SINGAPORE: MaNaDr, which had its clinic licence revoked last year for providing very short teleconsultations, has introduced new safeguards such as requiring these sessions to last at least one minute before a medical certificate (MC) can be issued.
This is one way the company is looking to tackle the questionable practices that were uncovered at its clinic located at the City Gate mixed development mall along Beach Road last year.
At a press conference on Wednesday (Apr 2), its co-founder and chief executive officer Siaw Tung Yeng said that the firm has also mandated audio recordings for all teleconsultations held, as well as tightened the onboarding process of clinics and doctors using its platform.
In addition, artificial intelligence (AI) has been used to enhance clinical standards such as an AI-powered note-taker that transcribes interactions between doctors and patients, as well as to consolidate prescribed treatment plans and other relevant medical records.
Having such an automated tool will allow doctors to “focus more on patient care”, Dr Siaw added.
So far, the AI model has been trained through 6,000 teleconsultations and has a “more than 90 per cent” accuracy rate.
Moving forward, MaNaDr intends to build on that and roll out an AI-powered “checker” that can assess these patient notes and suggest questions for doctors to ask during consultations and recommend alternative treatments.
“We respect and acknowledge the findings and decisions by (the Ministry of Health) … and have strengthened our platform’s governance and compliance, training and education with AI safeguards and innovation,” Dr Siaw said.
“While we are not able to govern doctors or clinics as a tech provider, we know we can better ourselves by implementing these guardrails, engaging more with our stakeholders – including clinics and doctors directly – and working closely with the relevant authorities to ensure alignment with best practices.
“Together, we aim to collectively uphold a safe, ethical and effective platform for digital care,” he added in a statement sent to the media after the press conference.
WHAT HAPPENED
On Dec 20, MaNaDr Clinic had its licence revoked by the Ministry of Health (MOH), which said that there was an “entrenched culture of disregard” for ethical and clinical standards.
This meant that the clinic could no longer operate at City Gate or on temporary premises such as patients’ homes or remotely via teleconsultations.
MOH said then that its investigations revealed inappropriate practices such as more than 100,000 teleconsultations in a sampled month lasting one minute or less, with the shortest being just one second.
Others included patients being given multiple MCs over a short period, as well as “questionable and poor” documentation of patient case notes.
