PM Lee Hsien Loong at the Launch of the SGH Campus Master Plan

Mr Gan Kim Yong, Minister for Health; Mr Peter Seah, Chairman SingHealth; Professor Ivy Ng, Group CEO, SingHealth; distinguished guests; ladies and gentlemen. I am very happy to be here, at last, to launch the SGH Campus Master Plan. We have waited for this a long time.

Singapore General Hospital (SGH)

SGH was the first hospital in Singapore, as you have heard from Professor Ng. It came here in 1882 but the history goes back even longer to 1821, when it was a medical facility in a wooden shed by the Singapore River. Eventually it moved here, after several shifts, on a hill near the "Sepoy Lines". Those of you who are not quite old enough, or have forgotten your school history, Sepoys were Indian soldiers in the British Raj. The Sepoy Lines was the Sepoys' camp, located near here. There used to be a road here, called "Sepoy Lines", and this was the Sepoys' camp, or cantonment, hence "Cantonment Road". That is the history lesson. That is why to this day, many older Singaporeans still call this place "See Pai Po" which is the Hokkien rendering of "Sepoy Lines".

This was also where Singapore's first medical school, the King Edward VII College of Medicine, was established back in 1905. Since then the medical school has gone to NUS's Kent Ridge Campus, and is now the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, but many of the students still come and train here. I am glad that after this, you will be hearing some of them from the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine performing for us. But here we have now another medical school – the Duke-NUS Medical School. So the Outram campus continues to play a major role in medical education.

As the oldest hospital, SGH has a special place in many Singaporeans' hearts. Often, it is the first hospital that comes to mind when people think of our healthcare system. It is the first one people instinctively want to go to, when they need treatment. Although we are trying very hard to educate people into the importance of right-siting medical care, and how it is best they be treated at the place that best suits their needs, whether it is a regional hospital, community hospital, outpatient clinic, or possibly resting at home.

Over the years, we have developed and expanded SGH. In the old days, we had open wards, and there were long corridors linking up different parts of the hospitals. Patients found their way around by following coloured lines painted on the ground along the corridors. Some of you may remember that. So you tell a patient, "Follow the red line", it will go to Orthopaedic, the "Blue line", it will go to surgery, whatever. Because many of the patients were illiterate and therefore it was the simplest way to get them around. Hopefully, if you had followed the line conscientiously, you would go to the right place. (Professor) Lee Yong Kiat explained this to me once, he said the only trouble was you are looking down and following the lines, and if you are not careful, you would bump into something. Now you look down on your iPhone as you walk along, following the App, and you have the same problem.

Today, SGH Campus has far better facilities and capabilities. We have 40 clinical specialties – National Centres for Cancer, Dental, Eye, Heart and Neuroscience. It is a major provider of care, receiving patients from all over Singapore. The layout of the campus today basically reflects a major redevelopment which started in the 1970s and was completed in 1981. I remember when Mr Lee Kuan Yew opened it, we were all very impressed by the new facilities and buildings. It was a quantum change from what the old hospital used to be. We have continued since then, to improve and upgrade it, building some new buildings and re-purposing others. But we have not done a comprehensive re-planning and renewal of the campus. Though we have been thinking about it for some time.

Therefore, it is timely for us now to launch this Master Plan and refresh the campus. 1981 is now 35 years ago. For those of us who are not-so-young, we still think of this as a new SGH, because our mental image of the old SGH was the corridors and the open wards. But 35 years is a very long time in medicine, and medicine has advanced enormously. The practice of health care has changed, our society is more developed, and our population is much older. We are launching the Master Plan now, but this Master Plan is going to take a long time before it is completed. I was going to say 15 years, 2030 by the time it is done, but Ivy just said 20 years. So it is going to be two decades of hard work and it is a very difficult job because we will have to do a musical chairs exercise. This is a very busy hospital that has to be kept running. We have got to shift buildings, roads and patients around, while maintaining service standards and not dropping the ball. By the time this Master Plan is completed in 2030, 2035 – 50 years will have passed since the 1981 re-development. So it is not at all too early to fit out and to have a new campus, fit to serve the new generation of Singaporeans.

The work has already begun. In fact the first piece of it is this Academia building, where we are today. A year and a half ago, we had the new National Heart Centre opened. We are now in the process of building the new Outram Community Hospital. You can see it coming up and it should be ready by 2020.

SGH Campus Master Plan

This Master Plan will transform SGH and help us to serve patients better. It will do so in three ways. First, by delivering better care. Secondly, by developing stronger healthcare capabilities. Thirdly, by making it easier for patients to get around the campus physically.

Deliver Better Care

First of all, better care. We will triple the total space for patient care, and target the areas where we expect the most demand. For example, cancer is one of those illnesses that many of us, even most of us will get, sometimes more than once in our lifetimes. With better cancer care, patients live longer. It can become a chronic disease, but then the patients will need continuing treatment and follow-up, so the caseload goes up. Therefore we will are building a new National Cancer Centre. It will be the tallest building on the campus, more than 20 storeys tall to meet these new needs. We are building a new Accident & Emergency (A&E) Department, moving it to a new building to increase its capacity as it is one of the busiest departments in the hospital. We are building a new SGH Elective Care Centre to add more operating theatres, specialist outpatient clinics, and acute beds. The Elective Care Centre will also house the National Dental Centre.

Through the buildings, we will bring together different aspects of care into a single complex. As Ivy said, patient-centric and focussed on their needs across disciplines. For example, if you have diabetes, there are many different parts of you which needs to get checked – your eyes, your limbs, your blood, your kidney function, each bit of you belongs to a different speciality. But you are just one patient. So rather than have the patient going to many different departments, we will bring all the specialties together, design the buildings and the operations of the hospitals to be more patient-centric, and take care of the patient in one place as far as possible. This new campus will enable us to do much more of that.

Develop Capabilities

Secondly, the Master Plan will develop stronger capabilities by integrating medical care, research and education, so that we can better understand diseases that affect Singaporeans, and find new and more effective and affordable ways to prevent and diagnose diseases and treat the patients. There will be a new Research Park in the campus that builds on the existing strengths of SingHealth and of Duke-NUS Medical School by collaborating with industry partners. Altogether, this campus will meet 40 per cent of our healthcare education needs in Singapore, with more teaching and training facilities. It will focus on integrated training – training doctors, nurses, allied health professionals, hospital staff together, because it is the whole team working together which delivers the first class medical care which our patients expect.

Enhance Connectivity

Thirdly, the Master Plan will make it easier for patients, caregivers, visitors and staff to get around. We are bringing the facilities closer to the public transport links, and making it easier for patients and visitors to get around the campus. Today, the campus covers 43 hectares. So if you take the MRT, and you want to come to SGH, you have to drop off at Outram Park MRT station. Then either you walk uphill for quite some distance, or wait for the shuttle bus. Getting around the campus can be confusing and tiring as you navigate from building to building, particularly for the elderly. Actually even to me, most of the corridors look the same. We will make this a bit better. We will move the high patient-volume services closer to the MRT station, and we will link up the hospital with the station, so that you can get off the MRT and take an easy walk to the place of care. We will also link together the different care facilities to make getting to different clinics and wards safer and more convenient, and redesign the roads so that ambulances and patients have faster access to A&E.

Conclusion

This Master Plan represents what we see as the future of healthcare in Singapore. It combines the best in facilities and technology, and puts the patient at the centre of things. It is integrated with the larger network of community hospitals, primary care and home care. It enables our healthcare system to continue to take care of Singaporeans well, and ensures that all of us have access to high quality and affordable healthcare.

At the same time, while we upgrade, we will where possible also preserve or re-purpose some of our old buildings to remind us of our heritage, of our history. Bowyer Block with the clock tower, is the only block which remains, going back to 1926, nearly a hundred years. It now houses the SGH Museum as well as outpatient services. It reminds us of how we have built and upgraded SGH over the years to serve Singaporeans, and commemorates those who have given their lives and careers to public healthcare, like Dr John Bowyer in particular. We also have the Mistri wing, donated by Navroji Mistri, who had a passion for helping the poor. The wing used to house two paediatric wards for sick children, later it had the Heart Centre. Now it has become the home to the new Diabetes and Metabolism Centre. It reminds us of how we can help the vulnerable and needy amongst us, through our own efforts. These are values that we must preserve, and pass on even as we upgrade and transform the buildings that house it – the institution. Because that is how we can take care of one another well.

I would like to thank MOH, SingHealth, SGH and all the healthcare partners for working hard on this Master Plan, and making it possible for us today to launch it. I would like to wish all our healthcare professionals, whether here, around the campus, or elsewhere in our eco-system – Happy New Year, 身体健康，万事如意.

Thank you very much.

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