Singapore to step up investments in healthcare infrastructure and manpower: MTI

It plans to add 20,000 workers until 2020.

The city-state is planning to make healthcare even more accessible to its citizens as the Ministry of Trade and Industry has recently announced that it plans to make even more investments in healthcare infrastructure and manpower.

In a speech by trade minister S Iswaran, he said the country will need to grow its healthcare professional workforce by 50%, adding about 20,000 more workers between 2011 and 2020.

Additionally, he said the number of community hospital beds is also slated to double to 3,000 by 2020.

“Beyond the hospital clusters, Singapore will also invest in primary care infrastructure such as polyclinics, Family Medicine Centres and Community Health Centres. These will support new models of integrated team-based care targeted at patient populations with chronic diseases,” S Iswaran said.

Meanwhile, as a part of Singapore’s smart nation initiative, Iswaran says investments in digital technologies would also be increased to support the healthcare sector.

“In particular, we are studying the scope and opportunities for IT and other digital tools to enable the delivery of better and seamless care across the care continuum, as well as targeted interventions for improved healthcare outcomes for our citizens,” he added.