Asia Healthcare Summit: Our country attaches great importance to population health and AI has great potential to help prevent diseases

Asia Healthcare Summit: Our country attaches great importance to population health and AI has great potential to help prevent diseases

(Local and overseas medical experts participated in a number of panels at the 2024 Asia Healthcare Summit, one of which discussed the benefits and impact of the development of healthcare technology on the industry. Topics covered include artificial intelligence, telemedicine and the future of healthcare.)

As Singapore implements the Health SG plan nationwide, the country will increasingly pay attention to the overall population health covering all age groups, while paying special attention to the elderly and vulnerable groups who lack the awareness to seek medical treatment.

Assistant Professor Chen Yongan, deputy director of comprehensive nursing at the National Health Insurance Group of Singapore, made the above point of view when he delivered a keynote speech titled "Population Health: The Next Frontier Issue" at the 2024 Asian Healthcare Summit.

Population health refers to the overall good condition of the population of a country or region, the physical and mental health of people of all ages, and the ability of most people to enjoy complete medical and health services, thereby improving the quality of life and life expectancy, and making a positive contribution to social and economic development. .

This concept focuses on analyzing all determinants that affect a population's health throughout the life course, including environment, diet, lifestyle habits, genetic factors, etc., rather than just focusing on risk factors or clinical causes related to specific diseases.

Chen Yongan pointed out that our country currently performs well in terms of life expectancy, but a major challenge it faces is that many people will inevitably suffer from multiple diseases in the last 10 years of their lives, and their bodies will become increasingly weak.

Therefore, he believes that in addition to relying on hospitals and polyclinics, health care services should also penetrate more into various communities and reach more elderly and vulnerable groups who lack the awareness to seek medical treatment. “Population health focuses on everyone in the entire group. of health”.

Under the Health SG plan, the three local medical clusters each protect the health of approximately 1.5 million to 1.6 million people in the region, and use a capitation funding model.

Chen Yongan said that medical workers should identify the last 10% of people who will not take the initiative to seek medical treatment but are in greatest need of help. "We need to pay attention to the elderly who do not go out to the downstairs of HDB flats and just stay at home without exercising, as well as vulnerable groups such as food delivery riders who are more likely to encounter accidents."

Technology can make medical services more accessible and improve work efficiency

In a symposium on the development of medical technology, Elizabeth Hospital President Yang Yimin pointed out that technological development can not only make medical services more common and accessible, but also improve the work efficiency of medical staff.

For example, he said that telemedicine has become popular during the COVID-19 epidemic, and more and more patients are able to accept this type of medical treatment. It also allows medical workers to accurately understand which types of diseases are more suitable for remote medical treatment in practice, thus moving towards Standardization and scale.

Yang Yimin also mentioned that hospitals affiliated with IHH Healthcare Group make good use of artificial intelligence to monitor the physical condition of inpatients, thereby identifying the risk of patients falling and reducing the workload of nurses in caring for patients and preventing falls.

He said: "Medical technology will not threaten nurses' employment opportunities, but will help them reduce duplication of work and focus on providing better care for patients."

Li Xuanming, CEO of Kangsheng Medical Group, also pointed out that artificial intelligence has great potential in preventing diseases. "We should look at genetics and patient profiles and assess their risk factors based on family history in the genetic map to tailor their health care plan before they get sick."

Li Xuanming believes that artificial intelligence can also provide very effective support in clinical decision-making. He used the Singapore Eye Lesion Analyser (SELENA+) as an example to explain that through deep learning, this instrument can detect signs of diabetic retinal lesions.

"Artificial intelligence is exciting, it's here to stay and we should make the most of it to benefit everyone."

About 50 local and overseas medical experts attended the 2024 Asian Healthcare Summit held in my country to discuss hot topics such as the relationship between artificial intelligence and medicine, how big data empowers the medical system, and the sustainable development of the medical system.