New HA Board Member: Digitalisation to transform Hong Kong’s health services

“Banking and healthcare services are both professions that emphasis trust. Customers entrust their wealth to banks, while patients entrust their health to hospitals. We must adopt a ‘People First, Professionally-Oriented’ attitude to gain and retain the trust of the public.”

Mary Huen, CEO of Standard Chartered Hong Kong, who has 30 years’ experience in the banking sector joined the Hospital Authority (HA) Board at the height of the pandemic last year. She identified an essential element that connects the disparate worlds of banking and medicine: Trust. “Banking and healthcare services are both professions that emphasise trust. Customers entrust their wealth to banks, while patients entrust their health to hospitals. We must adopt a ‘People First, Professionally-Oriented’ attitude to gain and retain the trust of the public.” says Mary.

As Hong Kong edges towards the new normal under the pandemic, Mary hopes to use her knowledge in digital transformation of Fintech to improve the patients’ experience in public hospitals.

Mary found herself at the eye of Hong Kong’s COVID-19 storm when she began her role at the HA, witnessing the selfless efforts of frontline medical workers and seeing one of the ‘430 spokespersons’ dash out of a HA Board meeting to attend the COVID-19 press briefing.

During the pandemic, Mary observed that it is essential to keep our fingers on the pulse of the times, and launch new services in response to people’s changing preferences and behaviour. In banking, many people who previously used branch services avoided going out because of the pandemic, greatly increasing the demand for and use of online banking. The bank therefore quickly seized the opportunity to improve their digital capabilities, introducing online meetings with relationship managers and e-ticketing for counter services, for instance, while maintaining social distancing between customers and employees.

A similar shift has taken place in many other industries, including the health sector. “The HA Go mobile app was not very popular in the past, but everyone became familiar with it during the pandemic,” Mary explains. “People then found it more convenient to make appointments online, demonstrating how the pandemic was the ideal time for service digitalisation of the HA.”

Joining the HA Board ahead of the organisation’s 30th Anniversary, Mary hopes to use her experience in the banking industry to push forward sustainable innovation and development in the HA, and to deploy technology to cope with future challenges such as the ageing population. By doing so, she hopes that HA can bring an even more seamless and high-quality experience to the patients, grounded in a profound trust in the integrity of Hong Kong’s public healthcare system.