S’poreans In HealthTech Share The Best Part Of Their Jobs – And It’s Not About The Billion-Dollar Industry

The rapidly ageing population in Singapore has been a constant pressing concern.

By 2030, the elderly population will be the biggest driver of innovation going forward, with healthcare investments expected to reach around 3.5 per cent of GDP.

In line with this, the Government has been continuously preparing to embrace the challenge of an ageing population.

This is done through the use of ICT and medical technology to provide efficient healthcare services.

With connectivity at nearly everyone’s fingertips, the tech-driven consumer healthcare industry in Asia is estimated to be worth billions of dollars today.

With people spending and investing more in healthcare, it’s a clear testament that the sector is booming and highly sought after.

To accommodate this demand, the healthcare industry has continuously been ramping up its innovation efforts and use of advanced technologies to augment the work of healthcare professionals.

Three Singaporeans from IHiS – Singapore’s HealthTech agency – shared that there are many motivating factors as to why they joined the industry, so we got them to reveal more about their working experiences:

Sim Yan Qing

Sim Yang Qing, Senior Systems Analyst, IHiS

Yan Qing is only 28, but she’s already working as a Senior Systems Analyst for the Service Delivery-Ancillary Care team in IHiS.

After she graduated from Nanyang Technological University with honours in an engineering degree, she landed her first job at IHiS.

She said that she’s always had an interest in IT, so she wanted to put the skills and knowledge she acquired in university to benefit the society.

“I thought that working in the healthcare industry would be meaningful as it is one of the growing sectors in Singapore, and I can contribute to systems that will benefit patients,” she said.

When Yan Qing first joined IHiS, she only had a basic understanding of the Systems Development Life Cycle Agile Model.

But over time, she’s learnt “how to run a project from the initial phases of planning and design, to implementing, testing, and seeing the system go-live”.

With her advanced skills proficiency, Yan Qing was quickly promoted to be a Senior Systems Analyst in a matter of two years, where she took the lead in implementing key projects.

In this new role, she currently supports the Outpatient Pharmacy Automation System (OPAS), which helps to improve efficiency of the prescription filling process, and enhance the manual picking accuracy for certain drugs.

This benefits patients by reducing their wait times at pharmacies and enhances patient safety.

At the same time, it also relieves healthcare professionals of laborious tasks, enabling them to be more productive and have more time for direct patient care.

As the OPAS involves machinery, Yan Qing has to ensure that the machine fits within the pharmacy of the newly-developed polyclinics and hospitals.

On a daily basis, she gathers software requirements from the users and translates them into IT logic for the vendor.

She also tests the usability of these requirements and enhances the system based on user feedback.

“I would need to think from the users’ perspectives to see if they require the enhancement or change. At times, I would propose an alternative solution which is more feasible for the IT vendor to implement.”

At the end of the day, Yan Qing said she gets a huge sense of gratification from her job.

[It’s a great feeling] when I see my family and friends benefit from the technology that I helped to implement at the newly-opened healthcare facilities. These technologies ensure that they receive the right medication in a shorter time.

Summing up her working experience thus far, Yan Qing said that it has been a very fulfilling journey.

In 2016, she even received a prestigious national award with her team for a system implementation at the Institute of Mental Health in 2016.

She also liked the fact that IHiS makes it a point for their employees to also “play hard” to strike a good work-life balance.

“There are about 7 to 8 organisation-wide fun events organised every year, on top of different sports interest group activities. We are also given a department welfare fund annually to organise team bonding activities such as a team retreat to de-stress and celebrate our achievements.”

“We also get free passes to the Singapore Zoo and River Safari, ActiveSG gym coupons, as well as movie vouchers!”

Vincent Seah

Vincent Seah, Cyber Security Governance Manager, IHiS

Vincent graduated from Boston University in 2008 with a Bachelor in Business Administration, majoring in Finance and Management Info Systems.

After graduation, Vincent had a tough time looking for a job because of the financial crisis in 2008.

“I have a friend who was in IT security at that time, so he recommended me and I took up the opportunity as the role sounded interesting. That was how I came into IT Security.”

That very first role led him to work in IT security for 9 years now.

The bulk of his career was focused in the finance industry, and he only decided to step out of that comfort zone last year.

“At that point of time, the healthcare sector was completely foreign to me but I decided to challenge myself to be more exposed in other sectors.”

Currently, the 35-year-old is a manager in the Cyber Security Governance team at IHiS, which develops cybersecurity policies and standards for public healthcare.

Vincent has been with IHiS for over a year now, and he describes his experience thus far as “an eye-opener”.

“IT Security is an interesting position, where you will be interfacing between application, network and system teams. It will provide you – though not very in-depth – with knowledge in all 3 domains, which I think is rare.”

The main focus of his role is to evaluate security postures, including conducting penetration tests, to see if it meets industry standards and legal requirements.

If it falls short, the Cybersecurity Governance team would need to figure out how to resolve it so they can achieve the required standard.

“The bulk of the work is to analyse audit reports or security incidents, and find the root cause of the issues,” said Vincent.

“After finding the root causes, I have to think of solutions and recommendations to resolve them so the issues do not happen again. These solutions can be in the form of new technology recommendations, or process improvement.”

According to Vincent, one of the key challenges that he faced is in dealing with the structure of public healthcare.

“In the past, I only had to be concerned with one setup in a company. But in the whole public healthcare that sees over 10 million patient attendances every year, there are systems of 3 very large and different healthcare clusters which are constantly changing.”

“The complexity and size of the whole structure can sometimes be quite mind-boggling. It is a constant learning experience as I learn new things on the setup every day.”

Despite these challenges, Vincent is happy to have been a part of some national projects revolving around precision medicine and robotics.

These projects will be rolled out nationwide, and Vincent is looking forward to witnessing his effort pay off and see it benefit others.

Commenting on his time at IHiS so far, Vincent said that the company has a very positive working culture.

His boss is very helpful and doubles as a mentor, guiding and teaching him the soft skills needed.

“It is a real benefit when you have a boss who encourages personal development. I am always encouraged to go for training to further equip and up-skill myself.”

In fact, Vincent makes it a point to stay on top of his game by attending internationally recognised courses to upskill himself every year.

Last year, Vincent completed a course on risk management and improving organisational resiliency, and another on organising IT resources to achieve efficiency.

Recently, he also completed his Healthcare Information Security and Privacy Practitioner (HCISPP) certification in his free time – and he’s one of only two people in Singapore to be awarded this certification to date.

Describing the current ICT landscape, Vincent said that it is undergoing a change due to technological advancements.

There is an increasing number of companies and investments flowing in to healthcare sector. Companies such as Apple, Google, and recently Amazon, have all taken the plunge into HealthTech.

“And I believe this is due to the growth of IoTs, machine learning and robotics, which has opened up new possibilities within the sector, which was previously unavailable.”

Dr. Daniel Li

Dr. Daniel Li, Senior Lead Informatics Specialist, IHiS

Daniel has always had a keen interest in IT, so after completing his A-Levels, he wanted to pursue computer engineering.

But his triple science background, coupled with a number of family and societal factors, pushed him to do Medicine instead.

He now holds a Graduate Diploma in Family Medicine at the National University of Singapore, and a Masters in Biomedical Informatics at the Oregon Health and Science University in the United States.

He also completed a Post-Graduate Certificate in Law from the University of London so he could explore the “unique triangle of law, healthcare, and IT”.

The 37-year-old previously worked with SingHealth for about 7 years as a Team Lead in implementing clinical informatics projects across various hospitals.

He worked closely with the Information Services (IS) design and implementation teams to build and deploy solutions that meet user requirements for clinical orders, medication administration and documentation.

He then left for private practice as a full-time family physician.

Currently, he takes on the role of a Senior Lead Informatics Specialist, National Architecture Office, in IHiS.

With an aim to improve patient care through effective clinical data recording, Daniel supports the adoption and use of clinical terminologies in Singapore.

The standardisation of these terms enable relevant clinical information to be recorded using consistent, common representations.

This then allows clinical decision support systems to provide real-time advice, and sharing of information with other healthcare providers for continuity of care.

“I feel satisfied that the work I do in Standards lay the foundation used in systems and facilitates the exchange of data to other existing systems, eventually leading to meaningful insights,” said Daniel.

His job scope also extends to clinic advisory for systems for primary care such as GPConnect, the National Electronic Health Record (NEHR), and any new initiatives which require input from clinicians.

He also assists with analytics work, translating clinical requirements into IT deliverables.

This year, he explores a new role, which is to look at how new healthcare legislation impacts medical practices in terms of IT adoption, change management, and the medico-legal issues.

Daniel said that technology has been increasingly important in the healthcare industry, and can literally make or break it.

Citing a quote from his senior, Daniel said;

As a doctor, I can make a difference to a life, one patient at a time. But as a doctor who does IT, I can make a difference to many patients at a time.

He added that IT systems in the past were mainly focused on storing and viewing information, but systems have matured greatly with the introduction of new features over the years.

With the advent of technology such as robotics and artificial intelligence in the sector, he expects many would want to embark on the HealthTech journey in the coming years.

Want A Job In HealthTech Too?

Today, IT skills are highly sought after in many businesses and industries, including healthcare.

But the good news is, these skills aren’t hard to acquire at all.

In fact, you can tap on TechSkills Accelerator (TeSA) – a SkillsFuture initiative driven by Infocomm Media Development Authority (IMDA) – to help yourself build a tech career.

TeSA offers various programmes to support professionals to upgrade and acquire new skills and domain knowledge that are in demand, so they can remain competitive and meet the challenges of a fast-moving digital landscape.

Various opportunities are available in the HeathTech space, and you can visit TalentGuru – a skills-based career development platform by SGTech  – to apply.

This article was written in collaboration with IMDA in support of the TechSkills Accelerator (TeSA) initiative.