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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Unleashing end-to-end HR, mobility and payroll services to address talent challenges

IBM’s open ecosystem model is essential to bringing greater value to our clients, allowing us to deliver integrated solutions with speed and scale for true enterprise transformation. This is why the Global EY-IBM Alliance has expanded its focus to address our clients’ biggest challenge for talent: the urgency to attract, retain and upskill their workforce amid evolving employee expectations and a requirement for more engagement and consumer-grade experiences.

The EY-IBM Talent Alliance is not just another two-vendor model. EY and IBM have developed joint offerings and established a new Center of Excellence to address clients’ most pressing HR transformation needs. By combining EY and IBM’s consult-to-operate process and technology expertise, we create a truly unparalleled level of end-to-end services. Let me give you some concrete examples:

◉ For Human Capital Management (HCM) platforms like Workday and Oracle, EY and IBM amplify the value of clients’ HR Cloud Transformation by starting with a digital-first and human-centered design, accelerating implementation by 3x with ready-to-deploy assets, and leveraging data-driven AI to transform employee experience.

◉ For clients struggling with complex regulatory requirements and multi-vendor payroll systems with disparate data input and reporting methods, IBM and EY can provide advisory services and single-sourced payroll operations across 160 countries, all while reducing risk and saving time by leveraging Virtual Agents, pre-built payroll automated digital workers, and a suite of proprietary payroll technology.

◉ For clients looking to reduce operational costs and drive organizational resiliency, EY and IBM offer a holistic consult-to-operate solution for Recruitment Process Outsourcing, Mobility, and HR Outsourcing.

◉ And finally, underpinning the entire portfolio is our unique ability to create differentiated talent-focused technology offerings by combining EY’s assets around mobility and people experience with IBM’s talent AI microservices and deep expertise in platform strategy and hybrid, multi-cloud architecture.

Together we are better equipped to help our clients overcome the urgent need to attract, retain and upskill their workforce while transforming their HR function. The alliance offers an array of solutions including outsourcing to create space and free resources to focus on what matters most, laying the foundation for success with a strong HR Cloud Transformation program or applying AI and Automation technology to transform employee experiences.

And we are not just helping our clients transform; we apply these same principles ourselves. For decades, EY and IBM have partnered to help each other in talent-related challenges, including EY and IBM’s previous collaboration to introduce AI in Recruitment and reimagine employee assistance with the award-winning HR virtual assistant used in-house at both organizations.

Source: ibm.com

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