Increasing Healthcare Efficiency through Digitalisation

17 July 2023 — The healthcare sector is constantly advancing, with billions of dollars spent annually on research and innovation. Over his twenty years of experience as a clinician, Associate Professor (Assoc Prof) Ngiam Kee Yuan, Programme Director, Master of Science (MSc) in Biomedical Informatics Programme, has seen how healthcare has sought to capitalise on technological advancements to achieve better care and patient outcomes. In this article, we seek his thoughts and opinions about the future of healthcare, the impact of digitalisation and the state of digital healthcare in Singapore.

1. You have published a number of research papers on Health Information Technology and Artificial Intelligence (AI). How did you go from medicine into this?

Assoc Prof Ngiam: I was involved in medical research, and we experienced difficulty in using data efficiently. I wanted to address this.

When we were using previously available simple statistical tools, we could do analyses for a sample group of up to about 200 people. With the introduction of AI into our research work, we were able to dramatically increase our sample sizes as well as improve our efforts. Now, we can run large-scale cohort-level analyses, from 10,000 to up to 100,000 people. Since we began using AI in 2016, we have seen the fruits of our labour, and have started using AI in other research work.

Through my dive into health information technology and AI, I hope to show others, especially individuals working in the healthcare sector, that acquiring these skills and applying them to their work is possible.

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2. What kind of skills will be needed for Care Economy workers in the future?

First, we need to enhance the digital literacy of such workers across the board. Care Economy workers who are able to use data, or who have an awareness of the importance of data, would improve their skillsets and efficiency. People possessing digital skills will also find more possibilities opening up in their careers, regardless of the business units or organisations they are with.

The second area that needs more focus is training in interpersonal or soft skills. Empathy is essential for any Care Economy worker because the job revolves around dealing with people. However, not everyone may see how important it is to apply empathy in their workplaces and much of the focus thus far has been on improving hard skills.

Admittedly, there is no very good way to teach empathy. Soft skills are essential across many roles, not just in the Care Economy, but in the real world, how do you teach these kinds of skills? Nevertheless, I know there are courses out there and we should probably be doing more of these kind of courses. Learning these interpersonal skills takes time, and it takes mentorship to learn them well.

3. Digitalisation has had an immense impact across multiple industries over the last few decades. What is its impact on the Care Economy?

I think digitalisation is a no brainer for any industry. However, not every industry can implement it easily. Healthcare is one of the more challenging industries for digitalisation, as it has a lot of high-touch activities that require human intervention. That said, healthcare can still reap the benefits of digitalisation.

Enhancing productivity is a clear-cut advantage of digitalisation. The more one can use tools in an automated fashion—or rather, use data in automated fashion—the better one’s productivity will be.

When we talk about digitalisation, we are referring the whole gamut of things: digital data curation, data analytics, machine learning, AI and so forth. Some of these can be applied to more manual or labour-intensive processes for quality improvement or workflow improvement.

However, companies need to consider cost-effectiveness in such efforts. An organisation can spend a lot of money trying to improve productivity through process improvement, but the gains may not be commensurate with the investment.

I think the most efficient way to drive productivity is to use digital tools. This is true for the healthcare industry, as a lot of our work is centred on knowledge and information, to provide better care for our patients.

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4. The rise of technology and AI has given rise to tools such as ChatGPT. What is the impact on doctors and healthcare professionals and their jobs?

AI is not a new invention in the realm of healthcare. It has been an important tool for us for at least six to eight years now. I think AI is currently drawing attention because of the publicity given to ChatGPT and its capabilities.

Traditionally, AI has been very difficult to adopt for healthcare professionals. Most lack the computing or foundational engineering knowledge to use them. For example, coding is a skill required to run and execute AI programs, but not  many clinicians’ possess that skill. However, with the introduction of pre-trained large language models such as ChatGPT, clinicians who do not have coding skills can now use AI to achieve outcomes that would otherwise have taken a long time to accomplish.

Although we are at a fairly early stage, many good things have come out from the use of AI due to its accessibility to clinicians, so I can categorically say that AI would change their jobs dramatically, especially in improving productivity.

5. In your opinion, what are the potential and the challenges in health informatics? What is the career outlook like for someone who wants to join this arena?

Let us break the subject of health informatics into two parts.

The first part is the medical informatics component, which involves things such as electronic medical record systems and data. In this arena, at least in a fully digitised electronic medical system such as Singapore, there will always be a demand for talent due to the system’s permanent presence and the specific skillsets needed to operate systems like EPIC or AllScripts.

The second aspect of health informatics is data analytics. Currently, we are looking at how AI and machine learning can be used to enhance workflow processes in healthcare. The biggest challenge we face in this is the competition for talent. The E-commerce and financial sectors have been aggressively hiring data analysts while the healthcare industry has lagged behind. Healthcare needs to continue to train people with data analytics as the demand for such talent will be there.

6. What is the current state of health informatics in Singapore?

Singapore’s strength lies in the fact that we have digitised our healthcare data for more than 20 years at this point. That strong foundation affords us the opportunity to do more things right and we have built up strong technical knowledge given our experience.

There is a lot of disparity, in terms of how far along the digitalisation of healthcare processes is in Asia. If we could share our 20-plus years of experience in going electronic and utilising digital methods as well as the lessons we have learnt with other countries, it would be a wonderful opportunity and we can help them in a meaningful way.

Given our strong foundation in healthcare informatics, we have the ability to run more extensive research projects, analyse data better, run longer-term studies, increase productivity and, with the introduction of AI, maximise the use of digital tools to further improve our processes.

Indeed, with the advent of digitalisation, the working landscape that we are familiar with will change permanently. To stay up to date and relevant, we should find out what the needs of the upcoming future economies are.

NUS Postgraduate by Coursework Masterclass Series 2023

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Associate Professor Ngiam will be speaking at the NUS Postgraduate by Coursework Masterclass Series 2023 (NUS PGCMS 2023) on 29 Jul at the Suntec Singapore Convention & Exhibition Centre.

Conceptualised as a series of talks by NUS academics and experts on how individuals can prepare for the Future Economies (as identified by SkillsFuture Singapore), the NUS PGCMS 2023 aims to attract learners, engage them and make them aware of the opportunities offered by NUS’ featured self-funded postgraduate by coursework programmes.

Extending on the Postgraduate by Coursework Fair 2022’s theme “Become a Master of the Future Economies”, the NUS PGCMS 2023 will be focusing on programmes classified under the following future economies:

  1. Digital
  2. Care
  3. Green
  4. Industry 4.0

The following speakers will be presenting Masterclasses on topics relating to the Care and Digital Economies:

Care Economy

  • Assoc Prof Caroline Lee, Senior Lecturer Kenneth Ban & Dr Lim Lee Jin, Co-Programme Directors, Master of Science in Precision Health and Medicine Programme: Towards a Future-Ready Healthcare: Precision Medicine Empowered by Data-Driven Innovations
  • Assoc Prof Tan Shyong Wei, Kevin, Programme Director, Master of Science in Applied Biomedicine Programme: The Importance of Applied Biomedicine in a Post-COVID-19 Pandemic World
  • Assoc Prof Ngiam Kee Yuan, Programme Director, Master of Science in Biomedical Informatics Programme: Leveraging Artificial Intelligence and Informatics to Improve Healthcare

Digital Economy

  • Senior Lecturer Suwichit (Sean) Chaidaroon, Programme Director, Master of Social Sciences (Communication): Digital Alphabet Soup: How AI, AR, VR and Emerging Technologies are Transforming Strategic Communication

Other industry experts and NUS lecturers will be speaking on key topics relating to the remaining two Future Economies, ranging from energy and the built environment to maritime transformation and entrepreneurship.

For more information about the NUS PGCMS 2023 and to register for the event, click here: https://www.gevme.com/site/NUS-PGCMS-2023  

 
17 July 2023