At the official groundbreaking ceremony of the Eastern General and Community Hospitals, Minister for Health, Mr Ong Ye Kung, shared about innovations that combine physical healthcare services with digital technology to better care for patients and the community.



The road towards the development of the Eastern General and Community Hospitals (EGH Campus) reached a major milestone with its groundbreaking ceremony. Officiated by Minister for Health, Mr Ong Ye Kung, the ceremony was held in conjunction with the hospital’s Community Day event and attended by close to 1,000 healthcare professionals, grassroots and community partners, and residents on Saturday, 20 April. The EGH Campus will consist of two hospitals: Eastern General Hospital (EGH) and Eastern Community Hospital (ECH). EGH will provide emergency, acute and secondary patient care, and specialty clinical services, while ECH will focus on rehabilitative care and offer dedicated palliative and dementia services to patients.



EGH intends to start running virtual wards around 2026. The hospital’s healthcare professionals will be nested in SingHealth hospitals such as Changi General Hospital (CGH) as they tap on digital solutions — including real-time remote monitoring, telemedicine and wearable technology — to monitor and communicate with eligible patients recovering at home. This will form the SingHealth@Home mobile inpatient care programme, to enhance and expand the programme’s capacity. With this, EGH will be the first general hospital to deliver services before the completion of its physical infrastructure. “EGH represents a good balance between innovation, continuous improvement, and also standardisation for efficiency and quality,” said Mr Ong.


Slated to be completed around 2029–30, the approximately 1,400-bed campus will provide patient-centred care to residents in the east of Singapore.

Outlining EGH’s mission, Professor Lee Chien Earn, Chairman, EGH Hospital Planning Committee, and Deputy Group CEO (Regional Health System), SingHealth, said: “The new Eastern General and Community Hospitals will serve residents who need urgent, acute as well as continuing medical care. We are also working with our community partners to make the Campus a hospital without walls, where we help residents who are ready for community-based care complete their recovery journey in the comfort of their homes with their loved ones, neighbours and friends close by. Additionally, through close collaborations with our primary care and community partners, we aim to help residents in the east proactively take charge of and regain their health so that they can live long and well.”

Watch this video about the future EGH Campus:


Human touch in digitally enabled hospital campus

To fulfil this mission, EGH Campus will be digitally enabled, with IT infrastructure designed and incorporated from the outset, and trained staff to deliver telemedicine.

For example, ECH aims to harness smart technology such as wearable sensors and AI-assisted applications for patients to continue with their rehabilitation exercise post-discharge, enabling physiotherapists to customise exercise programmes for patients, and remotely monitor and track patients’ recovery progress while they await for their community rehabilitation to commence.

While technology will help streamline processes and augment patient care, the human touch remains crucial for personalised care and fostering meaningful connections. Care teams will familiarise patients with the devices during their hospital stay so that they will feel confident to use it back home.


EGH and ECH will also continue to work closely with partners in the region as an integrated approach to empower patients to get well and live well in the community.

For example, ECH will collectively work with partners to deliver seamless care transitions for patients from hospital to home, enabled by SingHealth Community Hospitals’ social prescribing programme that connects patients with community assets to support their overall well-being.

The ‘One SingHealth’ approach

Despite being the newest hospital campus in the cluster, Prof Lee said that its “workforce draws expertise from hospitals and speciality centres within SingHealth”. Calling it the ‘One SingHealth’ approach, Prof Lee shared that the EGH Campus will tap on SingHealth healthcare professionals’ wealth of experience in the planning, design and delivery of patient care.

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