Ms Ng Ling Ling
asked the Minister for Health (a) when will the national digital health app HealthHub extend its current function of appointments management across all three public healthcare clusters to include Healthier SG general practitioner (GP) clinics; and (b) whether the rest of the current functions on HealthHub, such as laboratory report, medical refill, health screening and CHAS balance, can be extended to these GP clinics.
Dr Tan Wu Meng
asked the Minister for Health (a) whether the Ministry has studied public feedback requesting for a single fully consolidated public sector app for patients to transact with the public healthcare clusters; and (b) whether there is room for improvement in existing platforms, especially for patients receiving care across multiple healthcare clusters.
The Senior Minister of State for Health (Dr Janil Puthucheary) (for the Minister for Health)
: Mr Speaker, may I have your permission to answer Question Nos 1 and 2 in today’s Order Paper?
My response will also cover the matters raised in the question by Ms Ng Ling Ling
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which is scheduled for a subsequent Sitting.
Mr Speaker
: Please proceed.
Dr Janil Puthucheary
: Thank you, Sir. I invite Ms Ng to seek clarifications, if need be. If the question has been addressed, it may not be necessary for the Member to proceed with the Question for a future Sitting.
Sir, HealthHub is our national health app and web portal which allows the public to interact with all three public healthcare clusters. One of its key functions is appointment booking. Through HealthHub, users can schedule cross-cluster appointments with the public healthcare institutions. This feature is also extended to Healthier SG general practitioner (GP) clinics that have opted to participate in the functions of this app. At this stage, we do not think it is appropriate to compel all private GPs to come onto the app. They are private clinics and they are operating within a market, albeit one that is heavily regulated.
We have not received much feedback on the difficulties in making cross-cluster medical appointments. This may be because the public are also familiar with alternative booking channels, such as the call centres of the institutions.
HealthHub also provides a range of other services to patients such as viewing laboratory reports, health screening results, prescription records and Community Health Assist Scheme (CHAS) balances. These functions are also extended to participating GP clinics, except the medication refills which only apply to the public healthcare institutions.
From time to time, we will receive suggestions to consolidate the cluster apps under HealthHub. The cluster apps do serve a purpose, in having features customised to their particular facilities and services. These apps also allow the clusters to innovate on user-interaction features, helping them to better connect with and address the unique needs of the patients they serve. On the other hand, there are also advantages to having a consolidated HealthHub. This is an issue that we will continue to explore.
Mr Speaker
: Ms Ng Ling Ling.
Ms Ng Ling Ling (Ang Mo Kio)
: Thank you, Speaker. I thank the Senior Minister of State for the reply. I have two supplementary questions. Sir, I would consider myself quite a savvy HealthHub user, but even with my use of it for the polyclinics and the hospitals especially when I help my parents, I actually needed some help from my GP that I enrolled onto Healthier SG with, on the navigation to find that there is actually a banner on the HealthHub homepage that says "Healthier SG" and the click-on says something like "View Health Plan". It is through that link that you can go in and make appointments with the GP clinic that you have enrolled with under Healthier SG, instead of the normal quick link to "Appointments" that most patients would have used HealthHub to make appointments.
My first question is: can the Ministry of Health (MOH) consider using the quick link "Appointment" button that a lot of people are very familiar with if they had been using HealthHub to also make appointments with GP clinics that Singaporeans had enrolled with under Healthier SG?
My second question is: I think I have a very good GP who goes over and above the extra mile, even when his clinic is very crowded, to explain to me when I ask questions. That took him an extra two to three minutes. I think some of these other GPs are really doing a good job trying to support Healthier SG which MOH is promoting. Will MOH recognise and give some award to encourage these GPs and encourage what we want to see other GPs doing, as we extend Healthier SG in the coming years?
Dr Janil Puthucheary
: Sir, I thank Ms Ng for her two suggestions. We will consider both and look at them closely. Indeed, we are always looking to see how we can improve the user interface and user experience of our digital products.
I am glad that she has found a GP that she trusts and is providing her with quality, in-depth care. I think we do need to find ways to reognise and incentivise this type of behaviour from the family physicians that look after all of us.
Mr Speaker
: Dr Tan.
Dr Tan Wu Meng (Jurong)
: Mr Speaker, I want to start by declaring that I work at a public healthcare institution, but I raise this feedback in my Member of Parliament capacity, based on what I have heard from my Clementi residents.
Sir, I have got two follow-up questions for the Senior Minister of State. Firstly, the Senior Minister of State also happens to be the Minister-in-charge of the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech). Can I ask the Senior Minister of State what lessons can we learn from drawing on GovTech's experience to improve the user experience of MOH's apps and the healthcare cluster apps? For example, GovTech has a deep pool of capable staff, some who have even got experience at major international tech firms such as Google.
Secondly, can I also ask the Senior Minister of State whether MOH has studied having a much more consolidated app, drawing on GovTech experience and GovTech's ease of use? Because I have residents who tell me that apps such as LifeSG and in particular, Parking.sg, are much, much easier to use than the hospital clusters apps, or even HealthHub. So, can I ask the Senior Minister of State along those lines further? Is there a lot of user interface testing done for HealthHub and the hospital apps, and is that user interface testing applied to populations, including the elderly and people who may not be naturally tech savvy? In short, Mr Speaker, seeing through the eyes of our people and not just the eyes of the engineers and coders.
Dr Janil Puthucheary
: Sir, I thank Dr Tan for his feedback and suggestions. We do recognise that as our population ages, as we have a growing number of people who have long-term health problems and multiple contacts with clinical providers, they may need multiple care settings to address their healthcare needs. And currently, that may mean navigating different apps to manage medical transactions across institutions for themselves and their family members.
So, we are looking at ways and how we can improve our digital services. We are indeed learning from the experience across the rest of the digitalisation in the public sector that GovTech and others have been heavily involved in. The teams that are working with the healthcare service providers – we have the Synapxe digital team, we also have got the GovTech teams, as well as private vendors. So, there is a significant amount of experience from the public sector and the private sector, drawing on the lessons of other care and business process transformation and applying that to what happens within the healthcare ecosystem.
Dr Tan made a point about the consolidation of the apps and the user interface. These are, in a way, two distinct issues. The matter of how we provide the digital infrastructure for the clusters to ride on and provide their individual apps at the moment is something that we are studying, as to whether or not there is a need to then consolidate and streamline.
This is distinct from the issue of the user interface and the user experience that he mentioned. We do indeed test with a variety of users from all backgrounds. We do indeed want to make sure that the digital services that we offer are accessible to the population and easy to use, so that they can engage in these transactions.
I take his feedback and we will continue to try our best. And if there are specific suggestions about buttons, banners, transactions, workflows, I would encourage him and other Members to provide us the information and we will certainly find a way to optimise the experience for all our users.
Note(s) to Question No(s) 1-2:
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Question subsequently withdrawn: To ask the Minister for Health (a) whether there has been any feedback by users of HealthHub on the difficulties in making cross-cluster medical appointments or missing out such appointments in the app; and (b) if so, what is the technical and non-technical reasons for this given that HealthHub’s appointment management feature is linked to all three public healthcare clusters.
