The Ministry of Health Singapore has announced that all nine private hospitals in the country have committed to sharing patient health information with the National Electronic Health Record system.
They will be working with Synapxe, which manages the NEHR, to get their hospital management systems prepared for integration by next year, according to a media statement.
WHY IT MATTERS
“This will enable healthcare data sharing across Singapore’s public and private healthcare sectors, to facilitate better continuity of care for patients,” the MOH explained.
As part of integration requirements, the private hospitals are expected to conduct frequent and timely software and system updates, report cybersecurity incidents and data breaches, and train staff in cyber-hygiene.
In 2010, a SG$32 million ($20 million) multi-year contract was awarded to Accenture to develop and implement the NEHR. Introduced in 2011, the system has received and consolidated health summaries from various healthcare institutions and national registries into one record. These include patient demographics, allergies, clinical diagnoses, medication history, radiology reports, laboratory investigations and discharge summaries.
To date, all public healthcare settings in Singapore, including hospitals, polyclinics, and specialty centres, are connected to the NEHR. In the private sector, at least 15% – including GP clinics – have been authorised to access and share health information with the system as of October last year.
THE LARGER TREND
Singapore has yet to mandate all hospitals and other healthcare settings to share health information with the NEHR. The proposed Health Information Bill, which is targeted to be passed in Parliament next year, pushes for this mandate to help realise the full benefit of a centralised data system in clinical decision-making and patient safety. It also proposes a framework to govern the safe collection, access, use and sharing of health information across the healthcare ecosystem.
Meanwhile, another EMR project, the Next-Generation EMR, is being developed and implemented by Synapxe to consolidate health and hospital data across the National University Health System and National Healthcare Group clusters. Launched in 2020, this system differs from the NEHR as it records the entire patient journey, from admission to discharge and follow-ups, and covers both medical and administrative data.
