Changi General Hospital (CGH) is a public hospital that serves the eastern region of Singapore under the SingHealth network. It focuses heavily on emergency care and geriatric medicine to support the country's rapidly aging population, as well as develops and drives aviation medicine nationally. The hospital provides a range of acute, specialist and rehabilitative healthcare services and works with community partners to support patient care beyond the hospital setting.
Singapore has one of the world's fastest-ageing populations. How is that changing how CGH thinks about healthcare?
Singapore has been planning for this for many years. As the main hospital serving the eastern region, Changi General Hospital serves a catchment of about 750,000 people, and more than a quarter are over 60 years old. Our approach has been guided by the "three beyonds": beyond healthcare to health, beyond hospital to community, and beyond quality to value. Health is not just medicine — "two thirds of health is social and economic issues" — so there has to be a concerted effort across the system.
That thinking has evolved into Healthier SG. At CGH, we have long worked closely with NGOs and social agencies, and because of the ageing population we have built a strong geriatric and rehabilitation capability. We are also trying to "gerify" the whole hospital. We cannot train enough geriatricians, so our strategy is to make everyone geriatric-competent. The goal is to ensure our staff, our community partnerships and our systems are all geriatric-friendly.
What initiatives is CGH pursuing around prevention, chronic disease management and care in the community?
A major focus is helping people age gracefully and ensuring continuity of care beyond the hospital. In our Emergency Department, geriatric specialists assess elderly patients and help ensure they are discharged into a safe environment with ongoing support in the community. We also participate in the Ministry of Health's Mobile Inpatient Care @ Home programme, where patients can be discharged home earlier and followed up by community nurses and our home-care teams.
We are increasingly using technology to support that care. One example is an AI-powered wound management app. The app helps nurses and doctors assess wound severity and guides treatment decisions, and it has since been adopted across our nursing community and throughout SingHealth. More recently, our plastic surgeons and geriatric team have begun a neurolymphatic study exploring whether neurolymphatic surgery can help slow the progression of Alzheimer's disease.
CGH has attracted international attention for initiatives such as its Emergency Department digital twin. Where are technologies like AI and digital tools making the biggest practical difference inside the hospital today?
We created the Emergency Department digital twin to help optimise workflow and identify bottlenecks in one of the busiest parts of the hospital, where we see around 400 to 500 patients a day. It focuses primarily on the ambulatory side of the department and allows us to model different scenarios, helping us plan staffing, rostering and resources more effectively across a 24-hour operation.
More broadly, AI and smart technologies are making the biggest difference by reducing repetitive administrative work. We use robotic process automation and AI-powered transcription tools to help doctors and nurses document consultations more efficiently, allowing them to spend more time with patients. We also have more than 80 autonomous robots operating across the campus, carrying out routine tasks such as cleaning corridors, delivering meals, transporting surgical equipment and supporting stroke rehabilitation.
That said, the human must always remain in the loop. AI helps us work more efficiently, but responsibility for clinical decisions always rests with the clinician. I often describe it as a centaur: AI provides the additional muscle and strength, but the brain and the heart still come from the human.
How does CGH approach innovation while ensuring care remains accessible and affordable?
Innovation should be part of everyone's DNA. It can be a small process improvement or a sophisticated technology platform. I always tell our teams that innovation is not just addition — it is also subtraction. Sometimes innovation means removing steps, removing processes and asking why we do things the way we do.
That philosophy also shapes how we think about affordability. Innovation may come at a cost initially, but we need to understand the value it creates. If a technology saves manpower hours, how do those savings translate into benefits for patients and the community? Technology can also help democratise healthcare. Patients today have access to more information than ever before, reducing the old information imbalance between doctors and patients. That creates opportunities for patients to become more informed, empowered and engaged in their own care.
How do patient mental health, caregiver support and community engagement fit into CGH's mission?
We work closely with community organisations, social agencies and healthcare partners to support patients beyond the hospital setting. Because of our unique location, this also includes running specialized aviation medicine teams for Changi Airport. Closer to home, a major area of focus is caregiver wellbeing. Singapore's small nuclear families mean many caregivers face significant pressure, particularly when caring for elderly relatives with chronic illnesses, dementia or frailty.
Often, the elderly patient is more accepting of mortality than their family members. We are exploring different ways to support caregivers through communication, training and health literacy programmes. The goal is to help families and communities better understand and manage these conditions.
What excites you most about the future of healthcare at CGH?
Agentic AI is the "elephant in the room". As healthcare generates increasingly large data sets, the challenge is making sense of that information and responding in a timely way. My vision is a data-driven learning system that continually improves care while keeping humans firmly in control.
A few years ago, I summarised my vision of a smart hospital using the acronym SMART. Healthcare systems should be Safe and Standardised, Measurable and Meaningful, Agile and Adaptable, Responsive and Resilient, and Timely and Tested. At the same time, we must not lose sight of the human side of healthcare. The danger is becoming so focused on technology that we look at screens instead of patients. The real opportunity of technology is that it frees healthcare professionals to spend more time talking to people, holding their hands, looking them in the eye, and truly connecting with the communities we serve.
