Healthcare is an information intensive sector with complex care delivery processes and effective use of patients' medical data and direct integration of lab results would help increase quality of healthcare, minimise medical errors and lower cost. Through the use of infocomm, patients' medical information can be better managed and made accessible to healthcare providers at all points-of-care. Infocomm can also enable the re-engineering of processes and workflows through the development of an integrated healthcare delivery system to address the current challenges faced by the sector.
IDA actively engages healthcare institutions and the infocomm industry to develop innovative applications for the sector to improve the quality of healthcare provided, lower cost, increase productivity as well as to enable the paradigm shift in healthcare delivery.
Singapore's healthcare providers have been leading infocomm technology adopters to improve healthcare quality, reduce costs, as well as to meet some of today's challenges such as Singapore's ageing population.
For example, the Singapore Health Services (SingHealth) and the National University Hospital (NUH) were merit award winners in the 2004 National InfoComm Awards.
Call for Collaboration - Improving Healthcare Quality and Efficiency Through An Innovative Use of IT
The Ministry of Health, the Infocomm Development Authority of Singapore and The Enterprise Challenge under the Prime Minister’s Office launched a joint Healthcare Call for Collaboration to seek infocomm (ICT) solutions to improve cost-efficiency and quality of healthcare delivery for the nation’s public and private healthcare institutions. This collaboration aims to exploit ICT maximally, as a key enabler in healthcare transformation and to promote innovation to change work processes and how care is delivered.
Integrated Clinic Management Systems (CMS) Programme
The IDA Integrated Clinic Management Systems (CMS) programme for GPs is part of the iN2015 Healthcare 10-year infocomm masterplan. The S$15 million, four-year programme's objective is to encourage GP clinics to adopt and leverage on infocomm technologies to facilitate operations and clinical improvements in their patient care.
The integrated CMS facilitates scalability of the GP infrastructure by enabling consistent and standards based interface with different healthcare provider systems. Secured and seamless information flow will allow GPs to plan the patient's treatment in an integrated and coordinated manner with other hospitals and step-down care providers. Through this programme, GPs will have the capability to easily plug into the national healthcare network and achieve MOH's "One Singaporean, One Electronic Medical Record" vision.
