SINGAPORE - With over six years of private sector experience, the new chief of NHG Health brings a strong sense of financial discipline to his role, a quality that is evident in how he manages the cluster.

NHG Health group chief executive Joe Sim said that having good financial discipline is not merely about cost savings, but also ensuring that monies are spent in value creation, a point he has emphasised repeatedly to his staff.

“We have many good use cases which makes sense to be used in healthcare. But having a good use case is not the same as having a good business case,” said Professor Sim.

He highlighted this point by referencing pilot programmes aimed at deploying

artificial intelligence (AI) in healthcare

. The costs of such pilots are usually absorbed by the Ministry of Health, which means the financial burden is not immediately evident to the clusters conducting them. However, the costs could influence their decision to formally adopt the AI tool after the pilot phase to benefit more patients.

Prof Sim stressed the importance of knowing the costs early on, as some cases offer moderate benefits but come with disproportionately high costs.

“For such cases, we should junk them instead,” said Prof Sim, rather than finding out much later that these are not financially sustainable to scale up.

Before taking over the reins of NHG Health, Prof Sim was the group chief operating officer and acting group CEO of IHH Healthcare Berhad, which has more than 80 hospitals across 10 countries, including the Mount Elizabeth hospitals in Singapore.

Before joining IHH, he was with the National University Health System. He had also taught at Nanyang Business School, and worked at government ministries and private companies.

Financial discipline has become even more critical followin...