DPM Heng Swee Keat at the Launch of the Intercontinental Alliance for Integrated Care

Mrs Mildred Tan
Chairman of the Board of Trustees,
Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS),

Professor Tan Tai Yong 
President of SUSS,

Representatives from Partner Universities,

Excellencies,

Ladies and gentlemen, 

Good evening, and for our overseas guests, a very warm welcome to Singapore.

Tai Yong just touched on the origins of this new Intercontinental Alliance for Integrated Care – how the idea was first mooted and how we now have 13 partners from Asia and beyond.

Singapore is a small country with less than 0.1% of the global population.

But as a microcosm of the world, we share many common challenges with countries and peoples around the world. 

I firmly believe that we must do our part to collaborate with partners around the world to explore, innovate and learn from one another.  

That way, we can collectively share and learn, and shape a better future for everyone. 

Our universities are important enablers of this effort.

The universities that are in this Intercontinental Alliance come from countries that together account for almost 20% of the global population.

I commend Mildred, Tai Yong and their team at SUSS for launching this important new platform to help us better address a pressing global challenge. I also thank all the partner universities for joining this platform. 

As Tai Yong said earlier, the world’s population is ageing at an unprecedented rate.

Here in Singapore, in 2010, one in 10 Singaporeans was aged 65 and above.

By 2030, just six years from now, that proportion will be one in four. 

This trend is similar in many other countries around the world.

I visited several countries this year – China, the UK, Japan and most recently the US and South Korea.

In all these countries, I see valuable work being undertaken to address the challenges of managing this major demographic shift.

Ageing is a complex challenge with multiple dimensions. 

Let me highlight a few.

The first is the economic dimension.

i. As lifespans grow, should people work longer and save more for retirement?

ii. How do we think about retirement age, re-employment age, and how do we re-design jobs, especially in the age of AI and automation? 

iii. Beyond work, how do we enable seniors to continue contributing to their families, communities and societies?

The second dimension is healthcare.

i. How do we manage rising healthcare expenditure and organise our healthcare systems to meet the different needs of an ageing population?

ii. How can we improve healthspans and provide continuity of care in appropriate settings?

The third dimension is our infrastructure and population distribution. 

i. How should our cities, homes and workplaces be designed to be more senior-friendly?
 
ii. What about countries with significant rural-urban migration, where young people migrate to cities in search of opportunities, while seniors are living in rural areas?

The fourth dimension is technology.

i. Technology and innovation are advancing rapidly – especially in digital technology. 

How do we ensure inclusion, and make the best use of new technologies and solutions to enable and care for our seniors?

There are just a few dimensions of ageing, and there are many more. So the logo for the Intercontinental Alliance encapsulates the issue very well – complex, multi-dimensional, almost ever-changing in shape and size.  Underlying all these different dimensions, all our efforts are seeking to deal with a central question: how can we best extend purposeful longevity and preserve quality of life?

In many parts of the world, life expectancy has improved over the years with better-quality and more accessible healthcare.

Between 2000 and 2021, the World Health Organization estimates that global life expectancy increased by 4.6 years to reach 71.4.

However, during the same period, healthy life expectancy grew by only 3.8 years, to 61.9.

In other words, healthspans – the proportion of life spent in good health – have not kept pace with lifespans.

Here in Singapore, our average lifespan is about 84 years and our average healthspan is about 74 years.
 
This means that the average Singaporean suffers 10 years of ill health at the final stage of life. I learnt from the US National Academy of Medicine that this 10 year gap between healthspans and lifespans is also the case in many countries around the world. 

Extending purposeful longevity also means tackling other issues that arise as individuals age, such as social isolation.

In Singapore, for example, the number of seniors living alone more than doubled in a decade – from around 28,000 in 2010 to almost 64,000 in 2020. In fact, one of the booths at the showcase outside looks at how music can be used to support seniors facing isolation, and promote greater community interaction. 

As our seniors age, it is important that they feel cared for not only in medical terms.
 
They must also feel valued as individuals in their families, organisations, communities and societies.

There is therefore a need to take a more holistic approach to tackling the ageing challenge. 

Integrated care is a critical part of such a holistic approach, which we are putting in place here in Singapore as well as in many other countries.

By combining medical interventions, such as early detection and diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation, with social care and support, integrated care addresses the full spectrum of seniors’ health and social needs.

This enables them to maintain their autonomy, dignity and well-being as they age.

In 2023, Singapore launched a Refreshed Action Plan for Successful Ageing centred on three ‘C’s.

i. The first ‘C’ is Care – to empower seniors to take charge of their physical and mental well-being.

ii. The second ‘C’ is Contribution – to enable seniors to remain active in sharing their knowledge and expertise, and thereby stay resilient.

iii. The third ‘C’ is Connectedness – to support seniors to age-in-place within their built environment, and to stay connected to loved ones and the wider community.

To support this Action Plan, the Government has also set aside S$3.5 billion over the next decade to implement Age Well SG – our national programme to support our seniors in ageing well in the community.

One major focus under Age Well SG is growing our network of Active Ageing Centres or AACs.
 
Located in our residential neighbourhoods, these serve as nodes for seniors to stay socially engaged and physically active. 

AACs do this by offering programmes that promote preventive healthcare, communal interactions and learning.

Through door-to-door visits over the past two years, our Silver Generation Ambassadors 
have engaged more than 480,000 seniors to better understand their needs and connect them to these AACs.

We now have a network of more than 210 AACs. We aim to reach 220 island-wide by 2025, 
at which point eight in 10 seniors will have access to AACs in the vicinity of their homes. 

I have seen firsthand the positive impact that these AACs have on seniors in my East Coast constituency,. by mingling with one another, forming strong support networks and learning new skills.

At the same time, scaling up and deepening the impact of integrated care will take more than just effort and investment by government. 

Many governments around the world face different fiscal pressures.
 
An ageing population is an important priority, but governments also have to deal with other national concerns.

In addition, governments may not have the right expertise including in areas like public health, assistive robotics and behavioural sciences, to pursue impactful innovations in integrated care.

Therefore, developing networks of multidisciplinary stakeholders – across the public, private and people’s sectors – is critical in unlocking new solutions in this domain.

I am happy to see some of the collaborations between SUSS and your partners at the showcase outside earlier. Developing these networks of multidisciplinary stakeholders, not just within Singapore but also across the world, will be hugely valuable. 

Our universities and institutions in Singapore are pursuing different streams of research that support our national efforts on ageing.

a. For example, the National University Health System has set up a Centre for Healthy Longevity to study how healthy life expectancy can be extended.

b. The Singapore University of Technology and Design has a Programme on Ageing Urbanism to improve our understanding of the needs of seniors in cities, and to develop innovative solutions to meet these needs.

c. At the Singapore Management University, the Centre for Research on Successful Ageing conducts research on the economic, physical, mental and social well-being of seniors here in Singapore and across Asia.

d. SUSS itself has also been engaged in research into integrated care for some time.

Through your Age+ Living Lab in Yishun, you offer experiential learning activities and tours to help seniors better understand gerontechnology products that support their mobility, health and living.

This new Intercontinental Alliance for Integrated Care is a valuable network to learn and co-innovate solutions.  

Across countries and continents, our contexts are different in many ways – for example in how our peoples live, how healthcare systems and communities are organised, and as Tai Yong mentioned, in our cultural perspectives, values and norms on ageing.

It is precisely this diversity, and the diverse solutions that we are piloting, that provide valuable learning. 

Singapore has drawn useful lessons from the experience of our friends, across Asia and globally, to strengthen our own efforts in improving the well-being of our seniors.

Under our Live Well, Age Well Programme, for example, we have mainstreamed community-based pilots such as the Healthy Ageing Promotion Programme for You, or HAPPY, to help our seniors improve mental alertness while enhancing functional ability and strength.

This was adapted from a dual-task programme from the National Center for Geriatrics and Gerontology in Japan.

We are also tapping on international experts to guide the development of the Health District @ Queenstown, a project by NUS, the National University Health System and the Housing Development Board.

This project aims to identify effective, scalable and sustainable programmes to address the challenges of an ageing population in Queenstown, a precinct in Singapore with more than 20% of its population aged over 65.

Specific programmes include testing integrated healthcare and social service teams in public housing neighbourhoods and developing Ibasho (ee-ba-show) hubs for seniors to engage one another. 

I am happy to see that this Intercontinental Alliance brings together 13 like-minded partners spanning Singapore, Thailand, China, Canada, Brunei and the UK – each of whom is paying close attention to managing our ageing populations.
 
Nine of these institutions are collaborating with SUSS for the first time.
 
And as Tai Yong said earlier, the aim is to grow this network further.

As you focus on your five core themes, I encourage all partners to leverage your respective expertise and strengths to sharpen your collective capabilities and pursue impactful innovations.

In this regard, I also commend SUSS for establishing a new node dedicated to advancing integrated care.

Drawing on the expertise from SUSS as well as other Intercontinental Alliance partners, this new node will serve as both an operational and research hub, translating research insights into practical solutions based in the community.

Through this node, the Intercontinental Alliance will work on new models of integrated care that will first be piloted in Singapore with the aim of scaling these solutions regionally and globally in future.

Let me also acknowledge UQPay Pte Ltd and the Singapore International Mastery Contests Centre for their support in kickstarting this new node.

It is encouraging that the Intercontinental Alliance is established, at the outset, with a bias for action.

This builds on SUSS’ distinctive edge – the strong connections you have developed with frontline organisations and practitioners in our social and healthcare sectors.

Last year, SUSS launched collaborations with seven local healthcare and social sector partners, including the Agency for Integrated Care, to develop talent and deepen capabilities and expertise in integrated care.

Today, you are launching three more chapters – with St Luke’s Eldercare, Tsao Foundation, and TOUCH Community Services.

These chapters and partnerships will help to accelerate the translation of research insights from the Intercontinental Alliance into real-world solutions that improve lives on the ground.

Likewise, SUSS’ collaboration with Alibaba Cloud through the Cloud Prize Competition will also foster greater innovation in integrated care across Alliance partners by tapping on cloud computing and AI to build new capabilities.

In closing, congratulations once again to SUSS and your global partners on the launch of this new Intercontinental Alliance for Integrated Care.

It represents an exciting new chapter in bringing together the best minds globally to push the boundaries of innovation in this very important domain.

This will deliver better health and well-being outcomes for seniors – here in Singapore, across Asia and the world.

By bringing partners from across the world, we can have a rich diversity of contexts and approaches.  

Some solutions may be contextually appropriate to specific regions or countries, while others will have global relevance. 

I hope that Singapore can serve as a Global-Asia node, bringing together partners from across the world to work on tackling common challenges.

I encourage SUSS to continue expanding your network of collaborators through the Intercontinental Alliance, as well as to deepen linkages between the Alliance and other like-minded research institutions in Singapore.

By working together more closely across institutions, borders and regions, we can amplify impactful innovation, create lasting solutions, and drive meaningful change for all our peoples. 

Thank you very much and I wish you all a wonderful evening.