Page 18 - Hospital Authority Convention 2017

Symposiums
HOSPITAL AUTHORITY CONVENTION 2017

S14.1 Managing Increased Healthcare Service Demands 14:30 Convention Hall C

System Engineering in Healthcare Operations Management
Long D
Department of Systems Engineering and Engineering Management, The Chinese University of Hong Kong, Hong Kong
To meet the increasing demand in healthcare, it is obviously desirable to build more facilities and train more medical staff
to increase the capacity of service. On the other hand, it is also of great importance to enhance the utilisation efficiency of
existing capacity. This presentation focuses on the latter, i.e., how to reduce the waste of healthcare service by using tools
from operations research. Being highly scarce, some healthcare resources are regretfully and inevitably under-utilised for
various reasons, such as the ubiquitous uncertainties in the system (e.g., uncertain consultation time). In this presentation,
by several examples, we demonstrate how the operations research tools can be employed to improve the efficiency of the
healthcare operations.

S14.2 Managing Increased Healthcare Service Demands 14:30 Convention Hall C

The Multiple Facets of Healthcare: How Would Practitioners of Science, Systems Design and Management Fulfil
Their Roles in the Future of Healthcare
Lew T
Medical Board, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore
Wednesday, 17 May organisations that can transcend sectoral or divergent interests. Beyond this unifying rally call, an effective and responsive
Purpose and calling remains a unifying foundation for healthcare practitioners. In a heterogenous and multigenerational
workforce, a unifying vision and mission, predicated on a common ethos and value system remains a hallmark of
structure is critical for organisational excellence and engagement. Theories centred around intrinsic motivation have proven
to be effective in getting the best out of our workforce. In recent years, we have seen how radical change and disruption
have affected healthcare institutions tremendously. There are several change paradigms that resonate well with healthcare
providers: quality and safety, the value proposition; and innovation and the advancement of biomedical science. Clearly, the
ability to see the challenges of healthcare from a broad perspective is helpful – how do we prepare the workforce for this?
There are clearly many models for adoption. Our experience with an open and engaging leadership model, partnered in a
learning organisation framework with a strong culture of quality and improvement has helped to foster an environment that
enables change to be managed effectively at the global level.

These considerations are discussed in the context of contemporaneous challenges facing the Singapore public healthcare
system and illustrated from the perspective of Tan Tock Seng Hospital, an acute and tertiary public hospital looking after the 1.5
million population of central Singapore.

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