In Singapore, Alexandra Hospital (AH) and private companies in the fields of healthcare AI, digital services, consumer electronics, and fitness have just launched a digital health service that will connect patients with doctors, health coaches, and caregivers.
Users can choose to share their data through the LifeHub+ app and get dynamic health scores, data alerts, and metrics that give them simple, clear insights into their health for tracking and daily improvement.
“The digital health revolution has arrived. Wearable health trackers which are linked to health and care teams in the hospital and the community can help empower users to proactively manage their chronic conditions before deterioration,” Dr Jason Phua, CEO of AH.
Customers can also grant access to a pre-programmed care team comprised of their family doctor or General Practitioner (GP), an AH health coach, caregivers, and even doctors from other healthcare institutions to access their health data via a dedicated secure LifeHub+ dashboard, which is a market first.
LifeHub+ can also be designed to urge users to improve their health, such as by reducing their sedentary time during the day, and can be used to toggle medication, exercise, and medical check-up reminders.
Three hundred (300) eligible patients with preventable chronic health risks from GP clinics and AH in Queenstown, Singapore, which provides acute and community care under the National University Health System, will be among the first to be onboarded to LifeHub+.
AH health coaches and their primary care physicians will monitor their wellness behaviours and specific indicators.
This collaboration intends to strengthen ties between patients and their care team, particularly with family doctors who serve as the first line of defence. Furthermore, this approach enhances patient health and lifestyle management through timely interventions delivered through a personalised health plan, particularly in the prevention and management of chronic diseases. Social prescriptions such as exercise and food are examples of lifestyle changes made.
Health and wellness statistics in the LifeHub+ app include shareable metrics such as steps, exercise, sleep patterns, heart rate, heart rate variability, skin temperature change, breathing rate, and oxygen saturation (SpO2).
In the LifeHub+ app, this information is integrated with user-recorded blood pressure and blood glucose from third-party devices to provide a dynamic wellness score. Using the public WebAPI, Fitbit data that users elect to publish are linked to the LifeHub+ platform.
The family physician or general practitioner and AH’s health coach who get these wellness insights may use them to manage and assist primary care patients holistically. This strategy promotes a healthy lifestyle for individuals who are at risk or have simple chronic health issues, such as obesity, diabetes, hypertension, and high cholesterol. ConnectedLife is developing lifestyle questionnaires and disease risk assessment instruments for incorporation into LifeHub+ as future features.
In addition to connecting GPs from mostly the Queenstown and western region and serving as a referral hospital to which the GPs may receive joint escalated care, AH is enrolling its own metabolic clinic patients to avoid simple diseases from escalating into severe chronic diseases. Health coaches from AH will offer digital health interventions via the LifeHub+ app by providing individualised health programmes that incorporate lifestyle and nutritional changes.
LifeHub+ is a complimentary, scalable cloud solution for physicians. Patients must subscribe to a LifeHub+ subscription through their healthcare providers for SG$9.99 each month. The first 300 LifeHub+ users onboarded via partner GPs will receive a device and free access for the first 12 months, enabling them to receive digital support from their care team. More than 30 GPs have expressed interest through AH in using this innovative service to better manage the health and lifestyle of their patients.
The nation is keen to work with universities and other innovation and research bodies to better healthcare and patient outcomes. Recently A five-year Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) was signed between SingHealth and the Singapore Institute of Technology (SIT) that aims to promote students’ practice-oriented healthcare education and foster new healthcare innovation projects.
For the next 5 years, SingHealth and the Singapore Institute of Technology will work together to equip the healthcare workforce with innovative and practical skills to overcome current challenges in the healthcare industry.
