Editorial

ETHOS Issue 26, Nov 2023

The COVID-19 crisis is the starkest recent reminder that ensuring a people’s health is a task vital to a society’s wellbeing, and a responsibility that extends well beyond the ambit of healthcare professionals: it is a critical aspect of governing well, and rests on a whole-of-society will to take care of one another and ourselves. The pandemic is by no means the only impetus driving a tidal change in healthcare. A silvering population, resource constraints, new affordances in medical, digital and data capabilities, and fresh insights into how care is best provided have moved Singapore, as elsewhere, to envision a more holistic and sustainable approach to looking after our people for the long term.

The Healthier SG initiative, announced in 2022 and launched in July 2023, is an important first step in reframing how we think about health and care in Singapore. It is part of a broader effort to lay the technical, infrastructural and administrative groundwork for a whole suite of innovative health-related applications and solutions, while activating both individual and communal ownership of health. In doing so, opportunities for providing and receiving attentive care will be greatly enhanced, beyond what centralised institutions such as hospitals alone can sustainably offer.

The implication is that the health and wellbeing of Singaporeans is a broader societal issue with ramifications for all aspects of public service work. It involves questions about how we choose to live, work and play in future, what kind of urban environment will support our living well, and what we can do to bring about a more caring, healthful Singapore for all.

There is much cause for optimism. The advancement of data and analytical tools, which has transformed many industries and lifestyles, will also benefit the health sector. It will enable increasingly personalised and effective forms of care and prevention that, done well, could help nip potential health issues in the bud before they cause concern. To support these and other advances, Singapore is developing groundbreaking regulations that will allow both public and private health records to come under one national database, with safeguards to ensure that this intimate personal data is managed responsibly and used appropriately. Such information will strengthen the core relationship between patients and their primary care doctors, by offering fuller insights into a patient’s health and medical status. It could also help track progress towards agreed outcomes, and in time reveal new and more impactful ways to improve decision-making towards health goals, both at an individual and population scale.

Giving patients agency over their health—which is to say giving Singaporeans ownership of their wellbeing—works.

It is also part of a healthy broader movement in governance that values working with the public, and across boundaries, to co-design and co-craft our collective futures. Game-changing as new technology and new approaches may be, they are a means to better realise what good caregivers and public officers have long understood. A patient—a citizen—is a human being with diverse and interdependent needs, including the economic and the social, that must also be looked after—and it takes a whole village to do so. Much authority and regard are vested in the healthcare profession, and rightly so, for the skill, leadership and vital service they provide. But regardless of where and how we serve, we can and must pool our wits and will, drawing on our empathy, humility and imagination, in caring for the future wellbeing of Singapore.

We wish you an inspiring and illuminating read.