With HealthTech being one of the fastest growing sectors in the past couple of years, it is no surprise that IT is the backbone and a core need for any hospital today. This makes Keith's role as the Chief Information Officer of Alexandra Hospital a critical one, as his team needs to ensure the resiliency and robustness of the hospital's IT systems, so that the medical staff can focus on providing a high standard of patient care.
Beyond that, the team also works on projects that improve automation in healthcare, such as the Robotic Process Automation. These projects help to reduce administrative work, thus easing the workload of public healthcare workers and achieving greater manpower sustainability.
Ultimately, the team's mid-to-long term IT strategy aims to future-proof systems and help public healthcare in financial terms via a cloud-first strategy, wireless centric design and more efficient workflows, to bring greater convenience and better experience for patients.
Highs and lows of the job
Achieving such success does not come without its difficulties. Keith pointed out how funding availability is always a challenge in his work. To overcome this, creativity and resourcefulness is key when it comes to roadmap planning and knowing where the funding can be sourced.Despite such obstacles, the sense of fulfilment in knowing you played a part in a big project or seeing your work win awards is hard to forget. One such memory is when the Next Generation Electronic Medical Record (NGEMR) his team was working on went live. After months of preparation alongside various teams and healthcare institutions their hard work came to fruition when the hospital transited from a decade-old Computerised Patient Support System to NGEMR. The new, state-of-the-art system records the entire patient journey to enable more seamless care across healthcare clusters.
To Keith, the opportunities to be exposed to different technologies, being a part of transformation and positively contributing to public healthcare are some of the best parts of working in IHiS.
The future of healthcare
With the introduction of Internet of Things (IOT), robotics and 5G, mundane work will be further automated.For example, healthcare providers can now collect the data remotely and even automatically with the popularisation of IOT. Healthcare services are also not bounded by the physical boundary of hospitals as telehealth gains prevalence. With a "virtual anything" concept, patients can receive services such as consultations, and health monitoring from the comfort of their homes.
With the advancement of robotics, there is a potential to expand the adoption of Automated Mobile Robots for the delivery of medication right to patients' beds. This translates to storage space and manpower savings, as well as increased patient satisfaction.
The introduction of 5G has and will improve remote patient care as systems becomes more connected, even when healthcare providers move out of the hospital or office compounds. The high speed, low latency connection will allow critical tasks such as surgery to be performed remotely as well.
For those keen to join the rapidly growing healthcare and technology industries, Keith highlights that potential joiners will receive a multitude of opportunities in IHiS. Staff can learn and excel in multiple different career paths, be it project management, software development, analytics, or even managerial roles. It is a very diverse, yet mission-focused environment here in IHiS.
A word of advice — some of the qualities Keith looks out for in potential hires include a good attitude, a positive mindset, willingness to try out new things and being unafraid of failure. Keith also maintains the importance of having fun and enjoying the work, believing that you must love what you do and who you work with. His favourite interview question? "What are your career aspirations and how do you think I can help you with that."
And finally, when asked about a career tip he would tell his younger self, Keith offered this tongue-in-cheek response — "I should have joined IHiS earlier".
IHiS has rebranded as Synapxe, the national HealthTech agency. Read more about our new identity here.
