Global Speakers

Dr. Adam Chee is the Founder & Chief Advocacy Officer of BinaryHealthCare, a social enterprise serving to “Bridge the eHealth Divide” by enabling sustainable innovation in patient-centred care through stakeholders empowerment to achieve context-effective adoption of Digital Health as an enabler. Bringing 15 years of experience and expertise in strategy & operations, technology & workflow advisory, implementation & adoption of eHealth across ASEAN, North Asia and Middle East, Adam had a successful career in the IT industry before venturing into Health Informatics in 2002, where he works across the healthcare ecosystem, including the primary care sector, private & public tertiary hospitals, research institutes, government health agencies and NGOs across the globe.

Shu-Ti Chiou, M.D. (specialist of family medicine) & Ph.D. in epidemiology, is the former Director-General of Health Promotion Administration in Ministry of Health and Welfare, Taiwan 2009-2016, former Chair of the Governance Board of International Network of Health Promoting Hospitals & Health Services 2012-2014, and former Global Vice President for Partnerships of the International Union for Health Promotion & Education 2013-2016. She established the “Task Force on HPH & Environment” and the “Task Force on HPH & Age-friendly Health Care” in collaboration with the WHO Collaborating Center for Evidence-based Health Promotion in Hospitals. Dr. Chiou initiated several pioneering initiatives in health promotion & in healthcare delivery reforms, including health-promoting healthcare initiative, diabetes shared care program, age-friendly city & healthcare initiative, healthy city & healthy settings development, breastfeeding policies, comprehensive cancer control policy, obesity prevention & control, etc., and published scientific evidences on evaluation of their impact.

Dr. Chiou has received many honorable awards, such as the Distinguished Achievement Award for Ten Outstanding Civil Servants (1999), the Award for Top Ten Outstanding Young Women in Taiwan (2000), the National Award for Model Civil Servants (1999 & 2012). Internationally, Taiwan was awarded with “the Network with Outstanding Fulfillment of Health Promoting Hospital Strategy” in 2013, and its cancer control plan and breast cancer control plan were rated with highest score among nine Asian countries and region in 2015 & 2016 respectively, its palliative care, the 6^th in the world & the best in Asia in 2015, by the Economist Intelligence Unit (EIU).

Prof Chon’s main research area is long-term care for older people. In particular, he has conducted a number of comparative studies of community-based long-term care systems of Korea, Germany and England. Prof Chon is also highly interested in the long-term care services delivery system and the marketization of care issues. He has published numerous English and Korean journals and is currently conducting research on the integration between health and social care services. In addition, Prof Chon is heavily involved in a number of Korean government funded research projects. Prof Chon is a graduate of Yonsei University in South Korea and a doctoral degree recipient from the University of York in the UK.

As director of Community Engagement at Ren Ci Hospital, Pei Lan oversees community outreach, fundraising, volunteer development and corporate communications.

Prior to joining Ren Ci, Pei Lan spent many years in the public sector spearheading numerous projects which covered social service delivery, corporate partnerships, and strategic marketing. Through these projects, she also established extensive working experience with key collaborators across the private, government and non-profit sectors.

Pei Lan holds a Bachelor of Science in Pharmacy (Hons) from the National University of Singapore and was awarded a scholarship to read Master of Science in Education (Learning and Change Management) from Northwestern University.

Choo Jin Kiat obtained his Bachelor of Electrical and Electronic Engineering degree (NUS/NTI), and joined O’Joy Care Services in 2005, i.e. after his 15 years journey in factory automation/semiconductor equipment manufacturing industry. 

In 2011, he succeeded O’Joy’s founding Executive Director and has since focused O’Joy’s work on the integration of social, health and community sectors.  This resulted in the expansion of O’Joy’s services from gerontological counselling and clinical case management to Community Mental Health Intervention Teams in 2012 (COMIT is an MOH’s national programme), and in 2013, to Health Oriented Ageing (HOA is O’Joy’s structured art based community care programme, for older residents of Upper Boon Keng area).

Since 2016, to increase O’Joy’s social impact across all levels of the society and financial sustainability, he started working with Singapore’s maturing social enterprise (SE) movement.  In 2017, O’Joy sets up its first 100% owned SE, Jolly Companion Ltd.

He has also spoken on both topic of integration and SE on various platforms including Community Mental Health Forum –  Health & Social Care (Feb 2013), Singapore Mental Health Conference (Oct 2014), Arts in Eldercare Seminar (Sep 2015), LeapForGood Expert Panel First Public Workshop (Jun 2016), Singapore Health and Biomedical Congress (Sep 2016) and Social Service Productivity Dialogue (Feb, 2017)

In 2015, he started working on improving the efficiency and productivity of such integrations.  His works include collaborating and using SAS, a data analytics software, on COMIT’s data and conducting a joint study on the localisation of DOREMI, an EU-funded gaming solution to support older persons, with Serious Games Association and Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine, NTU/London Imperial College.  The results of these and earlier works will be used for further integration with home based gateways for automation of remote monitoring/caring and provision of cyber interaction platform for older persons so that they can age well in the community.

Edwin Yim has been the Director of AWWA Family Service Centre since 2012. Overseeing AWWA Family Service Centre, Edwin aims to deliver the promise of a bright future to families and individuals. His personal mission to “be a friend to the poor” has touched many lives. With involvement in social services dating from childhood and his parents’ work with the Department of Social Welfare, Edwin’s experience is personal as well as professional: he has modelled his own work on his family’s commitment to improving the lives of others. He strongly believes that provision of better quality services comes through investing in professionalism and better tools for staff. Throughout his career, Edwin has transformed agencies into consistent high performance-focused cultures with better leadership and management.

Prior to joining AWWA, Edwin held Centre Head positions for a day activity centre under the TOUCH Community Services for persons with mild intellectual disability, as well as for RiverLife Centre for Youth.

Edwin holds a Bachelor of Psychology, Graduate Diploma in Social Work and a Postgraduate Diploma in Disability Studies, He is a registered social service practitioner, a therapist in mediated learning experience and solution focus brief therapy. He has also attended the Non-Profit Management Programme for the 21st Century by LKY School of Public Policy and Social Leadership Singapore. He once served as a member of the SSO-FSC (Social Service Office –Family Service Centre) Business Integration Sub-Committee at the Ministry of Social and Family Development (MSF).

As the Chairman of the Board of the Alzheimer Indonesia, Ms Eva Anne Jeanne Sabdono has extensive experience in the business world, and counter balances her business life with activities in social development, especially to improve quality of life as well as care conditions for the ageing population in Indonesia. Eva organized the HelpAge International Regional Conference in Bali in 2008 and ROK-ASEAN Regional Conference on Home Care in Yogya, 2009. She attended as a participant as well as a resource person in many National as well as International Conferences, Seminars and workshops since 1999 – to date. A Master holder in Education from the Institute of Education (IKIP) in Jakarta and in Business Administration from the University of the City Of Manila – Philippines, Eva is also a member of the Indonesia Psycho Geriatric Association, the Indonesia Gerontology Association (PERGERI) as well as the National Movement on Ageing (GNLP).

Karen graduated with a first class honours degree in Zoology from the National University of Singapore. She never pursued her dream of working with animals, choosing instead to join the Economic Development Board chasing after biomedical investments to be set up in Singapore, and subsequently freelancing as a business consultant. She joined healthcare in 2007, working in clinical operations at the Singapore General Hospital and National University Hospital System. Her last posting before joining the Home Nursing Foundation as CEO in 2014, was to set up the SingHealth Regional Health System (RHS) Office.

Dr Sato graduated from the Sapporo Medical University in 1997 to become the first resident of the Hokkaido Centre for Family Medicine (HCFM) which is the first institute in Japan to have a formal family medicine training programme. Post-training, Dr Sato specialised in family medicine and went on to be certified as a Japan Primary Care Association (JPCA) family physician in 2005. Between 2007 and 2011, he trained medical rehabilitation professionals to realise the importance of rehabilitation for family physicians in an ageing society. He was named the representative of JPCA from 2009 onwards. After working in Hokkaido, Okinawa and Osaka, Dr Sato relocated to Singapore in 2011 to serve the Japanese community in the country. He published a book on rehabilitation for family physicians in 2012, and continues to energetically give presentations and conduct workshops on rehabilitation for family physicians. In 2013, Dr Sato presented at the 1st Japan-Singapore Inter-Professional Collaboration(JSIP) Seminar and shared his experiences from Japan on falls precaution. Dr Sato’s areas of interests include family medicine, medical education, medical informatics, medical rehabilitation, geriatrics and in-flight medical emergencies.

Kiesha Prem is a research assistant at the Saw Swee Hock School of Public Health (SSHSPH), where she does modelling work with the Biostatistics and Modelling Domain. She trained at the Department of Statistics at the National University of Singapore where she obtained her BSc. (Hons) in Statistics. Currently, Kiesha is a PhD candidate with SSHSPH under Associate Professor Alex Cook. Some of her research interests include infectious disease modelling using Bayesian statistics and survival analysis in nutritional epidemiology.

As a member of the Singapore Zika Study Group, Kiesha contributed spatial statistics and modelling expertise to bolster and supported the Ministry of Health’s strategic team in tackling the national crisis. She is a passionate educator and together with a team, she has conducted several R and biostatistics workshops around ASEAN (University of Public Health in Yangon, Mahidol University in Bangkok, UCSI University in Kuala Lumpur, and SSHSPH in Singapore). She assisted the organising team for several Public Health Thought Leadership dialogues in SSHSPH with Dr Margaret Chan, Professor John Ioannidis and hosted the recent session with Professor Paul Zimmet.

Dr Dirk F. de Korne holds positions as Adjunct Assistant Professor at Duke-NUS Graduate Medical School Singapore and Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands. His implementation, research and teaching focuses on the diffusion of quality and patient safety innovations and include business process and systems redesign, human factors and ergonomics, and performance benchmarking. He holds an MSc in Health Policy and Management from Erasmus University Rotterdam and a PhD in Public Health from University of Amsterdam.

Associate Professor Lee Kheng Hock is the Director of the Office of Integrated Care at the Singapore General Hospital. Concurrently, he is the Director of Bright Vision Hospital. He serves in various national committees on professionalism, training and care integration. A/Prof Lee also serves in the Family Physician Accreditation Board and is the Co-Chair of the Joint Committee of Family Medicine Singapore. He is currently the President of the College of Family Physicians Singapore.

Dr. Lee is one of the pioneers in field of care integration and care transition in Singapore. Since 2006, he and his team developed various models of transitional care and home care. These new models of care were proven to be effective in various studies that were published in international journals, including 2 landmark randomized control studies which proved the effectiveness of transitional care in Singapore.

Ms Loh Shu Ching has 20 years of healthcare experience, with 8 of these in the ILTC sector. She started her career in the healthcare industry with Tan Tock Seng Hospital where she rotated through various administrative and operational units including Medical Records, Case Management and Inpatient Operations. She was seconded to the Home Nursing Foundation (HNF), a voluntary welfare organisation, as its General Manager in April 2009. At HNF, she initiated HNF’s partnership with GPs to provide multidisciplinary home care services. She became the CEO of Ren Ci Hospital in 2011. During her tenure, Ren Ci started a Day Rehab Centre and SPICE in the Community Hospital and a second nursing home and senior care centre in Bukit Batok St 52. The team is preparing for another home and SCC in Ang Mo Kio to be opened in the 2nd half of this year. Shu Ching chairs the Community Care Manpower Committee.

Regarded as one of Australia’s most innovative health and aged care providers, HammondCare founded the Dementia Centre in 1995. With the aim to improve the quality of life for people living with dementia, DementiaCentre of HammondCare is recognized both nationally and internationally as a leading resource and research centre for aged care.

Meredith is an Occupational Therapist and a Senior Consultant (Research and Design) in HammondCare’s Dementia Centre. Meredith has co-ordinated major research projects and developed and directed residential, community and specialist dementia care services. Previously, she coordinated and developed the internationally-acclaimed Dementia Carers Training Program at Sydney’s Prince Henry Hospital, and in the past, has been a past vice-president of the Alzheimer’s Australia NSW, representing the Association at state and federal levels.

She has been involved in providing education and support for carers of people with dementia, residential and community care staff, and undergraduate Occupational Therapy students both in Australia and overseas. Meredith is also a frequent presenter at national and international forums.

Meredith leads the Dementia Centre’s Design portfolio, providing consultancy on evidence-based dementia design and leading the Australian Dementia Design Schools. She has a particular interest in modifying environments and activities to assist people living with dementia to participate in meaningful life activity.

Dr Ow Chee Chung is the CEO of Kwong Wai Shiu Hospital. The hospital is now in the midst of a major redevelopment to be transformed into an Integrated Nursing Home and Community Hub. It will double both its inpatient and outpatient capacity by 2018. A medical doctor by training, Dr Ow also has a Master in Business Administration (MBA, Surrey). He has held several leadership appointments in public service, VWO sector and as well as in the restructured hospitals and health institutions. He has a strong interest in the development of community care services.

Oyungerel Amgaa is regional health coordinator at the International Federation of Red Cross and Red Crescent Societies, where she leads the IFRC health and care team across Asia Pacific. In her current role, she provides a technical support in health and care areas to 38 member Red Cross or Red Crescent National Societies in the region, with a focus on community-based health.  She has 13 years of experience of humanitarian work in Asia region. Her last posting before joining the IFRC as the regional health coordinator in 2016, were consultancies for the Asian Development Bank and Hera International, health consultancy firm.  She obtained her medical degree from the National University of Medical Sciences in Mongolia and her masters of public health from the Boston University, USA.

Associate Professor Pang Weng Sun is currently the Acting Group Chief Executive Officer of Alexandra Health System. He is a senior consultant geriatrician at Khoo Teck Puat Hospital and holds administrative appointments as Chairman, Medical Board, Yishun Community Hospital; and Vice Dean, Clinical Affairs at Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine and Director, Geriatric Education and Research Institute. He is on the Advisory Boards of Lien Centre for Palliative Care and Duke-NUS Centre for Ageing Research and Education.

A/Prof Pang is a Fellow of the Academy of Medicine in Singapore and a Fellow of the Royal College of Physicians, Edinburgh. He trained in geriatric medicine in Edinburgh and Newcastle-upon-Tyne in the UK. He has, in the past, served in various administrative roles as Head of Geriatric Medicine in Alexandra Hospital; Chairman, Medical Board of Alexandra and Khoo Teck Puat Hospitals and a former President of the Society for Geriatric Medicine. He continues to chair the Resident Advisory Committee for Geriatric Medicine. He has contributed geriatric expertise to various community services and Ministry of Health and was a recipient of the Healthcare Humanity Award (2005), Public Administration Medal Silver (2012) and National Outstanding Clinician Educator (2016).

Kim Choo has more than twenty years of experience in the aged care sector. Trained as a social worker and counselling therapist and clinical supervisor, she has worked in team-managed primary care, home-based health and psychosocial care, as well as care management for elders living in the community. Currently, she is the Chief Executive Officer of Hua Mei Centre for Successful Ageing, the Foundation’s collective of seven pioneering aged care programmes designed to enable good health and wellbeing over the life course and support ageing in place. She is also the project leader for the Community for Successful Ageing (ComSA) at Whampoa, coordinating the efforts for the Foundation’s latest groundbreaking project: a community-wide approach to forge an integrated system of comprehensive programmes and services with the aim to promote health and wellbeing over the life course, and to enable ageing in place.

Dr PHUA Kai Hong is a tenured professor at the Lee Kuan Yew School of Public Policy, NUS, where he lectures in global health, health economics and financing, population ageing and social policy. He is currently a visiting professor on senior faculty exchange at the Graduate School of Public Policy, Nazarbayez University, Kazakhstan. He was previously Associate Professor and Head, Health Care Division, and Head, Health Services Research Unit, at the Department of Community, Occupational & Family Medicine, Faculty of Medicine, and also Adjunct Senior Fellow at the Institute of Policy Studies, Singapore. He graduated with honours cum laude from Harvard University and received graduate degrees from Harvard School of Public Health and the London School of Economics & Political Science. He was the recipient of a Harvard College Scholarship, the Sigma Scholarship from the Faculty of Arts and Sciences, Harvard University, and an NUS Overseas Graduate Scholarship.

Prof Dato Hj Abd Rahim Mohamad is a prominent Public Health figure in the country and the region. He joined CUCMS upon his retirement from the Ministry of Health (MOH) Malaysia in 2013. His vast working experience in the MOH has contributed significantly to the development of the Faculty of Cyberjaya University College of Medical Sciences.

Before joining the academia, the Dean had served the MOH for over 30 years. In his last position at the Ministry as the Director of the Planning and Development Division of MOH, he initiated many programmes in promoting the betterment of the country’s health services and has vast experience in healthcare financing. His special interest is developing value-based healthcare and has always been actively involved in the promotion of healthy lifestyles, food safety and health tourism.

Sahari’s diverse background in nursing, NGO world and Red Cross positions him as a uniquely exposed developmental work and disaster management practitioner. He is a strong advocator in strengthening character and nurturing Youth Leadership through humanitarian work including providing opportunities to contribute beyond the shore of Singapore through Overseas Humanitarian Programme.

He participated in 17 disaster response missions and more than 50 reconstruction and sustainable development projects since 2003.

He was featured by the Asian Development Bank in “Water Champion” series for the month February 2009. He is recognized for his efforts in going beyond the call of duty – the Humanity Award for his active participation in volunteerism and the Courage Star Award for his contributions in responding to the SARS Outbreak.

Concurrently holding the position of Director of Services and Youth, Sahari’s diverse background in the private sector, NGO world and RCRC movement positions him as a uniquely exposed developmental work and disaster management practitioner that also equipped him to champion the causes for humanity.

He is a strong advocator who believe in strengthening character and nurturing Youth Leaders of tomorrow through humanitarian work. He is instrumental of widening the platform for youth participation in community work and mainstreaming civic responsibility. Regionally he is a pioneer Singapore Red Cross representative the RCRC SouthEast Asia Youth Network and has actively provided Singapore Red Cross Youth the opportunities to contribute beyond the shore of Singapore with the aim of moulding them to be a concerned global citizen.

Mr Stephen Yee is appointed as Senior Group Director of Training at the Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF) in January 2007. He has been concurrently holding the role as Assistant Executive Director since October 2009. Stephen manages the SNEF Corporate Learning Centre, and assists the Executive Director in various areas of tripartism and operations of SNEF. He also works with consultants in the area of Human Resources (HR) and Industrial Relations (IR) for course delivery and consultancy.

He is also involved in the construct of the PMax program with Singapore Workforce Development Agency where SNEF is a programme partner of the place and train program for employers. In addition, SNEF has been appointed as the Lean Enterprise Development Multiplier in helping small and medium size companies in rolling out strategies in automation, business model and process innovation driving productivity and efficiency. Stephen is in the International Organisation of Employers (IOE) Future of Work panel members representing South East Asia. He is a sought after expert and speaks on numerous platforms and in expert panels for IOE for the last 3 years.

Stephen has an extensive background in training and development. He was the Training Director/ Country Manager at Training Partners from April 2006 to December 2006 and joined SNEF after that. Stephen was the General Manager of One Learning Place, a subsidiary of the National Library Board (NLB), from 2001 to 2003, and had assumed various training positions at i2 Technologies, Hewlett Packard as well as Iverson Computer Associates.

He was awarded a Master in Project Management (Distinction) from the University of Adelaide – Singapore campus in 2006 doing it as part-time.

Stephen is involved in many tripartite committees in particular the HR Task Force for HR certification, trustee board member in Migrant Workers Centre (2011-2015) and Chinese Development Assistance Council Workers Upgrading Unit as an employer representative.

Dr Tan Jit Seng graduated with M.B.B.S. from National University of Singapore, Faculty of Medicine in 2002. he obtained Graduate Diploma in Geriatric Medicine in 2010. He is registered as a Family Physician from 2012. Dr Tan is involved in many aspects of Eldercare work; in the development and piloting of new elder friendly technologies and products, long term care services, training of care givers, and consulting on care homes architecture etc. He is currently running clinical practices in private home care services, an outreach clinic and locuming for a geriatric department in a public hospital.

Dr. Thaworn Sakunphanit is, presently, Program Director of the Health Insurance System Research Office, Health System Research Institute, Ministry of Public Health, Thailand. He is medical doctor with specialty in Internal Medicine, Bachelor degree on Economics and Master of Science on Social Protection Financing. His previously professional working experiences including community hospitals directors, deputy director of Health Insurance Office of Ministry of Public Health and senior expert of the National Health Security Office. He played active role in establishing sickness benefit for the Social Security Scheme in 1990, managing the Medical Welfare Scheme and Public voluntary health insurance (Health Card Scheme) and finally, establishing the Universal Coverage Scheme in 1991 to fulfillment a universal health coverage for Thai citizen. He has involved in shaping national policies on health care reform in Social Security System, Civil Servant Medical Benefit Scheme and the Universal Coverage Scheme. He worked closely with the ILO to develop health care financial models for social health protection schemes and social protection floor in Thailand. He has been appointed as member of Committees and Subcommittees in Ministry of Public Health, other Ministries and Parliament.

He published more than 30 research documents and publications in Thai and English, mainly in health care financing, health care management, health system and policy research. He also provided training and constancy services for social health insurance and other social protection international communities.

Dr. Zubin J Daruwalla is a Director in PwC South East Asia Consulting and leads the healthcare consulting team in the region, while remaining a practicing clinician with an interest in orthopaedics. With more than 20 years of experience in health, prior to working with PwC, Zubin’s career in healthcare provision from a surgeon’s standpoint has included working in both the public and private sectors across continents, including cities like Dublin, Oxford and Singapore. This has allowed him to gain experiences globally that help provide his clients insights that assist in solving their most complex challenges. Zubin has extensive experience in Digital Health, Medical Education, HealthTech and MedTech, and is a Consultant, Advisor and Mentor to a number of  start-ups and individuals in these spaces both locally as well as internationally. He holds Bachelors Honours Degrees in Medicine, Surgery and Obstetrics & Gynaecology from the Royal College of Surgeons in Ireland (RCSI) as well as two Masters Degrees in Orthopaedic Surgery from the RCSI and National University Singapore (NUS). Having published extensively over the last decade with more than thirty publications to his name, including being an invited author for Economic Times, Zubin continues to write actively.

He has shared his insights and expertise as well as presented, spoken, and participated in numerous events revolved around healthcare. These have included local, regional, and international conferences, workshops, panel discussions and working groups.

Zubin is active in the local community and is a big proponent of giving back, volunteering his time as an Executive Committee Member of the Dyslexia Association of Singapore and a practicing clinician at Tayka Medical Centre that provides medical care to the foreign worker community.