Singapore’s healthcare sector emerging from the pandemic with renewed focus on data, AI, predictive technology, and sustainability, according to Philips Future Health Index 2022 report

91% of leaders in Singapore agree that the value of data to their facility is worth the time and resources invested, a number significantly higher than in other countries such as the United States (82%) or China (53%), and one-and-a-half times larger than the global (65%) and European averages (60%).

Currently, 37% of leaders in Singapore report that they are collecting, storing and sharing data with other parties (such as other healthcare facilities or health tech companies) in clinical settings, and more than one-quarter do so in operational settings. Additionally, about a third of leaders state that they are using data for both descriptive (35% in clinical and 31% in operational setting) and predictive analytics (32% in both settings).

Along with their confidence in the value of data, healthcare leaders in Singapore are positive about their ability to make the best use of it. Most (91%) leaders say that they have access to necessary technology and can extract actionable insights from data. And, while half of the leaders trust they have all the expertise needed internally to fully utilize data, another 46% believe they have at least some of this expertise.

Despite high confidence in data and technology, data silos and security concerns remain a significant barrier to full data visualization in Singapore. More than three quarters (77%) of Singapore’s healthcare leaders cite data silos as the primary challenge hindering their ability to use data effectively, whilst managing high volumes of data and having enough time and resources to make the best use of it also rank highly (24% and 20% respectively).

Training could be part of the solution in Singapore. 77% of the country’s healthcare leaders say their staff are overwhelmed by the volume of data available, whilst 22% agree that the availability of data specialists would support them in using data more effectively and 36% believe that greater staff expertise would help their facility to do more with data.

Key would also be collaborating with other ecosystem players. For example, healthcare leaders in Singapore believe that joining forces with health technology companies could provide healthcare facilities with counsel on contingency planning (32%), support technology integration (28%), and provide guidance on regulatory issues (27%) and data analysis (27%).

Despite the obstacles to data utilization, healthcare leaders in Singapore are committed to using artificial intelligence (AI) and predictive analytics to extract the most value out of the information they have. 38% of Singaporean healthcare leaders are currently already investing heavily in AI, while more than three quarters (74%) predict it will become a top investment area within the next three years.

While the highest AI investment is currently for operational settings (16%), three years from now it is expected to grow within the area of clinical decision support (from 12% to 37%), which includes uses related to diagnosis or treatment recommendations, early warning scores, automatic disease detection and clinical decision guidelines. This is followed closely by investing in AI to integrate diagnostics (34%) and predict outcomes (32%).

Even as Singaporean healthcare leaders see AI as a key investment for the near future, many are already utilizing predictive analytics in some capacity. Almost half (45%) of their hospitals or healthcare facilities have already adopted the technology, with a similar figure (47%) currently in the process of doing so. This puts Singapore far ahead of other countries, with the percentage of those already working with predictive analytics (92%) almost twice as high as the European average (47%), as well as significantly higher than the global average (56%), the United States (66%) and China (79%). 

As with AI adoption, predictive analytics are more likely to be used today in operational settings (87%), supporting tasks such as financial forecasting (26%), capacity planning (22%) and maintenance prediction (22%). However, when asked about the areas where their facilities could most benefit from predictive technologies, leaders are significantly more likely to indicate clinical uses (92%).

Singapore’s healthcare leaders are stepping up focus on social responsibility and are looking to digital solutions to support these goals. The need to make healthcare more accessible and affordable is already a focus for both government and healthcare leaders. Initiatives to make the country’s healthcare system greener are predicted to become more prominent in the near future. Today, there is a noticeable shift in the leaders’ attitudes towards environmental sustainability. Almost one-quarter (24%) of Singaporean healthcare leaders put sustainability practices at the top of their agenda, placing the country on par with the European (25%) and global average (24%), and ahead of the United States (19%), as compared to 2% in the 2021.

Being a socially responsible healthcare provider is currently seen as a key priority by one-quarter (25%) of healthcare leaders in Singapore too, almost double the number seen in 2021 (13%). As healthcare access and affordability have been on the Singapore government’s agenda for many years, it is not surprising that 43% of Singaporean leaders have health equality initiatives already in place, with an additional 49% in the process of doing so. This puts Singapore far ahead of other countries when it comes to the adoption of health equality initiatives. 

To achieve all these ambitions, there is a renewed focus on staff welfare as the country emerges from the pandemic. As staff shortages and burnout continue to drive the industry agenda, almost one-third (32%) of healthcare leaders in Singapore are placing employee satisfaction and retention at the top of their priority list, a figure comparable to the Asian (33%) and European (32%) averages. In 2022, 15% of Singaporean healthcare leaders consider staff retention a top priority vs. 9% in 2021, while the focus on improving staff satisfaction (18%) in 2022 is slightly higher than it was in 2021 (15%).

Singaporean healthcare leaders know that they cannot quickly, or easily, resolve the staffing challenges they face currently. While in 2021 most leaders predicted that staff satisfaction and retention would no longer need to be prioritized in the years to come, today they are convinced these staffing issues will be of great importance in the foreseeable future and addressing them will need to remain at the top of their agenda.