Lien Fellow Speakers Series 2026: Senior Minister of State Mr Tan Kiat How Shares Singapore’s AI in Healthcare Vision

The Nanyang Centre for Public Administration (NCPA) at Nanyang Technological University, Singapore, hosted the Lien Fellow Speakers Series 2026 on 1 April 2026. The session, themed “AI in Healthcare,” featured Mr Tan Kiat How, Senior Minister of State at the Ministry of Health and the Ministry of Digital Development and Information. Introduced by Professor Liu Hong, Associate Vice President (International) and Director (Research & Executive Education) of NCPA, the event brought together about 200 participants, including staff, faculty, students, and overseas visitors.

Mr Tan opened the session by addressing Singapore’s demographic challenge: with the population ageing rapidly, the healthcare system must transform to deliver care that is accessible, preventive, and community-centred. Drawing on several key AI initiatives in Singapore’s healthcare system, he demonstrated how AI is already driving this transformation by bringing care closer to people and communities, empowering healthcare professionals, and enhancing care delivery. 

A significant part of Mr Tan’s dialogue explored critical policy considerations that accompany AI adoption in healthcare. He addressed the importance of balancing innovation pace with patient safety, ensuring data privacy while enabling data access to develop AI models, building the institutional readiness for effective AI adoption across diverse clinical environments, and designing for equity while ensuring efficiency. He also reflected on the longer-term implications for healthcare professionals, stressing that technology should augment human judgment rather than replace it, and that cultivating clinical experience and critical thinking remains essential. 

Mr Tan shared on Singapore’s approach to navigating these challenges: importance of collaboration between stakeholders, sound regulatory frameworks that support responsible innovation, and international partnerships to share learning across borders. The session concluded with a lively Q&A on regulatory developments, public trust, and the enduring role of human expertise in an AI-enabled healthcare landscape. The dialogue exemplified NCPA’s mission to connect emerging leaders with senior policymakers at the frontier of governance challenges that span technology, society, and public service.