Smart wards: Singapore hospitals use technology to cope with manpower needs

SINGAPORE – Reaching an elderly patient within seconds before he gets off his hospital bed and falls, or nurse clinicians using hands-free wearable devices to update doctors who are off-site on the patient’s condition to get direct input for his care plan.

Such automation, deemed as the future of hospitals, is already in Singapore as healthcare institutions here shift to smart technology to address manpower shortage in healthcare and to look after a rapidly ageing population.

The smart ward team at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH), for instance, leverages digitalisation, robotics and artificial intelligence to change the way its staff work and care for elderly patients. 

“Innovation is no longer a wait-and-see luxury but one that is mission-critical,” said chief nurse Hoi Shu Yin. 

With its gadgets and automated equipment, TTSH’s smart ward engages patients, improves services, lightens the load of a limited and ageing staff, and allows healthcare personnel enough room for efficiency and upskilling.

“We’ve been given the agility and autonomy to ensure collective decisions can be made and implemented fast and safely without being belaboured by conventional approval processes,” said smart ward lead and senior nurse manager Lim Mei Ling.

One in four Singaporeans will be at least 65 years old by 2030 – up from one in six today. This means more healthcare staff will be needed to run hospitals, clinics and eldercare centres.

In his speech in Parliament in October 2022, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung said his ministry estimated that another 24,000 people are needed to grow the current number of 58,000 healthcare personnel to 82,000 by 2030.

An alternative to merely increasing manpower could lie in harnessing digital technology to provide better and safer care to patients, hospitals have found.

Helmed by a multi-disciplinary care team of doctors, nurses, allied health professionals and administrators, TTSH set up its smart ward late in 2022 in the general medicine speciality division, where the patients are mainly the elderly with the most complex of needs.

“As a hospital with high ambitions for the transformative benefits of innovation, it is important that our ideas are test-bedded in the most real and intensive of environments and not in extended spaces,” said the smart ward’s co-lead, associate consultant in general medicine Keefe Tan.

“Real problems are explored and exposed this way, and we can then realise the proofs of concept and value of these forward initiatives for our patients and workforce,” he added.

“As our society becomes older, so will our patients and our workers. It is crucial that we leverage innovation to tackle new determinants of health such as frailty and create a nimbler workforce not burdened by repetitive and labour-intensive tasks,” Dr Hoi said.

He added that initiatives and ideas in the smart ward are constantly being rapid-tested, repurposed and planned for scaling up.

To date, more than 20 innovations have been tested at TTSH, with 14 initiatives introduced and waiting to be scaled up to other wards. In the next couple of years, another 20 initiatives will be in line to be rapid-tested.