push notifications in Health Buddy app again, please turn on notifications for Health Buddy under your phone’s settings.
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