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Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS), the technology agency for Singapore’s public healthcare sector, is partnering with Google Cloud and Accenture to improve population health, delivery of care and patient engagement.
According to IHiS, the project targets the elimination of data silos and achieves interoperability across Singapore’s healthcare ecosystem.
Specifically, the three parties have established an “agile and advanced” architecture, supported by application programming interfaces (APIs), aimed at making data, applications and services “securely and readily” available.
Terms of the multi-year agreement see Accenture assist with deploying Apigee, Google Cloud’s API management platform. The implementation is expected to help IHiS unlock data and services across its systems, making it accessible for developers to create new applications and capabilities.
“Connectivity and the secured sharing of health data are key enablers of better healthcare for Singaporeans,” said Alan Goh, assistant chief executive at IHiS.
“Apigee provides IHiS with a flexible API-based architecture that serves as the connective tissue across data sources and applications. With Apigee, we can scale our API program with internal developers to deliver more high-quality and digital-first healthcare experiences.”
For instance, developers can use IHiS’ APIs to build applications and tools – underpinned by integrated workflows and artificial intelligence (AI) models – to optimise staff allocation and workload.
One tool born out of this partnership is the Facial Recognition Automated Visitor Management System (FRAVMS), launched by IHiS and SingHealth to facilitate a smoother and more efficient visitor registration process.
As revealed by IHiS, Apigee provided the framework that accelerated FRAVMS’s development, while increasing its scalability, minimising the need for ongoing maintenance, and futureproofing its integration architecture.
“The pace of innovation and technology is creating unlimited possibilities for businesses to build a digital core powered by cloud, data, and AI,” observed Ng Wee Wei, unit lead for Southeast Asia and country managing director of Singapore at Accenture.
“Organisations like IHiS can now scale as quickly as they need to, while reinventing their businesses for competitive differentiation. Our interoperable enterprise blueprint for IHiS, which is based on Apigee, integrates IHiS’ systems, applications, and capabilities under a single strategy – enabling real-time data-driven insights and more agile operations to empower their people and their partners to deliver personalised, efficient, and informed care.”
Goh shared further that this ability to extend secure API gateway access to its trusted third-party developers, patients now have easier access to their health information while public healthcare officials can receive deeper insights to inform population health management programs and public health policies.
“Moving forward, IHiS will be exploring the feasibility of adopting commercial cloud API gateways to widen our coverage and promote innovation across Singapore’s healthcare ecosystem,” he added.
Meanwhile, to give IHiS full visibility over the use of its APIs, such as validating data flows and ensuring that access is only granted to authorised users, Google Cloud has built security features including encryption key verification, identity brokering, traffic monitoring, and threat and vulnerability detection into the Apigee platform.
These features are intended to support the agency’s existing efforts to safeguard patient data in compliance with regulations like Singapore’s Personal Data Protection Act (PDPA) and Healthcare Services Act 2020, as well as international standards for exchanging healthcare information electronically, such as Fast Healthcare Interoperability Resources (FHIR), Health Level 7 (HL7), and Digital Imaging and Communications in Medicine (DICOM).
“A secure-by-design API management platform that standardises data and facilitates information exchange across healthcare systems, services, and applications is becoming just as essential as a stethoscope or an X-ray,” added Sherie Ng, Google Cloud’s country director for Singapore.
She continued to outline that as Apigee delivers API-led connectivity at scale, IHiS and its developers can focus on “upcycling” data, and attain benefits such as overcoming staff shortages, improving transitions between in-patient and out-patient care, and advancing preventative care and precision medicine.
“We look forward to continuing our work with IHiS and Accenture to promote data interoperability and open innovation to the wider healthcare ecosystem. This could then drive new forms of public-private sector collaboration to address other gaps across the care continuum, creating a more efficient and effective healthcare system for all.”
