Can Singapore’s health data law create business value?
Companies are advised to assign clear responsibility for patient data.
Singapore’s Health Information Act is requiring healthcare organisations to share patient data securely, raising questions about whether better data management can also create business value.
Healthcare companies are under growing pressure to collect, protect, and use health data as regulators and insurers place more weight on the quality of data supporting medical products and payment decisions, according to an August report by Roland Berger GmbH.
“In this environment, it is the strategic infrastructure that turns sensitive health data from a potential liability into a trusted, reusable, financeable, and partnerable asset,” it said.
Roland Berger said regulators and insurers are paying more attention to how companies manage data used to support evidence submitted for market approval and reimbursement.
That makes data management more than a compliance task: Companies that can show how they collect, protect, and use health data could have an advantage when seeking regulatory approval or payment for their products.
Sapience Consulting Pte. Ltd. said organisations should assign clear responsibility for patient data, control access, and boost safeguards such as encryption, access records, and monitoring.
The changes could also affect how investors assess healthcare companies, particularly in acquisitions where the quality and security of patient data can affect the value and risks of a business.
Questions to ponder:
- Can Singapore’s Health Information Act turn compliance with data-sharing rules into measurable business value?
- How should Asia-Pacific healthcare providers balance mandatory data sharing with patient trust and privacy?
- Should data management become a standard part of due diligence in pharmaceutical and healthcare acquisitions?
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EXPERT OPINION
Singapore's Health Information Act can create value from compliancy with data sharing requirements through enhanced governance, reduced duplicate testing and manual work, faster access to records and more reliable care coordination, and better analytics, interoperability, and care delivery. Specifically, this means less rework and faster throughput for providers, and a stronger foundation for analytics and care delivery.
Across Asia-Pacific, providers must balance mandatory sharing vs. preserving patient trust by making access to information role-based, limited to purpose, transparent, auditable, encrypted, and subject to regular review. Clarifying to patients what, why, and how information is shared is key to maintaining trust while achieving mandated shareability of clinical data.
For healthcare and pharma sectors, data management must be a due diligence priority because weaknesses in controls may impact valuation, cost of integration, cybersecurity risk, and regulatory compliance. The key issue is not whether the target organisation has a policy, but rather that the policy is executed consistently in technology, processes, contracts, and governance. Buyers need to ensure that access is controlled, records are reliable, sharing is legal, and security is appropriate given the sensitivity and value of the data.
Creating value through data sharing and security compliance requires compliance with regulations to be a three-pronged safety net:
- Compliance as a cost saver: avoid penalties, disputes, breach remediation and rework
- Compliance as efficiency: avoid rework, improve access and speed
- Compliance as growth catalyst: unlock analytics, interoperability, care delivery innovations
The most significant takeaway is that data regulation can create value by being embedded as infrastructure and not viewed as a paper exercise. By focusing on disciplined governance, technical controls and transparency, health care organisations can turn compliance with the Health Information Act into care, operational and strategic advantages.
What has changed is that health data is now being shared across the whole healthcare provider system. However, under the Health Information Act, the NEHR can only be used for patient care, so I don't see the record itself as a commercial asset. I do think organisations can create real value from what they need to build in order to comply.
Clean records, consistent coding and clear ownership of data will help providers reduce duplicated tests and support better transitions of care between hospitals, specialists and GPs. This matters more now that patients are paying a larger share of their hospital bills themselves.
Employers and insurers cannot access the NEHR, but I think providers that build better data discipline will be in a stronger position to share their own cost and outcome information, which will help employers and insurers guide people to the right care.
Patient trust underpins all of this, because patients can restrict access to their records if they are not confident in how they are protected. For investors, I would encourage data governance to become a standard part of due diligence, including who is accountable for data quality.
The real opportunity is not compliance but turning fragmented health information into coordinated care. Regulation can compel data sharing, but leadership determines whether that data reduces duplication, improves decisions, and creates better patient outcomes. Trust must therefore be designed into the system through transparency, disciplined access, and clear accountability. The same principle should guide healthcare acquisitions: poor-quality, inaccessible, or inadequately protected data is hidden debt. Healthcare leaders must stop treating data governance as a back-office obligation. Data without trust is a liability; trusted data is infrastructure for growth.