Keynote Lecture

A/Prof Kenneth Mak

A/Prof Kenneth Mak is Director of Medical Services (DMS) at the Ministry of Health (MOH) and oversees the provision of all health services in Singapore.

Since the beginning of COVID-19 pandemic, he has been heavily involved in the national efforts to control the outbreak in Singapore. He advises the Multi-Ministry Taskforce and other governmental agencies in crafting the overall strategy for managing the outbreak and oversees the public health response to combat spread of COVID-19 in the community.

A/Prof Mak was previously Deputy Director of Medical Services (Health Services Group) in MOH from 2015 to end-2019. He worked closely with the healthcare institutions on care integration and the long-term healthcare transformation strategy in Singapore.

He was trained as a general surgeon with subspecialty interests in hepatobiliary and pancreatic surgery, and trauma surgery. He maintains his clinical practice as Senior Consultant surgeon at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital’s Department of Surgery.

Session:

At The Cusp of Change: Transforming Care for Better Population Health and Sustainability
7 October 2022, 0830 - 0915hrs

This plenary lecture will outline the key policy shifts that the Singapore healthcare sector will be embarking on to achieve the care transformation that is critical for Singapore to address the major challenge posed by an ageing population and an increase in prevalence of chronic diseases. As we roll out Healthier SG, we would be making fundamental shifts from hospital-centric care to supporting Singaporeans to adopt heathy living and age in place and receive care in the community. This would require transformation of our primary care where the family physician will activate and journey with residents in their care needs. At the same time, we will need to build a resilient community care landscape to support Singaporeans as patients’ care needs become increasingly complex and often interacting with their social circumstance.

It is important that all healthcare workers from across all settings and institutions join us in the effort to drive for better health outcomes for all Singaporeans as we embark on this care transformation journey. Our care transformation and delivery will continue to anchor on the delivery of value-based and person-centered care. This means each of us need to be prepared to embrace cross-setting collaborations where shared care models will be a key vehicle of service delivery in our future health ecosystem. We will also need to explore new care models and implement systematic programme evaluation to support the delivery of holistic care in a more cost-effective manner. We will need to put in place key enablers to build a future-ready healthcare ecosystem and smoothen our care transformation journey. This will include (a) upskilling and grow our workforce, (b) leveraging on technology and data to provide better care, and (c) redesigning our financing system to better align incentives of different parties.

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