SINGAPORE — A robot attends to your medical needs in the comfort of your home, while a doctor checks that you are taking the right medication using the robot’s video interface. Motion sensors set up in your room could monitor if you have a fall, and doctors may also remotely assess if you need emergency help when you press a panic button.

These scenarios could play out when eldercare goes high-tech in Singapore, in tandem with the healthcare sector’s push to get hospital patients to recuperate independently at home after discharge.

German firm TUV SUD showcased these digital solutions and more on Friday (Oct 27), at the official launch of the Smart Elderly Care@Home Centre on Science Park Drive.

Dr Andreas Hauser, director of TUV SUD digital service, said that the centre would act as a “sandbox” for companies to pilot innovative smart healthcare devices for patients’ home use.

Dr Amy Khor, Senior Minister of State for Health who officiated the centre’s launch, noted that this allows healthcare service providers to find the most appropriate and cost-effective solutions for different care needs in the community.

She said that many Singaporeans have expressed their wish to age in place in the community and recuperate at home. While the Health Ministry is “working hard” to move patients’ out-of-hospital care in that direction, technology would play an “an increasingly important” role in helping elders to do that and for healthcare service providers to carry this out more productively, she added.

This is where the new centre will support this move, especially in helping patients manage chronic diseases. It can potentially reduce the demand for manpower in the healthcare industry as well.

INNOVATION WITH AN EYE ON DATA SECURITY

Given that there are concerns about data security and the lack of rigorous certification standards in the market for homecare devices — compared to the heavily regulated hospital sector — TUV SUD will be developing a framework of guidelines and best practices to test the safety, security and reliability of such products by the end of next year.

The firm specialises in testing, inspecting and auditing smart healthcare solutions, and provides certification, training and knowledge services.

Dr Hauser said that gadgets, for example, would have to be “medically and technically safe”, such as having encryption systems to ensure sensitive patient data does not fall into the wrong hands, checking that sensors do not miss out on blind spots, or that the machines do not shut down when one electronic component fails.

Asked how the centre’s role in this area would be different from that of the Integrated Health Information Systems, Singapore’s health IT provider, he said that the roles are complementary: “All companies should work in partnership to drive the digital transformation of healthcare, and provide an integrated care solution that is safe and secure for elderly.”

The centre would provide another platform for smaller start-ups, and add one more layer of protection and credibility if the piloted products go through the centre’s “stress tests” and certifications, he added.

Dr Tan Jit Seng, director of Lotus Eldercare which runs home eldercare services, was reassured that there is an avenue for service providers looking for certified devices. “There’re many vendors around, and we wouldn’t know if the cheapest one is (necessarily) the best,” he said.