Singapore's health data bill mandates regulated information sharing

To ensure data disclosure and sharing, the Ministry of Health can impose up to $1m in fines for non-compliance.

Many private healthcare providers have yet to adopt the National Electronic Health Record (NEHR), even though it has been available as a central repository for patient records since 2011. As of October 2023, only a 15% participation rate has been recorded.

To encourage data sharing amongst healthcare providers, the government introduced the Healthcare Information Bill (HIB) that will make health data sharing mandatory.

“The Ministry of Health has identified that healthcare needs would become more complex as the population ages. This will entail more Singaporeans experiencing chronic conditions, having to visit various healthcare institutions and rely on multiple healthcare providers. The MOH expects that Singapore’s healthcare system will become more diverse, as it is continually evolving to meet the different demands of the population,” Lim Ren Jun, principal and co-lead of Healthcare & Life Sciences Industry Group at Baker McKenzie Wong & Leow, told Singapore Business Review. 

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