Professor Alex Sia Tiong Heng was appointed Chairman, Medical Board, of KK Women’s & Children’s Hospital (KKH) in January 2012. His research interest to improve safety and reliability of care includes the development of closed-loop, automated and computer integrated administration of medications. He has filed three patent applications in this regard. Prof Sia is also involved in research of the pharmacogenomics of pain, particularly in relation with the use of opioids.

He is a Professor and Senior Associate Dean at Duke-NUS Medical School, Singapore. In addition, Prof Sia is Clinical Professor of Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine, National University of Singapore (NUS). He was recently appointed Adjunct Professor of the Engineering Design & Innovation Centre, NUS. Trained in anaesthesia and intensive care medicine, Prof Sia is currently a practicing clinician and serves as a Senior Consultant in the Department of Women’s Anaesthesia.

Prof Sia strongly believes in the alignment of academic medicine with patient safety and experience.

Synopsis - Going For Zero Harm In Risk Management
The health care environment is a high-risk, complex and error prone one. Health care errors and consequent adverse events are causes of preventable death. There are challenges to managing healthcare risks. Even though well-documented methods to prevent the incidence of many of these errors are known, the threats may not be well controlled for a multitude of reasons.

“Zero harm” is an aspiration that many healthcare organisations strive for and that is the fruition of the relentless pursuit of reliable patient safety and experience. The compelling communication of achieving “target zero harm” by top leadership sets the necessary tone in shaping the safety culture within the organisation. Adopting a formal framework by establishing a structure populated by tools for risk assessment and mitigation, as well as having the capacity to proactively manage potential risks are critical in the strategy to obviate harm in the system.

Enterprise Risk Management (ERM) is the structural analytical process that focuses on identifying and eliminating the impact of risks to any organisation. This journey requires staff at all levels to play a key role in shaping everyone’s behaviour to enhance the commitment to safety. Risk management needs to be integrated in the work processes to promote collaboration and buy-in among all levels of employees. ERM should be incorporated to be a part of the organization’s routine management processes. This proactive process of risk mitigation would be a factor to maintain the sustainability of the drive to delivering zero harm, while at the same time rendering the highest value to the patients.