One central record for all patient data, one unified queue to serve patients at hospital touch points, and one consolidated bill for patients. At Jurong Health Service’s (JurongHealth) upcoming Ng Teng Fong General Hospital and Jurong Community Hospital, these improvements to the patient experience will soon become a reality, thanks to its award-winning IT architecture.

Designed by JurongHealth and Integrated Health Information Systems (IHiS), the Health Ministry’s IT arm, the enterprise architecture provides a roadmap for JurongHealth to leverage technology to achieve its vision to deliver seamless, integrated care for the community.

It beat submissions from the United States, Middle East, South Africa and India to clinch the Enterprise & IT Architecture Excellence Award in the Healthcare category at Architecture World conference in Bangalore, India, in September. Organised by iCMG, the award recognises IT architects’ work in creating systems that empower companies to thrive.

JurongHealth’s Chief Operating Officer, Ms Joanne Yap, said that the planning and building of the two hospitals from ground up gave the healthcare cluster an opportunity to design a seamless journey for patients across the acute and community hospital settings, and with healthcare partners beyond the hospitals.

“Backed by an intelligent IT system, we aim to go ‘four-less’ – paper-less, film-less, chart-less and script-less, in our drive to better integrate care and resources,” she said.

This will help reduce stress for patients and their caregivers, and at the same time improve collaboration, productivity and efficiency with seamless sharing of information between doctors, patients and other healthcare providers for improved medical outcomes.

The Ng Teng Fong General Hospital and Jurong Community Hospital are scheduled for completion in Dec 2014 and June 2015 respectively.

The IT blueprint was developed through close collaboration between IHiS’ enterprise and IT architects and senior hospital management as well as over 60 key business, clinical and ancillary healthcare staff.

“JurongHealth’s enterprise architecture will shape its current and future IT landscape to transform and achieve quality care across its healthcare institutions,” said IHiS Chief Executive Officer, Dr Chong Yoke Sin.

This was the second time IHiS has won the global award. Last year, it clinched the award for Eastern Health Alliance’ IT architecture, which enables integrated care for patients across care facilities in the community.