Debated in Parliament on 20 Nov 2018.
Ms Irene Quay Siew Ching asked the Minister for Health what are the key performance indicators and the percentage of these indicators that have been met under the $62.5 million pilot to scale up hospitals' adoption of smart technologies as part of the Smart Nursing Ward initiative under the Healthcare Industry Transformation Map.
Nurses make up the largest proportion of our healthcare workforce, constituting more than 40% of the workforce in public hospitals today.
In March 2018, the Ministry of Health (MOH) launched the Healthcare Productivity Fund – Smart Nursing Ward Programme, a key initiative under the Healthcare Industry Transformation Map. This programme supports hospitals in improving nursing processes and adopting smart solutions so as to reduce our nurses' administrative load and enable them to focus more attention on direct patient care.
Some of the areas being looked into include inventory management, materials delivery, patient monitoring and patient transport. Some technology solutions being explored include Autonomous Mobile Robots (AMRs) and Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) technology. For example, AMRs were earlier piloted in some of our public hospitals to transport items, such as consumables and medication. One deployment saved as many as six Full Time Equivalents (FTEs). Under the Smart Nursing Ward programme, we are exploring to expand the use of these AMRs, by deploying them to deliver medical instruments. This aims to save time for nurses from walking back and forth between sterilisation facilities and Operating Theatres, enabling them to focus on direct care.
As part of the programme's eligibility criteria, proposed projects are required to strive for at least 10% nursing time-savings. As the programme was only launched in March 2018, many of the projects have just been initiated or are being explored. It is thus premature to assess the progress.
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