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SINGAPORE \u2013 Identifying vulnerabilities that carry strategic consequences to the nation if they fail and adopting a \u201cjust in case\u201d instead of \u201cjust in time\u201d approach to deal with these is what Singapore requires, Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing said.<\/p>\n
The essence of the \u201cjust in case\u201d approach is investing ahead of time in capabilities that are not fully appreciated until the moment they are needed, Chan said, when he opened the 20th Public Health and Occupational Medicine Conference at Temasek Club on Aug 13.<\/p>\n
Taking a leaf from what the late former US defence secretary Donald Rumsfeld said about \u201cknown knowns\u201d, \u201cknown unknowns\u201d and \u201cunknown unknowns\u201d, Chan said the conference theme, \u201cFrom Prevention to Preparedness: Safeguarding Health Across Systems\u201d, was apt.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe all know that preventing something from happening, dealing with the \u2018known knowns\u2019, is necessary but not sufficient… It is much more challenging to deal with the \u2018known unknowns\u2019 and the \u2018unknown unknowns\u2019,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n
An example of a \u201cknown unknown\u201d is disease outbreaks, which are bound to happen at some point. But something on the scale of the Covid-19 pandemic is considered an \u201cunknown unknown\u201d, as the world did not know the nature of the public health crisis, the timing of the outbreak or the preparations needed.<\/p>\n
Touching on \u201cunknown unknowns\u201d, the minister said these could be in the realm of geopolitics, medicine and public health, for instance, and that this \u201cshould set us thinking about how we should prepare ourselves, our teams and our systems\u201d.<\/p>\n
Systems that are built \u201cjust in time\u201d are lean and efficient and deploy resources only when the need arises.<\/p>\n
But drawing parallels between public health and defence, Chan highlighted that there are vulnerabilities where the \u201cjust-in-time\u201d approach is simply not good enough, as there will be no time to build capability from scratch when a crisis hits.<\/p>\n
Hence, there is a need to go upstream with the \u201cjust in case\u201d philosophy, which is also what the Singapore Armed Forces (SAF) medical system is built on, said Chan, who is also the Coordinating Minister for Public Services.<\/p>\n
Through processes, including pre-enlistment medical examination and medical classification<\/span><\/a>, SAF identifies risks and places national servicemen in roles suited to their health profiles, protects them from avoidable harm, and preserves operational readiness, Chan said.<\/p>\n In addition, the upstream approach continues throughout their service, including through vaccination, heat injury prevention and follow-up of medical issues that could affect their training and deployment.<\/p>\n \u201cThe objective is simply this \u2013 to keep our servicemen healthy, safe, deployable and able to contribute to Singapore\u2019s defence,\u201d Chan said.<\/p>\n Through lessons learnt from dealing with the 2003 severe acute respiratory syndrome, or SARS, crisis, Singapore made strategic investments in national stockpiles of masks and antivirals and SAF\u2019s operational medical stockpiles, he pointed out.<\/p>\n The National Centre for Infectious Diseases was also opened in 2019 with dedicated isolation capacity and outbreak response capabilities.<\/p>\n Chan said the prior investments gave Singapore a stronger footing when faced with the Covid-19 pandemic.<\/p>\n \u201cThat is the essence of \u2018just in case\u2019 \u2013 investing ahead of time in capabilities that are not fully appreciated until the moment they are needed,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n Beyond these upstream efforts, there is also a need to ensure that the entire system, not just individual sectors, is prepared to deal with future challenges.<\/p>\n As servicemen receive care from the national healthcare system before, during and after national service, the SAF medical services work closely with public healthcare institutions on specialist care, vaccinations, infectious disease management and continuity of care.<\/p>\n There are also efforts to deepen integration, such as SAF adopting the Health Ministry\u2019s Next Generation Electronic Medical Record<\/span><\/a> for the next iteration of its own electronic medical record system.<\/p>\n The moves not only support better continuity of care between the SAF and the national healthcare system but also ensure healthcare resilience, which today extends beyond capacity and manpower to data integrity, system uptime, cybersecurity and continuity of operations.<\/p>\n \u201cPreparedness must include secure data systems, interoperable systems and platforms, stronger cyber hygiene, regular stress-testing, and trusted coordination across services and sectors. If we neglect this, we are building resilience with a gap in our foundation,\u201d Chan said.<\/p>\n Beyond systems and infrastructure, the minister stressed that people will always remain Singapore\u2019s decisive advantage.<\/p>\n Investing in people is the most important \u201cjust in case\u201d investment, \u201cbecause it is the ingenuity and determination of our people that will make or break us in any crisis\u201d.<\/p>\n Chan said training needs to be across disciplines, rather than within professional silos, and that doctors, nurses, public health practitioners, psychologists, exercise scientists, commanders and data specialists, who each bring their own expertise to the table, must learn to operate as one team before the next crisis emerges.<\/p>\n \u201cTo be able to deal with the \u2018known knowns\u2019 is level 101 basic competency,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n \u201cBut for Singapore to continue to survive, to thrive and defy the odds of history, we will have to go beyond level 101, to seriously consider how we build our systems, how we build our teams, in order to deal with the many more \u2018unknown unknowns\u2019 in this tumultuous world.\u201d<\/p>\n The two-day conference is jointly organised by the Academy of Medicine, Singapore (AMS) and its College of Public Health and Occupational Physicians (CPHOP).<\/p>\n The SAF Medical Corps has partnered with AMS and its college for the first time to organise the conference \u2013 a move that CPHOP president Brian See described as \u201cespecially fitting\u201d.<\/p>\n See, who is also the chief air force medical officer, said military medicine, public health and occupational medicine all share a common purpose \u201cto anticipate risks, protect people and build resilience before crises occur\u201d.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n SINGAPORE \u2013 Identifying vulnerabilities that carry strategic consequences to the nation if they fail and adopting a \u201cjust in case\u201d instead of \u201cjust in time\u201d…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":76229,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[2611],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-76228","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-buzz-headlines","wpcat-2611-id"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76228","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=76228"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76228\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/76229"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=76228"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=76228"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sgbuzz.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=76228"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}Most important investment is in the people<\/h2>\n
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