Strategic exploitation of information and communication technology in the healthcare sector

Abstract

Among the various industrial sectors in Singapore, healthcare was the first to exploit broadband technology. In 1997, the Singapore General Hospital installed a broadband backbone even before the technology was generally viable. Today, the system supports the transmission of high-quality X-rays, CT- and MRI-scanned images, and electrocardiogram. And the latest decision is to supplement the existing facilities with wireless technology.

This paper examines the strategic use of infocomm technology in the healthcare sector focusing on some recent technologies such as electronic data interchange, the Internet, e-commerce, broadband network and wireless technology. The patient-friendliness and the intelligence level of the entire healthcare sector are also analyzed. Besides, the strong coupling between human minds and artificial infocomm systems in healthcare may have stretched the interactions between the two systems into the nonlinear domain. The consequences may be a more innovative development of new infocomm systems and a more strategic exploitation of infocomm technology.