Medicine, technology to the fore at Singapore Medical Week next year

SINGAPORE — With advances in medicine and technology promising to enable earlier detection of diseases and make prediction of diseases possible, how can doctors make good use of it to improve care for their patients?

A conference and expo next August, organised by doctors for fellow doctors and the public, will seek to address this question and more.

The Singapore Medical Week and FutureMed 2017 conference will take place on the week of Aug 24 next year, announced the Singapore Medical Association on Thursday (Nov 3).

American biomedical and innovation expert Ogan Gurel, who will be the keynote speaker of FutureMed 2017. said that instead of diagnosis and treatment of diseases, a doctor’s true value is in prognosis, or communicating to the patient what an illness means for one’s life, family and the activities one is able to do.

“Does the patient really care if it’s Stage 2b small cell lung cancer? ... Ultimately what they care about is what this means for my life,” he added.

If better and more sensitive diagnostic tools are able to take away some of the burden of disease diagnosis from doctors, they would allow the doctors to devote more energy to caring and communicating with the patient, said Associate Professor Nigel Tan, organising chairman of Singapore Medical Week and FutureMed 2017.

Next year’s event will also feature talks for the public, as there is a need to increase medical literacy among the community, said Dr Wong Tien Hua, president of the SMA, which represents the majority of doctors here.

Technology will enable some health-monitoring tools to be used by patients themselves, but patients will need to take more ownership of their healthcare and assume more responsibility for their health, he said. For instance, it is useful for patients to know the medicines they take, what blood pressure levels are considered normal, as well as any drug allergies they have.
The Singapore Medical Week will include the SMA’s annual medical convention, said Dr Wong. 
In future, medication could come in a single pill custom-designed for individuals, and blood sugar could be read through sensors embedded in contact lenses that monitor sugar levels in one’s tears. And the health of blood vessels could be monitored via 3D cardiac imaging instead of cholesterol tests, he said.
“The question really is a matter of how we can bring together new scientific discoveries, advancements in technology and the development of new medical products, and to integrate these various components of healthcare,” he said.