10 May 2022
Innovation is key when it comes to creating an ecosystem for digital collaboration as well as a system that transforms emergency care.
At the Tech Leader Awards ceremony on 6 May 2022, two teams from DSTA clinched the Digital Achievers (Team) award for their contributions to the technology industry. Presented by the Singapore Computer Society, the award recognises teams and individuals who have made significant impact to the industry or society and have benefitted multiple companies or organisations. The award was formerly known as the IT Leaders awards.
One of the teams operationalised the Digital Factory.
The Digital Factory team from DSTA’s Enterprise IT Programme Centre.
The Digital Factory brings together defence engineers, operational personnel from MINDEF and the SAF, and developers from the industry to create digital products in a collaborative and highly integrated fashion. Critical in driving digital transformation for defence, the Digital Factory’s strategy of creating an ecosystem converging people, process and technology allows us to develop digital products up to three times faster.
One of the products developed at the Digital Factory is the Soldier Health mobile application, which aims to provide essential digital services at MINDEF’s medical centres. The app allows servicemen faster and more convenient access to medical services through an in-app medical appointment booking system, as well as telemedicine services for non-urgent medical consultations.
Director (Digital Factory) Koh Jin Hou shared how the Digital Factory is a nexus between government and industry. He said: “We bring key industry players into the defence community to ideate, develop, and deliver solutions quickly through a strong synergy of skills and knowledge. We hope that our collaborative approach to leveraging the tech ecosystem becomes a reference model that the defence or technology industry can adopt, to improve digital product development.”
On bagging the award, he added: “We are honoured to receive the award. We’ve put in a lot of time and effort into conceptualising and operationalising the Digital Factory over the last few years, and it is heartening to know that we have developed products that impact Singaporean’s lives. This was only achieved with the team’s common goal of making product development efficient and effective. I cannot wait to see what else we will deliver!”
The second winner of the award was a multi-agency team that delivered the Operational Medical Networks Informatics Integrator (OMNII) system.
A paramedic using the OMNII tablet.
Credit: The Singapore Civil Defence Force (SCDF)
Jointly developed by a multi-agency team from DSTA, the SCDF, the Ministry of Health, and ST Engineering, OMNII is an integrated and digitalised system that allows seamless information sharing between SCDF paramedics and hospital personnel, as well as better visualisation of data. The efforts included developing an OMNII mobile application for paramedics to assess critical information and share vital information with the hospital through the OMNII tablet. The software is also integrated with various existing systems to ensure that crucial information is piped to the hospitals’ emergency departments through OMNII for more informed decision making.
To understand how they could develop OMNII successfully, Senior Programme Manager (Systems Engineering and C3 Centre) Fannie Lim shared that the team members tapped their systems integration expertise, and even studied workflows of paramedics and medical personnel extensively.
“The development process for OMNII’s mobile application user interface was iterative, as we constantly incorporated feedback for the interfaces of the various systems and mobile app to be user-friendly and intuitive,” she explained. “I am glad that the team has been recognised for our efforts in harnessing technology to help save lives. OMNII is a result of close ops-tech collaboration, and would not have been possible without the various agencies’ collaboration.”