Singapore, 27 November 2024 – SingHealth today announced two key leadership appointments for the upcoming Eastern General Hospital (EGH). Associate Professor Gan Wee Hoe will be appointed Pro-Tem Chief Executive Officer (CEO), EGH, with effect from 1 January 2025. This appointment will be concurrent to his appointment as CEO of SingHealth Community Hospitals (SCH). Associate Professor Augustine Tee will be appointed Pro-Tem Chairman, Medical Board (CMB), EGH, with effect from 1 January 2025. Currently Chairman, Division of Medicine, Changi General Hospital (CGH), he will relinquish this appointment on the same day.
EGH is SingHealth's newest general hospital in the making. It is part of the EGH Campus – which comprises EGH and the Eastern Community Hospital (ECH) – that is expected to open around 2029 to 2030 in Bedok North with 1,400 acute and community hospital beds. When ready, EGH will offer inpatient and outpatient care across a comprehensive suite of medical, surgical and ambulatory care specialties, catering to the health and healthcare needs of patients and the community. Notably, EGH will be the first general hospital designed and equipped to deliver clinical services virtually from 2026, well ahead of its physical completion. This novel concept is in line with it being designed as a purpose-built "phygital" hospital, where it integrates physical and digital solutions to deliver personalised care.
These key leadership appointments are part of SingHealth's efforts to formalise the plans for EGH as the hospital progresses in its development towards operational readiness and the timely completion of its facility.
Pro-Tem CEO, EGH
Prof Gan, an occupational physician by training, has wide-ranging experience in health systems management and leadership. As the CEO of SCH, he successfully led the SCH team in putting together a compelling and winning proposal in the competitive tender for ECH in 2023. He has also been overseeing the introduction of new capabilities in SingHealth's community hospitals, including the development of future community hospitals' models of care and spearheading the Social Prescribing 2.0 initiative[1], among other programmes and services.
Prof Gan has experience in large-scale systems implementation, including in the fields of information technology and medical informatics. He played a leading role in the organisation-wide migration of electronic medical records (EMR) system when he was with the Singapore Armed Forces. In his previous roles as Singapore General Hospital's Chief Medical Informatics Officer and SingHealth's Deputy Group CMIO (Acute Care), he also collaborated extensively with clinician champions to enhance the EMR's clinical decision support capabilities.
As Pro-Tem CEO, EGH, Prof Gan will provide leadership in all aspects of EGH's strategies and operations to realise EGH's aspiration as a centre of excellence in clinical and community care, research, innovation and education. In line with SingHealth's focus on enhancing regional and population health, he will also oversee both capability and capacity building to deliver EGH's population health mandate to the communities of care under its coverage.
Pro-Tem CMB, EGH
Prof Tee has held various leadership roles throughout his distinguished career. As Chairman, Division of Medicine, CGH for the last six years, he was responsible for leading specialists and non-specialist doctors across 12 medical specialty departments. Prof Tee's prior experience as Chief, Department of Respiratory & Critical Care Medicine and later as Chief, Department of Medicine, CGH, was crucial in successfully leading his teams during the COVID-19 pandemic. Prof Tee is also dedicated to improving patient safety at both the hospital and national level, such as through his role as Chair of the National Medication Safety Committee from 2017 to 2022, earning the recognition of the Minister for Health team award in 2019.
Since the start of the planning for EGH, Prof Tee has been the Hospital Clinical Services Lead on the EGH Hospital Planning Committee, where he led in designing and building the foundation of clinical care and service models for the EGH Campus. As Pro-Tem CMB, EGH, Prof Tee will oversee the development of professional services and clinical specialties at EGH, and drive the creation of an environment that encourages clinical excellence, education and research. He will work towards fostering a culture of continuous improvement and innovation to ensure the highest standards of patient outcomes, sustainable practices and compassionate care.
Together with Professor Lee Chien Earn, Deputy Group CEO (Regional Health System), SingHealth, who will continue as the Chairman of the EGH Campus Hospital Planning Committee, and the EGH and SCH teams, Prof Gan and Prof Tee will shape and drive the directions of SingHealth's newest hospital.
"Upon its completion, EGH will significantly augment the capacity of Singapore's healthcare system to meet its increasing healthcare needs as our population ages," said Professor Ng Wai Hoe, Group CEO, SingHealth. "The opportunity to build a new general hospital that is designed and purpose-built to integrate physical healthcare services with digital solutions is a unique and exciting one. I am confident that Wee Hoe, with his keen interests in information technology and medical informatics, and Augustine, with his depth of experience in fostering high-performing clinical teams, will ably lead EGH on its journey to transform care delivery and enhance clinical outcomes for patients and the community."
[1] Social Prescribing 1.0 addresses social determinants of health by linking patients to activities and services in the community to manage issues such as loneliness, social isolation and access to care that impact overall health. In Social Prescribing 2.0, the transformative goal is to activate patients' innate strengths which will enable them to not only be recipients of Social Prescribing support, but also equipped to advocate, volunteer and even lead their peers in health enablement.
