Singapore General Hospital is empowering its non-technical staff to develop automation and AI solutions to tackle pain points in their daily work.

RPA citizen developers at Singapore General Hospital.

A citizen developer revolution is brewing in Singapore’s largest tertiary hospital, Singapore General Hospital (SGH).

More than 227 employees with non-technical backgrounds are developing automation and artificial intelligence (AI) solutions for their daily work.

This bottom-up revolution is led by the AI & Automation (AIA) team under SGH’s Department of Future Health System.

For the six-person strong AIA team, adopting a citizen developer model was key not only for managing the high demand for automation solutions – but also for ensuring solutions truly hit the mark.

(From left) The writer, Si Ying, RPA citizen developers Siti Nurkiah Binte Mohd Amin (Division of Medicine) and Shawn Poh Kiat Keong (Specialist Outpatient Clinic Operations), SGH's Manager of AIA, Chan Wai Ching. Image: GovInsider

This “federated approach” – according to both SGH's Manager of AIA, Chan Wai Ching, and Senior Manager of AIA, Jonathan Tan – was chosen over a central IT team approach due to its feasibility and scalability.

A federated approach lets individual departments create their own models to fit their unique needs and maintain them more effectively.

The most effective solutions emerge from users themselves, when they overcome their own pain points at work, rather than a result of technology being pushed from top down, they say.

“The best way is for people who are doing the daily work to build the tool and see the possibilities to connect the dots,” says Tan to GovInsider.

Growing RPA capabilities amongst SGH staff

SGH’s citizen developer programme started with robotic process automation (RPA) back in 2019.

RPA was a natural inclination given the many manual processes within the operations side of the hospital, says Chan.

While the team initially relied on an external tech provider to teach SGH staff how to build automation solutions, it lacked the specific relevance needed for the healthcare setting, she adds.

This gap prompted SGH to pivot to in-house training, which proved crucial for scaling their citizen developer programme.

Currently, the AIA team still manages RPA projects for departments without citizen developers, but those with experienced citizen developers largely handle their projects independently, seeking occasional guidance, she says.

RPA citizen developers at SGH.  

Among the experienced citizen developers interviewed by GovInsider were Shawn Poh Kiat Keong from Specialist Outpatient Clinic Operations and Siti Nurkiah Binte Mohd Amin from Division of Medicine. Both of whom possess some coding knowledge.

They found the specialised peer support from the AIA team more helpful, particularly when it came to shared scripts, as well as external resources like online videos, forums and ChatGPT.

The impact of this grassroots innovation movement extends beyond mere process automation. It represents a fundamental shift in workplace culture, where staff  actively shape technological solutions to improve processes for themselves and patients.

Excerpt from GOVINSIDER. Read the full story here

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