The S$200 million project comes at a time when the Singapore Government has expressed its commitment to developing and enhancing the healthcare industry. In his recent National Day Rally address, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said that the focus on elderly care and integrated care for the community will be cornerstones of the healthcare industry in future.
The MOHH partnered with more than 300 clinicians across the island to define the requirements for the e-health records system architecture, identifying from the end-users what they required and needed. The project promises to offer substantial improvements in productivity, accessibility to information and better quality of care.
In an interview with FutureGov, Muttitt explained that one of the key challenges initially faced was building the expertise and skill-sets needed to drive the project. MOHH brought in a team of international hailing from Canada, Australia and UK to design the architecture and spearhead training and knowledge transfer.
“The other challenge was the issue of governance,” added Muttitt. “It’s a living breathing architecture that constantly needs to be revisited, validated, maintained, enhanced and evolved. It is a large national programme which involves a large investment over many years. So strong strategic leadership, compliance and accountability is critical.”
She admitted that initially MOHH faced some resistance in changing the culture and mindset of sharing information, but the strong political support and momentum around the issue made it easier to push through change.
“The key was to identify the value proposition for all stakeholders, and once they recognised the benefits of cross-sharing of information, it helped break down some of that resistance. The project has every chance of being successful because of the scale and size of Singapore and the deep IT penetration and infrastructure already present that will accelerate our progress,” she said.
Elaborating on the desired qualities of the potential vendor for the tender selection next month, Muttitt said MOHH hopes to work with vendors and potential partners to validate their requirements as well as tweak and optimise not only the solutions but also the implementation strategy.
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Autor(en)/Author(s): Wendy Koh
Quelle/Source: FutureGov Magazine, 08.09.2009
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