University of Texas Southwestern Medical Center; USA

Speaker bio to follow. 

Chief Medical Officer, Centre for National Health Insurance, Kingdon of Saudi Arabia; Saudi Arabia

Dr. Azhar Ali is Chief Medical Officer at the Center for National Health Insurance (CNHI) in Saudi Arabia. He is also currently a faculty and formerly Head of Middle East & Asia-Pacific at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI). He is a trained Improvement Advisor and has a deep understanding of healthcare systems around the world both from his experience as a JCI surveyor as well as through his role at IHI. Dr. Ali is also a Consultant in Family Medicine and has over 20 years of clinical experience. Dr. Ali is a graduate of the University of Glasgow and Imperial College, London, and he holds an MBA (with distinction) from the University of Strathclyde. Dr. Ali is a member of the Royal College of General Practitioners (UK) and the Faculty of Medical Leadership and Management (FMLM) and is a Fellow of the The Chartered Institute for IT (BCS) and Fellow of the Royal Society of Public Health in the UK.

 

Wednesday 13 August 2025 | 09:30-16:30

Format: Workshop

Quality improvement holds massive potential to reduce health care delivery operating costs by improving clinical outcomes. While the first step in such a journey is mastering project-focused “data-based problem solving” (green belt-level quality), a giant pile of projects does not form a system. Deming’s “System of Production” (black belt-level quality) involves understanding care delivery operations as a complex set of interacting processes, then building a management system to optimize cost effective production. This half-day course will lay out the functional structure and tools for a clinical System of Production, illustrated through successful clinical examples. Any care delivery group that hopes to succeed under a value-based care framework, will at some point need to successfully deploy such an approach.

Brent James Stanford University School of Medicine; USA

National University Health System; Singapore

Mr Gilbert Yuen is an experienced volunteer with over 15 years of volunteering experience. He has experience volunteering with several senior organisations. As a NUHS volunteer leader, he helps to train and guide new volunteers. Gilbert is passionate about community work and provides peer and befriending support to residents in the community.

ESTHER Network; Singapore

Speaker bio to follow. 

Senior Principal Pharmacist, Changi General Hospital; Singapore

Yasmin Ng is a Senior Principal Pharmacist at Changi General Hospital (CGH), currently seconded to Group Pharmacy, SingHealth. In her current role, she serves as the pharmacy domain lead for the Epic electronic medical record (EMR) implementation, where she is responsible for resource planning, leading change management and fostering cross-institution collaboration to standardise pharmacy workflows within the SingHealth cluster.

From September 2021 to January 2024, Yasmin was a Senior Improvement Specialist with the National Improvement Unit. Under the National Diabetes Collaborative, she managed SingHealth quality improvement initiatives, notably serving as the improvement advisor for the SGH-NKF CLEAR & BLAST project. This project focused on preventing occluded tunneled hemodialysis catheters (THC) and upskilling community nurses to perform unblocking of THC to reduce hospital admissions, and has since been successfully scaled to other community dialysis centres.

Between 2013 and August 2021, Yasmin co-chaired the CGH Medication Safety Committee and led key initiatives such as optimising smart pump drug libraries, launching the “Good Catch” error reporting programme, and co-developing barcode-assisted medication preparation application with nursing. In 2021, she led a multidisciplinary team that received the SingHealth Family Target Zero Harm Team Award. Her innovations were further recognized with the SingHealth Allied Health Innovative Practice Award for inventing the Syringe Brake, a patented dosage flow restrictor to prevent bolus administration errors, and the Allied Health Professionals (AHP) Safety Advocator Award.

An advocate for Just Culture, Yasmin is certified in the IHI Improvement Advisor Programme and is a trained Change Leader and Oro® 2.0 facilitator.

Tan Tock Seng Hospital; Singapore

Dr. Gervais Khin-Lin Wansaicheong is a prominent healthcare professional known for his dedication to patient safety and clinical quality. He has spent many years at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, where he implemented innovative strategies to enhance safety protocols and improve clinical practices. He is a Senior Consultant in Diagnostic Radiology with an interest in Breast Imaging.

Currently, Dr. Wansaicheong is also an Associate Professor at the LKC School of Medicine and serves as the clinical lead for patient safety. He emphasizes evidence-based practices and has contributed to numerous publications and conferences, sharing insights on clinical quality. Dr. Wansaicheong is recognized for his commitment to fostering a safe healthcare environment and exemplifies the qualities of a compassionate physician and dedicated leader in patient safety.

Senior Consultant Anaesthesiologist, National University Hospital; Singapore

Sophia Ang was a graduate of NUS medical school in 1990 and obtained her Master of Medicine Anaesthesia in 1995. She specialised in cardiac anaesthesia and completed a year of cardiac anaesthesia training in Massachusetts General Hospital in 1998 to 1999 and another year in Texas Heart Institute in 1999 to 2000.

Sophia is interested in promoting and teaching patient safety. She is the Vice Chairman Medical Board for National University Health Systems( Clinical Governance and Medicolegal ) with interest in projects promoting patient safety such as critical laboratory test communication, reduction of failure to rescue and proper handover of care. Currently she is a member of the Singapore Medical Council and an advisor to the Ministry of Health . She is also the curriculum lead for patient safety at the Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine. She helped to develop interprofessional patient safety workshop and patient safety curricula at the medical school and for new hospital staff at junior and senior leadership level.

Sophia was awarded the Public service excellence Gold award in 2011 and was leader of the team awarded the Singapore National Medical Excellence Team award in 2012 for Communication of critical laboratory tests. She was previously a Patient safety consultant with the Ministry of Health and a representative at in the WHO High 5 Patient Safety Project in which her team in National University of Singapore was awarded best poster for implementation of Correct Site Surgery in 2012 at WHO High 5 Project Seminar. In 2020 she received a Bronze National Day Award for Administration work in the area of Patient Safety.

She was previously the President of Singapore Society of Anaesthesia 2006 and immediate President of the Patient Safety Special Interest Group for AMEE 2022-2023( Association of European Medical Education ). She is currently the lead in the selection track for AMEE for patient safety abstracts for 2025 and also in 2024.

Tan Tock Seng Hospital; Singapore

Dr Chiu Li Qi is a Senior Consultant Emergency Physician and Lead for the Clinical Practice Improvement Programme at Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Singapore. She helmed the role of Quality Review Officer in the Emergency Department for 7 years prior. She is also a Faculty of the National Healthcare Group Institute of Healthcare Quality and actively involved in content development and instruction. In 2022, she completed a Master in Health Care Management at the Harvard Chan School of Public Health. Her interests include driving and spreading continuous quality improvement and measurement for quality. Her clinical interests are in trauma and acute care.

Senior Consultant to Group Quality, National Health Group (NHG); Singapore

A/Prof Tai Hwei Yee is a Senior Consultant to Group Quality, National Health Group ( NHG) and Emeritus Consultant, Tan Tock Seng Hospital, Department of Anesthesia and Intensive Care Medicine. She is also a Part-time Consultant to Ministry of Health, Singapore for Quality and Patient Safety.

A/Prof Tai had served as Chief Quality Officer, NHG, Director of Institute of Healthcare Quality, NHG, Assistant Chairman, Medical Board for Clinical Quality at Tan Tock Seng Hospital (TTSH).

She has been involved in various transformational projects and programs. She was a proponent of using casemix data to drive better clinical care and improve value. She set up the first nurse-led Pre-anaesthesia Assessment and Counselling Service in TTSH and was the first in Singapore to introduce an acute hospital model of Case Management in 2001. She worked to establish the Quality and Patient Safety framework in TTSH and NHG and led or participated in Patient Safety Collaboratives and Adverse Event studies in NHG. She co-chaired a 45 institution national collaborative to reduce harm under Singapore Healthcare Improvement Network (SHINe). She also served as the inaugural Quality and Patient Safety lead for the Lee Kong Chian School of Medicine.

Prof Tai was recognised by NHG for her contributions, receiving multiple awards including the NHG Lifetime Achievement Award. She was also honoured by MOH with the National Medical Excellence Award as a Clinical Quality Activist.