New Bedok hospital campus will be pandemic-ready and tech-enabled

The EGH Campus will have about 1,400 beds and be ready by 2030

- Chin Soo Fang

A new hospital campus will add about 1,400 beds to augment Singapore's healthcare capacity, bringing services closer to residents in the eastern region by 2030.

Located beside Bedok North MRT station, the campus comprises the Eastern General Hospital (EGH) and the Eastern Community Hospital. Collectively known as the EGH Campus, it will open around 2029 to 2030 and will be operated by SingHealth.

EGH will provide a comprehensive suite of emergency care as well as inpatient and outpatient clinical specialities.

The Eastern Community Hospital will offer continuing and rehabilitative care services, including specialised programmes for palliative patients and dementia patients, and those with other medical conditions to improve their work ability and facilitate an early return to work.

Minister for Health Ong Ye Kung, who officiated the ground-breaking ceremony in Bedok North on April 20, said the EGH will incorporate new, unique features that differentiate it from other general hospitals.

First, it will be a more pandemicready hospital.

"The planning and design process benefited from the Covid-19 experience," Mr Ong said in his address. "The team has thus designed EGH to have wards that can be quickly converted for isolation use, and to accommodate the need for bed surges." Working spaces can also be quickly segregated to support new work arrangements during a pandemic, without major modifications to the building infrastructure.

Second, EGH will have information technology infrastructure that is designed and incorporated from the outset, and its personnel will be trained to deliver telemedicine more effectively.

For example, during teleconsultation, doctors can ask if patients are keeping up with their exercises, but are not able to verify what the patients say.