Everywhere you go these days, the buzzword is artificial intelligence. Just days ago, Health Minister Ong Ye Kung announced that Singapore had revised its AI guidelines to enable more innovation that augments the healthcare workforce and accelerates the development of new drugs.

What does that mean for Singapore? I recently spent the best part of a morning with SingHealth group chief executive officer Ng Wai Hoe for answers to this, and other questions related to healthcare services around the nation.

Professor Ng sees three areas where AI will be particularly helpful.

First, it will help physicians make better diagnostic decisions. Second, it will free up clinicians from administrative burdens so they can focus on their patients and other patient-related activities, and third, it could assist in improving operational efficiency along the healthcare system.

If you follow a ward nurse around on a typical work day, he explains, she could be spending up to 40 per cent of her time on “non-patient fronting” activities such as charting or checking supplies. But what matters most to patients are their interactions with doctors and nurses, and technology can free healthcare professionals to enhance that.

“Call it paradoxical,” says Prof Ng. “What we want to do is to use AI to humanise healthcare. We call it AI with humans in the loop.”

He believes this approach is the right one to ease AI use into healthcare. To begin with, it facilitates adoption because the technology used does not supplant livelihoods.

For instance, the Note Buddy, a Microsoft AI system in use since September 2024, summarises a doctor’s conversation with the patient and is intelligent enough to screen out social small talk. It is a tool to enhance the work process, rather than something that replaces the doctor.

Patients also like Note Buddy, because a common complaint is that doctors are not looking at them but at their computer screens during consultations.

But some areas will come under more pressure from AI. Radiology, for instance, could see some of the swiftest advances in AI use. At present, a routine scan is reviewed by two specialists – for example, in cases like mammograms, which check for breast cancer.

Now, SingHealth is moving to have one reading by AI and the next by a human radiologist – thereby eliminating one of the humans in the loop. Such developments could improve efficiencies and conserve radiologist resources.

“We have collated sufficient data to show that it is safe to do so,” says Prof Ng, 55, an experienced clinician administrator who previously led the National Neuroscience Institute and Changi General Hospital.

Even in his own specialisation, neuroscience, AI could be helpful – from assessing brain scans to pathology to comparing cancer specimens, where AI can zone in on the most critical things.

There is, of course, the risk of overdependence on AI. Recent medical research shows that excessive dependence can lead to a diminishing of skills among medical practitioners.

Singapore’s educators, he responded, are proactively working to understand how people absorb and retain information.

Possible solutions may be for doctors not to use AI until they have attained a certain experience level, and subsequently, mandatory AI-free periods that help them maintain their human competency. This draws from lessons from some recent air crashes, which suggested an excessive dependence on the aircraft’s technology, whereas experienced pilots manually overrode the faulty systems and took direct control, thus recovering the aircraft.

“One can never underestimate the power of experience,” said Prof Ng.

Besides, calibrating AI adoption is imperative in the interests of preserving employment and human dignity. Even societies that have great inequality can be stable if you have a broad middle class to ensure stability – and reasonably stable employment prospects are critical. At the end of the day, he says, AI should serve mankind, not the other way round.

On the broader health situation in the country, Prof Ng says Healthier SG, the national initiative towards preventive health, is indeed the way to go, given that Singapore is heading to a time when the national expenditure on health, which has passed education, may soon overtake defence spending.

Social determinants like smoking and drinking and the lack of an active lifestyle can contribute as much as 80 per cent of morbidity in a population. For that reason, focusing on health rather than healthcare – “going upstream” as he calls it – can help bring down healthcare costs.

It is the same with the anti-vaping campaigns, the taxes on cigarettes, and the move to reduce sugar content in drinks.

“That’s why we have a Ministry of Health, not a Ministry of Sickness or Disease. Singapore has the will to lead the world on this agenda for population health and technology helps us provide that platform to reach hundreds of thousands of people.

“This is not rocket science, but brain science because it involves understanding how humans behave and what makes them tick.”

Prof Ng says he frequently finds the need to check himself from indulging excessively on his favourite char kway teow, and confesses that he doesn’t have cheat days so much as “cheat weeks”.

His way of compensating is running – evenings, or at night. Blessed with strong knees, he clocks about 6km on weekdays, and longer on weekends.

Singapore’s public healthcare system is organised into three main, geographically based integrated clusters – SingHealth in the east, NHG Health in the central region, and the National University Health System in the west – designed to provide primary to acute healthcare and serve as regional health managers to improve population health.

Prof Ng doesn’t see much reason to tweak that model, which he believes is sized optimally for operational efficiency.

“If you have different clusters, it offers a bit of diversity and produces different mindset, different ideas. The diversity also allows a bit of creativity, and we could learn from each other.”

SingHealth, the largest cluster, which celebrated its 25th anniversary in 2025, is working with urban planners to renew urban public spaces that would be friendly for an ageing population. That, and digitalising healthcare to make it more accessible and enhance patient experience, are the immediate priorities.

As Singapore moves towards being a super-aged society, the pressure on hospital beds and health infrastructure in general is rising, although the opening of Woodlands Health Campus in 2024 has eased some of it. Eastern General Hospital’s opening around 2030, and a hospital in Tengah after that, will further ease the pressure.

But building facilities is not the same as operating them and the manpower crunch remains a worry, especially as shrinking birth cohorts mean fewer students enrolling in schools. Healthcare finds itself in competition with all the other sectors, including finance and manufacturing, for talent.

Hospitals of the future will likely be leaner in manpower with technology deployed to augment human resources.

What about rising medical costs? Many people have changed their private medical insurance plans such that they are now valid only for public hospitals.

Prof Ng notes that some 90 per cent of in-patient admissions are in public hospitals, which stretches public healthcare resources.

“It is a kind of double whammy in that the elderly tend to consume healthcare, and the elderly also are retired and don’t have the income to pay for the high premiums (to afford private healthcare).

“I guess there is a move towards a more value-driven care concept rather than a purely fee-for-service model because fee-for-service tends to incentivise consumption, and in some cases, overconsumption.”

What about this huge Johor-Singapore Special Economic Zone taking shape, a development that will be several times Singapore’s size? Would there be room to shift some healthcare delivery into the zone to save on costs and manpower?

Prof Ng says that while there are some “early conversations” involving the private sector, SingHealth’s mandate is to provide healthcare for Singaporeans and residents here.

“That is our mandate, and we will support the evolution of the healthcare ecosystem to serve Singaporeans, keeping in view all the time that there are multiple stakeholders involved and issues involved go beyond healthcare to politics and the economy.”

I had a final question for Prof Ng, and it related to the resilience of Gen Z professionals in the healthcare field, and a perception – unfair perhaps – that they tend to flee the public sector as soon as they finish serving their bonds.

“The key is understanding what drives Gen Z,” he told me. “They can be very altruistic. If they have strong beliefs in something, they will be full on and they will do an excellent job – way better than us. It is all about motivating them and giving their lives meaning and purpose.”

Original source: sg