Khoo Teck Puat Hospital

It was reported in Straits Times that the new 550-bed general hospital being built in Yishun is to be named the Khoo Teck Puat Hospital, in acknowledgement of the $125 million donation made by the late hotelier’s family. Of the total, $100 million will be used to fund part of the construction costs, and $5 million will be set aside each year for the next five years towards a welfare fund to help poor and needy patients. When ready in 2010, the new hospital promises to be at the frontline of technology, said Health Minister Khaw yesterday. Speaking to healthcare and information technology professionals at the first Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society conference in the Asia-Pacific, Minister Khaw said the healthcare industry needs to use IT to improve services. The article also reported Minister Khaw as saying “We have seen how technology has transformed the other sectors of the economy…but healthcare unfortunately remains many steps behind other sectors.” In addition, according to chief executive officer of Singhealth Prof Tan Ser Kiat, there are three main challenges in implementing IT in hospitals: money, talent, and mindsets. The report added that some of the new ideas that could be featured in the new hospital include software that shows all available beds at the touch of a button and alerts housekeepers, porters, and nurses on their Wi-Fi phones when beds need to be made or when they are ready for patients.

Khoo Teck Puat was a Malaysian-born banker and hotel owner with an estimated fortune of $2.6 billion, who owned the Goodwood Group of boutique hotels in London and Singapore and was the largest single shareholder of Britain's Standard Chartered Bank, and who was ranked as the 137th richest person in the world by Forbes magazine (and the richest in Singapore), died Feb. 21 of a heart attack in a Singapore hospital at age 86.