At a glance:

• Learn how OneNUHS mobile app incorporates clinical care plan functions and patient support capabilities for service transformation to better engage patients and simplify care.


• Find out how the team exceeded the delivery of two Minimum Viable Products (MVP) from conceptualisation to delivery in 12 months.


• Hear how the first public healthcare cluster implementation of Teleconsultation in a mobile app improves both patient and provider experience.


• Access health information and services on OneNUHS mobile app across NUHS institutions.


• OneNUHS mobile app has been downloaded >176,000 times, and has surpassed 6,485 daily active users (as at end-September 2021), with positive feedback from users.

In today’s digital economy, compounded by Singapore’s space and manpower challenges, the traditional physical counter for service delivery needs to evolve. The process is cumbersome and reactive to changes in demand, resulting in choke points during peak periods.

When the National University Health System (NUHS) decided to embark on service transformation to enhance patient’s experience, it chose to adopt a mobile first strategy – to allow NUHS to better engage patients through the use of a mobile app and simplify care by empowering them to manage and influence their health outcomes.

NUHS partnered IHiS to create the OneNUHS mobile app, a “digital front door” to address patients’ pain points, leveraging IHiS’ experience in digitalising patient experience via HealthHub, the national platform offering citizens a convenient and secured way to access a suite of digital health services and personalised health content. The collaboration helped NUHS to break new ground with their digital mobile app to transform the way their patients engage with them, it also provided learning opportunities for IHiS’ HealthHub team to enhance and deliver better user experiences in HealthHub and other clusters’ mobile apps. Thanks to the close teamwork, it took only 12 months to conceptualise and develop the first two versions of the OneNUHS mobile app that were launched in December 2020 and April 2021 respectively, based on an agreed roadmap.

With MVP2, users can view and make payment for outstanding bills with OneNUHS mobile app and enable caregiver consent to access functions of the app on behalf of their dependents. Thanks to the support of IHiS’ HealthHub team which provided domain expertise for the introduction of HealthHub Standard pages and Caregiver Access, the delivery of these features was expedited. In the latest MVP3 released in August 2021, teleconsultation, and the ability to view COVID-19 records were added, together with a host of enhancements to existing features.

The end-to-end teleconsultation patient journey is in the OneNUHS mobile app, including viewing a teleconsult appointment, receiving teleconsultation reminders, viewing the patient queue, ordering medications for home delivery, requesting a medical certificate and making payment. The inclusion of a Video Conference Platform (VCP) in the OneNUHS mobile app makes managing teleconsults much easier for support staff by automatically scheduling Zoom sessions and sending reminders for teleconsultations. Both patients and providers gave good reviews of the first 50 teleconsults and provided valuable feedback to improve teleconsultation functionality in future releases.

These achievements were made possible because:

• NUHS and IHiS counted on the strong support from the senior management of both organisations and close engagement of stakeholders/users. Senior leaders at NUHS and IHIS met on a weekly basis to provide hands-on guidance to the project team. Senior management was also actively consulted for advice in joint monthly meetings.


• A collaborative effort. IHIS delivery team adopted the Agile methodology and the guiding principles of MVP – Methodology, Values-driven mindset and Product oriented design in developing OneNUHS mobile app. The teams worked closely to leverage existing technology built within HealthHub and extended its functionalities to OneNUHS mobile app at speed while minimising rework. Both the NUHS and IHIS teams worked closely to plan out feature roadmap and progress through two-week based sprint cycles. The IHIS team also provided regular updates to and sought timely feedback from NUHS leadership on the work-in-progress deliverables, so that the teams could continue to refine the deliverables in next sprint cycle.
  

The Making of OneNUHS Mobile App

“Our partnership with NUHS is a fruitful one,” said Jackling Yeo, IHiS’ Assistant Director, Digital & Integration Services, Digital Services and Solutions. “Our teams worked closely to translate NUHS’ patient care protocol into OneNUHS mobile app to transform their service delivery. By tapping on our experience in the development of HealthHub and SingHealth’s Health Buddy, we were able to leapfrog the development process and explore new capabilities faster for NUHS, including the integration of intelligent capabilities (Chatbot) developed by the NUHS GCTO office.”

“As the national service provider for the key healthcare electronic medical records and source system, IHIS also provided value-add and scalability with advice on IT security and seamless interface with source systems and the national-wide healthcare ecosystem of services.”

About OneNUHS Mobile App

OneNUHS Mobile App users will be able to access health information and services across the following NUHS institutions:

• National University Hospital
  
• Ng Teng Fong General Hospital
  
• Alexandra Hospital
  
• Jurong Community Hospital
  
• National University Polyclinics
  
• National University Heart Centre, Singapore
  
• National University Cancer Institute, Singapore
  
• National University Centre for Oral Health, Singapore
  
• Jurong Medical Centre
  

Patients are able to:

Unique Features of OneNUHS Mobile App:

• Access the OneNUHS mobile app with biometric data such as fingerprint and facial recognition


• Obtain recommendations on health screenings and vaccinations based on their demographics and health status through the NUHS MyHealthMap programme


• Interact with the chatbot on clinic operating hours and other commonly asked questions


• Teleconsultation Patient Journey within the mobile app (to be progressively rolled out to all NUHS institutions)

Other Features of OneNUHS Mobile App:

• Link to ‘MyInfo’ in SingPass for convenient set up of ‘My Profile’


• Pre-fill appointment and medication request forms with their contact details once ‘My Profile’ has been set up


• Manage their appointments and receive notifications for appointments


• Register on the go and check their queue status


• Request for medication refills or top-ups


• Request, purchase and download their medical reports directly


• View and make payment for outstanding bills


• View health records such as lab test results, immunisation and prescription records


• Enable caregiver consent to access functions of the OneNUHS mobile app

OneNUHS Mobile App tailored to NUHS users’ needs

So, what is the difference between the national healthcare app HealthHub and the OneNUHS mobile app?

“Imagine HealthHub as a large shopping mall with access to a wide range of health content and e-services in a secured and safe environment,” explained Low Jinrui, Senior Manager, NUHS Group Service Transformation. “HealthHub provides a convenient option giving you access to medical services across all public hospitals and clinics in Singapore. Cluster apps like the OneNUHS mobile app are like specialty boutiques filled with curated content for target users who are NUHS patients and also residents in the western region. OneNUHS mobile app offers greater convenience for NUHS-cluster users as its offerings are tailored to our users’ needs and requirements.”

Accolades from OneNUHS Mobile App

According to Similarweb, the OneNUHS mobile app was among the top four most popular healthcare and fitness app in Singapore, after HealthHub which topped the list (as at 3 September 2021), with a rating of 4.5 out of 5 on both Apple Apps and Google Play Store.

Since its soft launch, OneNUHS mobile app has been downloaded >176,000 times, and has surpassed 6,485 daily active users (as at end-September 2021), with positive feedback from users. The most popular features of the OneNUHS mobile app are:

1. Managing appointments, 
2. Payment and
3. Request for medication.

User feedback

“App is simple and good.”

“I never heard of the app until 10 minutes ago when I searched for the pharmacy phone number on the Internet. Now I have made a medical refill application. Well Done.”

“It’s more convenient than a physical piece of paper, especially if I have multiple appointments on the same day.”

“I like OneNUHS App… easy to use and GUI is simple and nice… I can even check my test results.”

Future of OneNUHS Mobile App