For nearly two decades, IBM Consulting has helped power SingHealth’s digital transformation

The healthcare industry’s heavy reliance on legacy systems, regulation and security challenges makes the journey toward digital transformation a significant hurdle. We saw this during the COVID-19 pandemic as many large healthcare systems scrambled to integrate digital technology at speed. While many healthcare institutions were caught off guard, Singapore Health Services (SingHealth), whose mission is “to define tomorrow’s medicine,” was poised to meet these challenges head on.

From cloud adoption to artificial intelligence (AI), automation to the internet of things (IoT), IBM Consulting has been helping SingHealth keep the lights for two decades. This partnership allows the public healthcare cluster to remain agile and navigate ongoing changes in compliance and technology. This means they can focus on what matters most: improving workforce productivity to deliver better patient outcomes.

An evolving partnership

SingHealth was born out of a regrouping of Singapore’s public health care system. Initiated by Singapore’s Ministry of Health (MOH), the goal was to better support an aging population and manage chronic diseases while addressing healthcare workforce and spending growth. Today, SingHealth is the largest of Singapore’s three public healthcare clusters providing first-class healthcare. Each year, more than 3.8 million patients visit its four hospitals, three community hospitals, five specialty centers and eight polyclinics.

In 2000, SingHealth’s longstanding relationship with IBM Consulting began with the design and integration of its healthcare information system. After this initial engagement, the IBM team became well-versed in SingHealth’s unique requirements, such as aligning their system to the Ministry of Health’s direction and maintaining compliance with statutory compliance.

HR digital transformation

In 2010, SingHealth needed to consolidate its disparate HR systems across its hospitals, specialty centers and polyclinics. SingHealth again turned to IBM Consulting, along with SAP Asia Pacific Japan, to build a single HR platform.

This system replaced the siloed systems with a common platform, facilitating better collaboration among the ten institutions involved. It also standardized policies on compensation and benefits, performance reviews and career development throughout the healthcare cluster. Following this standardization involving IBM Consulting the cluster won multiple HR awards including the SingHealth Enterprise award for IBM’s commitment as a “Partner in Our Success.”

Moving to the cloud securely

In 2016, SingHealth needed a better way to store, manage and process an ever-increasing amount of healthcare-related data. IBM Consulting facilitated the implementation and migration of their applications from physical on-premise legacy to private cloud systems.

By combining the benefits of cloud with the security and control of on-premises IT infrastructure, this solution was able to meet the Singapore Ministry of Health’s stringent standards for data governance. It also provided a critical layer of private cloud security to protect SingHealth’s IT system and its patients’ health information from attacks, breaches and other threats.

In 2017, the Ministry of Health launched yet another reorganization of the public health system into three integrated regional clusters. Subsequently, IBM Consulting played a key role in the merger of Singapore’s Eastern Health Alliance (EHA), located in the country’s eastern region with SingHealth, ensuring a smooth transition of the consolidation of applications across HR, finance, procurement and other critical areas.

Meeting COVID-19 challenges

With the onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, SingHealth’s HR processes had to be adapted to meet the requirements of the government’s COVID-19 healthcare strategy. Here, IBM Consulting worked to upgrade the cluster’s HR platform to process applications from employees who needed to take COVID-related leave.

Fulfilling statuary compliance and making continuous improvements

Building upon a foundation of strict regulatory compliance is critical to a healthcare organization’s reputation. IBM Consulting works with SingHealth to ensure the cluster complies with statutory and union requirements, and other mandates issued by the Ministry of Health.

Through its application management services, IBM Consulting continues to keep SingHealth’s HR and IT systems up-to-date and in line with business functions. This enables the cluster’s frontline professionals to operate efficiently and productively.

Keeping the lights on

Today, SingHealth’s applications cater to 17 institutions with more than 35,000 employees and are designed to scale and grow with the cluster.

IBM Consulting is proud to continue helping SingHealth keep the lights on so the healthcare system can deliver on its mission of defining tomorrow’s medicine.

Source: ibm.com

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NanoDx licenses IBM CMOS-compatible nanosensors for rapid COVID-19 testing tech

Rapid but accurate low-cost testing could play an essential role in containing pandemics.

If the COVID-19 pandemic has taught us anything, it’s that we need to be prepared for the next global health crisis.

With that in mind, our teams at IBM Research and medical device company NanoDxTM are announcing that NanoDx is licensing IBM’s nanoscale sensor technology for use in NanoDx’s diagnostic platform. IBM’s technology was developed with the goal of advancing sensor CMOS technology.

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NanoDx plans to use this sensor technology for diagnostic platforms designed to provide rapid, accurate and inexpensive detection of different diseases. NanoDx also plans to use this technology to advance efforts to diagnose a variety of medical conditions rapidly and accurately, including COVID-19, different forms of influenza, traumatic brain injury (TBI), sepsis and stroke in the field of in vitro diagnostics, as well as biosensors.

The IBM-designed nano biosensors are metal-oxide semi-conductive (CMOS)-compatible, which means they may be more cost-effectively and rapidly manufactured in high-volume. When integrated with automation circuitry, these tiny sensors may enable NanoDx’s real-time, point-of-care diagnostics technology to detect and quantify biomarkers from small fluid specimens in less than two minutes. This collaboration is significant because it offers a healthcare use case for IBM’s CMOS hardware technology.

Figure 1:

NanoDx handheld with Covid Cartridge.

Pandemic pivot

Prior to the pandemic, NanoDx had been working on a proprietary diagnostic platform that the company believed could rapidly detect early signs of TBI. Their sensing platform was designed to detect the presence of biomarkers in a small fluid specimen by monitoring changes in the sensing current signal.

With the advent of COVID-19, NanoDx needed to find a way to mass produce the tens of millions of units needed to satisfy projected demand, as well as manage more complex diseases that require more complicated multiplexing capabilities. Fortunately, NanoDx had held preliminary discussions with IBM Research several years ago with the objective of incorporating our technology into its existing process and recognized the potential of our technology.

Concurrently, our IBM Research team independently recognized what we believed to be drawbacks in existing diagnostic technology and had been working on developing enhanced biosensors that addresses these issues. Leveraging our expertise in device physics, materials and CMOS technology, our team was able to create biosensors with significantly enhanced sensing characteristics that could potentially be produced at extremely high production volumes with expanded multiplexing at a lower cost.

Furthermore, these sensors could be cost effectively mass produced in a CMOS foundry with existing tooling. The details of this research are published in “Silicon Nanowire Field Effect Transistor Sensors with Minimal Sensor-to-Sensor Variations and Enhanced Sensing Characteristics.”

NanoDx saw the publication and was interested in working with us in the field of in vitro diagnostics, as well as biosensors on their TBI detector. Soon after, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, NanoDx approached IBM again. They wanted to modify their device for rapid COVID-19 testing and thought IBM Research’s nanoscale sensor technology could help them address this new challenge with the ability to cost-effectively scale to significant production volumes.

NanoDx’s goal is to create accurate, rapid and low-cost handheld diagnostic devices that would be available to consumers for at-home testing. 

Despite the strides made in containing the COVID-19 pandemic, there is still room for more accurate testing, as well as easily manufacturable devices that could be used to get ahead of any future pandemics. Through NanoDx, IBM Research’s innovative nanoscale technology may now play a crucial part in rapid tests for COVID-19 and other health conditions.

Source: ibm.com

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IBM researchers use epidemiology to find the best lockdown duration

We finally have vaccines, but prevention strategies and mitigation of spread of the virus will stay for the foreseeable future, in the form of lockdowns. While effective for helping to deal with disease spread, the duration of lockdowns during the current pandemic has been typically chosen through empirical observation of symptoms.

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But is it the best way?

Our team at IBM Research, in collaboration with the team of Dr. Ira Schwartz at the US Naval Research Laboratory, aims to provide an arguably more accurate approach to the optimal duration of lockdowns, based an epidemiology theory.

In a recent paper Optimal periodic closure for minimizing risk in emerging disease outbreaks published in PLoS One, we describe a new technique to calculate the optimal duration of a periodic lockdown during an outbreak of an infectious disease where there is no cure or vaccine. Our findings are different from the lockdown durations widely applied during COVID-19.

Using an epidemiological model and a new mathematical formulation, we’ve assessed the optimal duration of a lockdown to help minimize the spread of the virus — and found that it can vary between 10 and 20 days rather than the inflexible and imprecise current protocol of two weeks.

The rationale of the 14 day duration

During the current pandemic, nations often have imposed lockdowns based on the time it takes for symptoms to appear. This is estimated to be, at most, two weeks. The lockdown would then be periodically reassessed.

However, our findings are different.

We show that an optimal, data-driven way to help control an epidemic is by closing businesses, schools, and other public meeting places for a period roughly equal to two to four times the mean incubation period, or between 10 and 20 days, based on measurable local health factors. After that time, these places can be reopened for about the same period, until the outbreak is controlled and the disease is eradicated.

Importantly, this period depends on the so-called disease reproductive number, or R0, a measure of the potential of the disease to spread in a population. When R0 is larger than 1, the disease spreads and triggers an outbreak. When R0 is smaller than 1, the disease dies out after having been put under control.

We’ve found that the higher the value of R0, the longer the lockdown needs to be to curb the spread, and vice-versa. We’ve also found that when the reproductive number exceeds a certain threshold, the spread cannot be controlled by periodic lockdowns. This observation, which has never been suggested until now, may have important consequences not only for the current COVID-19 pandemic, but also for the next one, whenever it may happen.

“Control theory” for lockdowns

Not much work has been devoted to the lockdown duration until now. Some recent papers have suggested strategies for lockdowns, but they were mostly computational in nature. Our work, on the other hand, introduces a mathematical framework based on the theory of epidemiology for the assessment of the effect of lockdowns. As such, its application is general and can be used not only for COVID-19, but for any disease for which a periodic shutdown may be necessary to contain and slow community spread.

We used a mathematical approach called control theory, widely used in engineering (for example, for the design of aircrafts and ships), biology and artificial intelligence. We assume that the incidence of the disease — the number of infectious cases per day — is something that can be ‘controlled’ using periodic lockdowns as ‘controllers.’ We then determine the conditions a lockdown needs to meet for the total incidence to be minimized over the course of the outbreak.

Paired with a predictive model, like the one used in IBM Watson Works’ Return to Work Advisor that mixes rigorous epidemiological theory with AI, we believe that our research results can potentially make a difference between a large outbreak and a small one.

It’s clear that to control an outbreak of an infectious disease when there are no vaccinations or treatments, breaking contact is a must. We hope that our work will help to further reduce the contact rate and pave the way to determining an optimal cycle of lockdowns when the next pandemic hits.

Source: ibm.com

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The COVID-19 crisis reinforces the need for these supply chain methods

Anyone who has worked in supply chain management for a while knows that disruptions are inevitable. Unlike previous disruptions, the COVID-19 pandemic is less localized and the long-term impact on individual companies and entire industries is still unknown. It does, though, serve as the latest reminder of the importance of making supply chains more resilient to stresses.

IBM has been involved with more than 7,000 successful supply chain deployments around the globe spanning every major industry. Based on what we have learned, here are some suggestions for making your supply chains resilient.

1. Manage the ABCs: Many of us use ABC analysis to classify inventory items so we can work out ways to manage “A” items more aggressively to drive down overall inventory. “A” items account for the highest value over a period of time to your organization, with “B” and “C” items stepping down in relative value. Typically, organizations maintain low inventory and low risk of stockout by closely managing A items, while carrying higher amounts of B and C items to keep workloads down and provide high customer service.

A properly implemented strategy for B and C items will make it easier to respond when events disrupt the supply chain. If you can count on having plenty of B and C items, which aren’t as costly and represent typically 80% to 95% of your overall part numbers, then staff that is stretched thin during times of crisis can focus on solving supply problems for A items – a much smaller number of items. This allows you to keep your overall inventory under good control and deliver on more customer promises, even when the supply chain is impacted by an event.

2. Leverage analytics for shortage analysis: Most of us have seen a supply-versus-demand stockout. But many organizations have never built this simple analysis into a full report for real-time shortage visibility. Supply chain analytics can quickly help you identify precisely which items require the most urgent attention, which items are expected to run out one or two weeks from now, and so on. When you move into crisis mode, it’s critical that you’re able to identify items at risk of stockout so you can take early action.

Adding two relatively simple analytics to the standard supply-demand analysis can create a report that provides the insights you need. Those analytics include the ability to set up the report so that you can sort by first shortage date and, also, so you can either include or exclude inbound materials on order. This allows you to do two things:

◉ Identify the first instance of shortage. That way, the earliest problem items—where demand will exceed supply—rise to the top of the report.

◉ By including or excluding items with purchase orders, you can identify what action is needed. Items with planned deliveries may need to be expedited, or have deliveries confirmed so you can be confident that supplies will really arrive as scheduled. You’ll need to place new orders for other items as needed.

3. Use AI to manage supply chain disruptions: We all talk about being “less reactive and more proactive.” But, in fact, the best tools for managing supply chain disruptions are a combination of (i) tools that detect events faster and allow us to react faster for better outcomes; and (ii) tools that help us anticipate where and when supply chain disruptions are more likely so we can proactively get ahead of them. Both require the assistance of AI.

Let me provide an example. A big electronics manufacturer was hampered by limited visibility into supply planning and time-consuming manual processes. And so, the company was often missing opportunities to make timely decisions and mitigate disruptions. Deliveries would already be late or the options available would be limited and more expensive.

Using IBM Sterling Supply Chain through the Fast Start program, in just six weeks the manufacturer discovered how to automatically correlate supply and carrier data. This includes Advanced Ship Notifications and shipment status updates for greater and faster visibility into inbound logistics. The company also began to use AI to proactively search for and use information about external events that could impact their supply chain, tapping into weather updates, social media, news reports, and customs and border reports.

Empowering its people with real-time insights to make more informed decisions faster, that manufacturer can now deliver better outcomes when delays happen. They can even anticipate where and when disruptions may occur to turn them into opportunities.

Disruptions are inevitable, but good supply-chain practices help ensure that businesses are better prepared. That way, they’re able to navigate disruptions today and adapt to changing markets and business dynamics in the future.

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