• The CHI Workforce Accelerator adopts a structured four-stage approach to guide workforce transformation: Reimagining Future Roles, Redesigning Roles, Rapid Prototyping Roles, and Rolling Out Roles.

• These stages provide a practical, step-by-step pathway to translate workforce transformation from concept into implementation.

• The process is iterative rather than linear, incorporating a sandbox learning loop that enables continuous testing, learning and refinement.

• Anchored on future care models, the framework emphasises that workforce transformation goes beyond optimising current systems to enabling new models of care delivery.

• Across all stages, teams are encouraged to actively explore how technology and AI can support job redesign, augment professional practice and create new opportunities for care delivery.

• Change management underpins the entire process, ensuring that transformation efforts are effectively adopted, sustained and scaled in practice.

Excellence Champion Medal

Institutions: SingHealth & Synapxe

Project Title: Note Buddy: Ambient AI Scribe

Clinical documentation is the cornerstone of patient care. At the same time, clinicians have to balance the need to do clinical documentation and focusing on interaction with the patient. Clinicians spend a sizeable portion of their workday on documentation including typing during patient consultations. Apart from dividing attention between the patient and the computer resulting in reduction of face-to-face engagement, it also increases the cognitive load on the clinician which can cause a delay in the completion of notes. Potentially, there is impact on patient experience and care team communication. To address this challenge, Note Buddy was developed by SingHealth as an in-house, AI-powered ambient scribe that listens quietly in the background, captures the consultation, and transforms clinician–patient conversations into structured clinical notes. By automating documentation in the background, Note Buddy enables clinicians to focus more fully on patient interactions while maintaining accurate and timely records.

Operating seamlessly during consultations, Note Buddy captures and converts conversations into structured clinical notes, which clinicians review before submission into the electronic medical record (EMR). The solution also features multilingual support across English, Mandarin, Malay, Tamil, and Cantonese, as well as customisable prompts that allow users to develop specialty-specific templates. A time-motion study demonstrated about a 15% reduction in documentation time per consultation, translating into the equivalent of 29 months of clinician time saved across a year. Clinician–patient engagement also improved, with close to 70% of patients feeling that their clinician was more focused on interactions with them. Since its implementation, Note Buddy has scaled beyond SingHealth to the other two public healthcare clusters, NHG Health and the National University Health System (NUHS), with over 8,500 users collectively generating more than 133,000 clinical notes.

Best Practice Medal (Care Redesign)

Institution: Asian Women's Welfare Association

Project: MTSS: Integrated Tiered Supports for Holistic Child Development

The Multi-Tiered System of Support (MTSS) was implemented across AWWA’s two special education schools - AWWA School@Bedok and AWWA School@Napiri - to address previously fragmented support across education, therapy, and home settings. The model brings together educators, Allied Health Professionals (AHPs), and caregivers to deliver coordinated universal, targeted, and intensive interventions within natural environments.

MTSS is enabled by shared digital documentation, structured interdisciplinary reviews, capability-building for staff, and data-informed decision-making through standardised assessments, detailed team discussions, and data visualisation tools. This integrated approach strengthens alignment across stakeholders and ensures more holistic, person-centric care.

This person-centric practice was strengthened by partnering closely with families to co-develop meaningful, functional goals aligned to daily life of the students. Since the introduction of functional goal setting in 2023 - replacing discipline-specific therapy or curriculum-based goals; there has been a significant shift towards supporting more holistic and functional development. The proportion of students having functional goals increased progressively from approximately 20% (60 students) in 2023 to 100% (473 students) by 2025.

Across the same period, improvement rates for Individualised Education Plans and Individualised Care Plans (or equivalent outcome measures) ranged from 75% to 100%, including 83% to 95.3% among students with profound multiple disabilities.

The model has also enhanced operational efficiency. The manpower required for intake screening assessments was reduced from five AHPs to two or three, depending on student needs, while assessment capacity doubled - achieved without additional allied health resources.  

Institution: Ng Teng Fong General Hospital

Project Title: Nurse-Led Blood Glucose Monitoring (BGM) Reduction Initiative 

Routine bedside blood glucose monitoring (BGM) is one of the most frequently performed investigations for hospitalised patients, often performed without a clearly identified clinical need.  This results in unnecessary patient discomfort from avoidable finger pricks, increased nursing workload, consumable wastage, and avoidable healthcare costs.

To address this, a multidisciplinary team redesigned inpatient glucose monitoring practices by introducing nurse-led standardised clinical criteria and embedding a Best Practice Advisory (BPA) within the Electronic Medical Record (EMR). This provides real-time decision support to guide appropriate BGM use and optimise testing practices, allowing nurses to initiate reduction in BGM monitoring.

Following implementation, the initiative achieved a 42% reduction in average BGM tests per patient (from 8.53 to 4.96), eliminating over 44,000 unnecessary tests annually.  This translated into approximately $677,000 in yearly cost savings, exceeding $1.2 million over two years.

Beyond cost and productivity gains, the initiative enhances patient comfort by reducing unnecessary procedures and enables nurses to focus more on direct patient care. This low-cost, digitally enabled, and scalable model demonstrates the impact of nurse-led care redesign in improving efficiency and delivering higher-value inpatient care. 

Best Practice Medal (Automation, IT & Robotics Innovation)

Institution: National University Health System 

Project Title: CHAMP (Population-based Chronic Disease Management Programme) 

Singapore’s rapidly ageing population is driving a rising burden of chronic disease, making reliance on expanding clinical manpower alone unsustainable. Traditional primary care models also face challenges such as fragmented self-monitoring and limited visibility of patient data between consultations, constraining timely intervention.

CHAMP addresses these challenges by enabling patients to submit health readings directly via WhatsApp, with data seamlessly integrated into the Epic electronic medical record (EMR). Designed to integrate with existing clinical workflows, the programme provides actionable insights through an intelligent chatbot, featuring customisable, rule-based messaging that adapts to individual patients’ health data patterns. 

Implementation across National University Polyclinics (NUP) has demonstrated measurable improvements, including better blood pressure control among patients and significant time savings for care managers. 

Patient experience has also been positive. Following implementation, CHAMP achieved an average satisfaction score of 8.23 out of 10, with 73.2% of users rating their experience highly. Users reported enhanced self-monitoring (85.4%), greater convenience (82.8%), improved awareness of their condition (84.8%), and high usefulness of health messaging (94%).

Institution: National University Hospital (NUH)

Project Title: NUH Pharmacy Centralisation Project 

NUH’s pharmacy operations were previously distributed across four dispensing sites, which presented opportunities to enhance efficiency and patient experience. This included addressing areas such as packing accuracy, waiting times (particularly for discharges), manpower optimisation, and overall resource utilisation. 

In response, NUH implemented a centralised model, bringing inpatient, emergency and outpatient pharmacy services under one roof. The NUH Main Building Pharmacy (MBP) is Singapore’s first integrated pharmacy to incorporate automation across inpatient, outpatient and emergency settings, improving efficiency while addressing workforce and safety challenges.

The project deployed a range of digital and automation solutions, including the Outpatient Pharmacy Automation System (OPAS), robotic dispensing, RFID-enabled assembly and advanced workflow software over three years.

This has led to significant gains in safety, efficiency and workforce sustainability. Packing errors fell by 60%, while 95th percentile discharge waiting time dropped from 87 to 41 minutes. Workload increased by 32% without additional staffing, with an estimated $757,680 annual burnout cost avoidance. Staff satisfaction improved, with attrition below 10%.

Best Practice Medal (Workforce Transformation)

Institution: Tan Tock Seng Hospital

Project Title: Nursing Vanguard of Caregiving Support

Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH) has advanced its care delivery through the 5Cs Caregiver Strategies, reflecting a meaningful shift towards holistic engagement that actively integrates caregivers across the care journey.

The Carer Matters Service (CMS) incorporates a modified Zarit Burden Index to systematically identify caregiver stress, enabling early intervention through timely referrals to social workers and community resources. Complementing this, the Carer on Board (COB) programme supports structured caregiver involvement, enhancing patient comfort, reducing anxiety, and promoting person-centred care through Move Well, Eat Well, Sleep Well.

In addition, Group Caregiver Training (CGT) equips caregivers with essential care skills while strengthening staff capability through a sustainable, multidisciplinary training model. Since its implementation in 2023, 900 caregivers have been trained. Post-discharge support is further reinforced through the NHG Health Virtual Care Centre and early community linkages, with an average of about 80 post-discharge calls were made per month to facilitate smoother transitions from hospital to home.

The team has also developed standardised workflows, simplified screening processes, and integrated informatics into systems to support scalability and sustainability- enhancing caregiver engagement and strengthening support for caregiving roles.

Institution: Tan Tock Seng Hospital 

Project Title: Project DEFEND: Digital Evolution of Foot Education iN Diabetes

Singapore’s ageing population and rising diabetes prevalence -projected to reach one million individuals,are increasing the demand for early detection and management of diabetic foot complications. 

However, existing training models for Diabetic Foot Screening (DFS) are labour-intensive and constrained by limited specialist manpower, particularly amid a severe shortage of podiatrists. This creates bottlenecks in training, limiting the scalability of screening capabilities at a time when primary care is taking on a larger role in chronic disease management under Healthier SG.

Project DEFEND addresses these challenges by transforming DFS training through the introduction of a Virtual Reality (VR)-based training module. This innovative approach enables scalable, high-quality training without the need for direct patient involvement, expanding training capacity while maintaining consistency, and clinical relevance. 

The integration of VR into the DFS curriculum has delivered significant productivity gains. Each training session saves up to four hours of podiatrist trainer time, allowing specialists to redirect efforts towards higher-risk patient care. Across nine trainees, this translated into 36 hours of trainer time saved, equivalent to supporting care for 108 high-risk patients, as well as approximately $4,500 in manpower cost savings.

By strengthening early detection capabilities, the programme also contributes to substantial downstream healthcare savings. With each timely podiatry intervention potentially averting up to $20,000 in complication-related costs, the initiative is estimated to have achieved over $2.1 million in potential healthcare cost avoidance. 

Project DEFEND demonstrates how digital innovation can overcome workforce constraints, enhance capability building, and strengthen chronic disease management. It is a key enabler in advancing diabetes care under Healthier SG. 

Best Adopter Medal

Institution: IHH Healthcare Singapore 

Project Title: IHH Healthcare Singapore Hospitals Patient Intelligence Centres

IHH Healthcare Singapore (IHH SG) identified inefficiencies arising from fragmented digital systems that limited visibility of patient flow and resource utilisation across its hospitals. This led to delays in bed allocation and operating theatre (OT) scheduling, last-minute cancellations, and increased risks in managing high-acuity patients. Frontline teams also faced time-intensive manual processes to reconcile information across multiple platforms. 

In response, IHH SG established the Patient Intelligence Centre (PIC), a network-wide command capability that integrates disparate systems into a unified platform, supported by advanced analytics, artificial intelligence, and standardised workflows to enable real-time, data-driven decision-making. 

The hybrid decentralised–centralised model allows hospitals to retain operational autonomy while benefiting from centralised oversight, improving the ability to anticipate bottlenecks, prioritise urgent cases, and ensure safer, more efficient patient placement across the network.

The development of PIC reflects growing adoption of command centre models to enhance operational intelligence. Recognised under the Best Adopter Medal category, the project draws reference from the NHIP 2020 Excellence Champion-winning TTSH/NCID C3 Smart Hospital for the FUTURE, while being adapted for IHH’s multi-hospital context with additional AI-enabled capabilities. 

The initiative has delivered measurable improvements, including halving operating theatre double bookings and reducing inpatient bed allocation time for Urgent Care Centre patients from 2–3 hours to approximately one hour. It has also streamlined over 31,000 hours of manual processing (83%), enabling staff to focus on higher-value care coordination. 

This project demonstrates how integrated digital systems and data-driven operations can improve performance, enhance patient experience, and support more sustainable healthcare delivery.

Institution: Woodlands Hospital

Project Title: How Advanced Practice Physiotherapy (APP) Transforms the Emergency Musculoskeletal Care Journey

Patients presenting to the Emergency Department (ED) with atraumatic and minor trauma musculoskeletal (MSK) conditions are often classified as non-urgent, resulting in prolonged waiting times and ED congestion. Many are subsequently referred for orthopedic review despite not requiring surgical intervention, and delays in accessing physiotherapy can lead to worsening conditions. This reflects a traditionally physician-led model of care, where physiotherapy intervention is dependent on referral, limiting timely treatment.

To address these challenges, Woodlands Hospital introduced an Advanced Practice Physiotherapy (APP) model in the ED, adapting care approaches from Tan Tock Seng Hospital. The service was implemented in phases, beginning with doctor-led triage and progressing to APP-led triage, where physiotherapists assess and manage appropriate cases independently, including the ability to order X-rays.

Early outcomes have demonstrated improved care efficiency and appropriate utilisation of specialist services. Only 48% of patients managed by APPs required orthopaedic follow-up, compared with 83% under physician-led care. X-ray utilisation was also reduced, with 15% of APP-managed patients requiring imaging versus 78% under the traditional model, with no adverse events or missed clinical red flags.

This initiative demonstrates how expanding physiotherapy roles can improve access to timely care, optimise resource use, and enhance patient outcomes in the emergency setting.

Institution: St Andrew’s Community Hospital 

Project Title: Project ProCARE (Proactive Caregiver Assessment & Responses)

St Andrew’s Community Hospital (SACH) launched Project ProCARE as part of its “Wards of Our Future” initiative to strengthen holistic care for patients, next-of-kin and caregivers. Recognising the unmet need to support caregivers’ emotional well-being, particularly for those caring for elderly patients with conditions such as dementia and stroke, the project focuses on early identification and support of caregiver stress. Caregivers often experience significant psychological burden, which can affect both their well-being and patient outcomes. Evidence shows that routine screening combined with timely support can reduce caregiver distress and improve care continuity.

Project ProCARE introduces a structured and proactive approach to caregiver support. Drawing on the principles of the KK Women’s and Children’s Hospital (KKH) Temasek Foundation Cares Caregiver Support Programme, it incorporates the validated Zarit Burden Interview-4 (ZBI-4), integrates screening into early admission workflows, and provides targeted interventions addressing caregiving fatigue, financial concerns and discharge planning.

The programme aims to achieve full caregiver screening coverage and ensure timely follow-up through counselling and tailored support, strengthening caregiver resilience and enhancing overall patient care outcomes.