Engendering Care Continuity Through Proactive Data Sharing and Enhanced Cybersecurity

Increasing digitalization has improved accessibility and care quality in Singapore, particularly so during the COVID-19 pandemic. To continue reaping the benefits of digitalized healthcare, we want to better tap on health data to enhance patient care, for instance, by establishing a Health Information Bill (HIB) to enable the safe and secure collection, storage, access, and sharing of patient health data between healthcare providers, as a critical pillar for Singapore’s broader agenda to focus on preventive health, the “Healthier SG” initiative. Through the HIB, we aim to better support care continuity via a multi-pronged approach, so as to foster trust with the public and healthcare professionals. This includes (i) a requirement for licensed healthcare providers to contribute summarized set of health data into a centralized national repository, (ii) facilitating proactive sharing of health data between providers within the healthcare ecosystem, and (iii) ensuring appropriate cybersecurity and data governance measures to ensure safe and secure storage and sharing of data within IT systems and connected medical devices. To do so effectively, we have started to develop a set of Healthcare Cybersecurity Essentials, support and training packages as well as Cybersecurity Labelling scheme for Medical Devices to help our healthcare providers.