BEIJING – Professor Wong Tien Yin sits in a room on the 13th floor of a big, bustling Beijing hospital affiliated with Tsinghua Medicine, a new academic health system he helped set up when he was named its founding head and chair professor in 2021.
But today, he is not here as its chief or a doctor; he is a patient who has just had surgery for an anterior cruciate ligament injury.
He is sitting up in his bed, his left knee in a cast after a fall. Despite the balmy, 25 deg C autumn day, the hospital does not run its air-conditioning – not even for a VIP.
This personal medical episode has given the 56-year-old Singaporean healthcare practitioner and administrator first-hand experience of being on the receiving end of the Chinese public healthcare system.
“I’ve practised as a doctor, and I’ve done the teacher route. Now I have the patient perspective,” the renowned ophthalmologist and physician-scientist, who is one of the most cited eye care specialists in the world, said from his hospital bed.
That perspective has allowed him to witness the problems faced by under-resourced Chinese public hospitals – where surgeons operate from the early hours of the morning till past midnight – and the inefficiencies and wastage brought on by a lack of integration.
Routine tests are often repeated because data systems between hospitals are not linked, unlike in Singapore, where significant resources have been invested to set up a national health record repository.
China’s healthcare policies also have not kept up with its rapidly ageing population, since its hospital-centric approach to care makes it difficult to manage an increasingly large number of patients.
Moreover, a shortage of doctors – exacerbated by low pay making the profession unattractive – has led to endemic corruption. The authorities launched a sweeping campaign in 2023 to root out corruption, arresting hundreds of health officials and hospital directors.
“These are China’s healthcare challenges, and coping with them is not easy,” said Prof Wong.
He was recruited after a global search to build an integrated academic and healthcare ecosystem at Tsinghua University, arguably China’s best varsity, whose alumni include many of the country’s former and current top leaders, notably President Xi Jinping.
Nearly three years since he left Singapore – and his job as deputy group chief executive for research and education at SingHealth – Prof Wong has transformed what was once a network of independent or loosely affiliated schools and hospitals into a cohesive structure. His goal is to improve medical education, research and innovation, and produce a new generation of physician-scientists at Tsinghua University.
In November, Tsinghua Medicine will announce the plans that Prof Wong – the highest-ranking foreigner in a university in China – has systematically laid the groundwork for.
This post was originally published on here
