BACKGROUND

Impetus. Six Regional Health Hubs (RHHs) will be established across Singapore, with the aim of bringing enhanced and specialised healthcare closer to our service personnel in the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF). This marks a critical milestone in the SAF's efforts towards delivering comprehensive and sustainable healthcare benchmarked to national standards.

CONCEPT AND BENEFITS

Concept. RHHs act as central nodes to provide one-stop healthcare for service personnel in their vicinity. They offer enhanced medical services such as dental, radiological, selected specialist, laboratory, physiotherapy, and mental wellness support, in addition to routine primary healthcare and emergency services. Each RHH is organised to cater for the specific needs of the SAF units in the surrounding camps.

Benefits. The consolidation of healthcare services under one roof optimises resources by reducing duplicative processes, streamlining ground operations, and improving logistics efficiencies. For service personnel, it provides greater accessibility to a wider suite of services, thereby reducing the frequency of trips service personnel have to make and improving the timeliness of medical consultations. In the long run, it enhances patient quality of care and experience.

KRANJI REGIONAL HEALTH HUB

SAF's First Regional Health Hub. The Kranji Regional Health Hub (KRHH) is a two-storey medical facility located at Kranji Camp III. As the SAF's first RHH, the KRHH will boast enhanced medical, dental, specialist and diagnostic capabilities under one roof. It will support Kranji Camps I, II, III, Mandai Hill Camp, SAF Detention Barracks, and Stagmont Camp.

Increased Capacity for Primary Healthcare and Emergency Services. Compared to primary healthcare services at existing camp medical centres, the KRHH will have an increased patient capacity of ten consultation rooms. There will also be increased emergency and treatment capabilities, with two resuscitation bays, two treatment rooms and a body cooling unit.

Specialist Health and Health Screening Services. The KRHH specialist health services will include dental services and satellite psychiatry services. The KRHH will also be equipped with a suite of enhanced diagnostic capabilities, including x-ray capabilities, blood investigations, electrocardiography (ECG), and audiometry to support one-stop screening and treatment services for streamlined healthcare delivery.

Enhanced Healthcare Delivery by Leveraging Technology and Industry Partners. The SAF and Defence Science and Technology Agency (DSTA) collaborated with industry partners and leveraged technology to achieve greater operations and administration efficiency. This will allow our medical service personnel to focus on their core duties and deliver a higher quality of care.

a.  Provision of Telehealth Services. Telehealth services will be provided to camps in the region, increasing convenience to our service personnel. It includes tele-consultation, tele-psychiatric/psychology services and virtual medical boards.

b.  Streamlining and Digitising Medical Logistics. The SAF and DSTA have partnered ST Logistics to streamline the end-to-end peacetime pharmaceutical logistics, which enhances logistical efficiency, reduces the probability of medication errors and better supports data collection of medication usage in the SAF.

(1) Medical Dispensary System (MDS). MDS is an end-to-end pharmaceutical inventory system that accounts for and dispenses medications at the KRHH. By leveraging IT and smart-locker systems, the MDS aims to reduce the probability of medication error, improve patient experience and reduce logistical demands on medical staff within the KRHH. The MDS IT system is also integrated with the SAF's medical records system and backend logistics system to provide a seamless dispensing and resupply workflow.

(2) MEDBOX. MEDBOX is a smart locker system located outside of the KRHH that will allow service personnel to collect medications at their own convenience. This 24/7 self-collection service will further complement tele-consultation services by removing the need for patients to wait for their medications in the KRHH. Through this, the likelihood of patient crowding in the KRHH and the risk of infectious diseases transmission is greatly reduced.

c.  Enhanced Medical Training. The KRHH will have training rooms and lecture rooms equipped with video-teleconferencing capabilities to support both on-site and remote continuous medical training of medical personnel in the SAF.

Pandemic Ready Features. The KRHH has several first-in-SAF features which were designed with DSTA to boost pandemic readiness and enable a sustainable daily workflow for an endemic COVID-19:

a.  New negative-pressured consultation and isolation rooms are designed with external doors, antimicrobial air-con filters and with higher ventilation rate to allow the airflow of high risk areas within the medical facility to be segregated. Isolation rooms are equipped with video intercom systems to facilitate remote communication between medical staff and patient. These rooms cater to service personnel presenting with potentially infectious conditions, and will reduce the risk of cross-contamination.

b.  Large multi-configurable naturally ventilated sheltered porch, enhanced with powerful directional fans to increase airflow will be used to hold potentially infectious patients and to segregate them from non-infectious cases.

c.  External dispensary window allows potentially infectious patients to collect medication outside of the KRHH.

d.  Dedicated external toilet for potentially infectious patients.

Smart and Green Building. The KRHH uses a Building Management System (BMS) to centrally monitor and optimise the building's functions, sensors and systems. Together with the patient video monitors, communication and alarm systems, it streamlines work processes, reduce manpower, and save man-hours. The SAF partnered DSTA in building the KRHH to be environmentally friendly, with the KRHH attaining the BCA Green Mark Platinum award in 2022. Key sustainable technologies and eco-friendly initiatives include solar panels which generate energy for the building's consumption, energy-efficient chilled water system, hybrid cooling and LED lightings which conserve more electricity. The building is also designed to optimise natural daylight through the roof skylight and have incorporated more greenery to create an inviting and comfortable environment for our patients and medics.