Government & Policy

As part of the slew of improvements that the National Electronic Health Record (NEHR) will receive, more healthcare institutions within the country will also be brought on board to contribute to the NEHR. Majority of these security enhancements and upgrades will be expected to be completed by the end of this year. This involves both technical and process enhancements as well as a thorough external review which will be conducted independently. The contribution of patients’ electronic health records to the NEHR will also be mandated in the future. Such measures have been implemented following an unprecedented cyber-attack on SingHealth’s IT system. In light of the COVID-19 pandemic which has escalated globally, the upgrades of the NEHR system will also enable it to meet the requirements for COVID-19 vaccination display, reporting and alerts as well. Healthcare experts will also be able to have easy access to their patients’ COVID-19 test results as well as their existing medical conditions prior to the vaccination via the NEHR. THE LARGER TREND Cybersecurity statistics have indicated that there has been a huge increase in the number of occurrences of hacking as well as breached data from sources such as mobile devices as well as IoT devices which are becoming increasingly common in medical facilities.  A reported 68% of business leaders have also expressed their opinions that cybersecurity risks are increasing. As such, it is imperative for healthcare organizations to ramp up their efforts to strengthen their technical as well as security infrastructure within their systems in order to ensure that the sensitive healthcare data of patients remains secure.  ON THE RECORD “Data security remains a key priority” Dr. Puthucheary, the Senior Minister of State explained and that the NEHR system has also been a “key enabler” in facilitating the provision of medical care during this pandemic by serving as a repository of patients’ medical records.

HealthCerts, an amalgamation of cryptographic hashes, blockchain technology, privacy protection and proof identity, is a set of open-source digital standards which is utilised for the issuing of digital COVID-19 test result certificates. Developed jointly by the Government Technology Agency of Singapore (GovTech) and the Ministry of Health (MOH), this new standard will help facilitate and hasten the clearing of travellers at immigration checkpoints both locally and internationally. HOW IT WORKS From March 10 onwards, travellers who go through a pre-departure COVID-19 test at selected authorised clinics in Singapore will receive their results digitally in the form of a certificate that is automatically loaded into HealthCerts. This can be manifested in the form of an attachment or URL link to the digital certificate. Subsequently, these travellers will have to upload their digital certificate to a separate website called Notarise. This website enables locally-issued certificates to be formally endorsed by the MOH so that they can be recognised at Singapore’s Changi Airport as well as foreign airports.  Upon successful completion of this process, travellers will receive another digital pre-departure test certificate containing a QR code via email and/or the SingPass mobile application. Every local in Singapore has a SingPass which stands for Singapore Personal Access and is the digital identity of every Singaporean, allowing each Singaporean to gain secure access to a plethora of government and private sector services both online and in person. Upon reaching the immigration checkpoint at airports, travellers can then present the notarized certificate displaying the QR code either in a hard copy format or as a digital copy for verification purposes. By utilising the platform Verify, airline crew and immigration authorities will be able to check on the authenticity of the digital certificate simply by scanning the QR code. The in-built system within the platform can then determine if the certificate was tampered with or notarised by the MOH. THE LARGER TREND In the wake of COVID-19, countries all around the globe have tightened healthcare measures at their borders, requiring passengers to provide proof of a negative COVID-19 test or in some cases, a COVID-19 vaccination record took prior to the flight before being allowed to board the plane. However, in certain countries in Europe, such as Brazil, France and the UK, there has been a sharp rise in the number of fake COVID-19 certificates available on the black market. This undermines the efforts of governments to put a tight rein on healthcare checks in an effort to mitigate the spread of the disease. As such, it is inevitable that digital systems such as HealthCerts would become increasingly popular over time as globally, governments would seek out ways to eradicate such issues and eventually be able to safely open up air travel once more. ON THE RECORD GovTech mentioned that it has  “open-sourced the HealthCerts schema, and the code for the issuance, verification, certificate storage and display modules, which facilitates wider adoption by private sector companies or other governments”, allowing for other countries to adopt similar systems.  “Only this hash is needed to check the authenticity and validity of the digital certificate” Smart Nation and Digital Government Group added, emphasizing that the individual’s data will remain secure as only a hash which will serve as a digital fingerprint is published to the blockchain once it is issued.  

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