Role of UPEC

UPEC supports the MOH Hospital Services Division in various national PEC initiatives, including ensuring quality audits for the medical dispatch system, training and standards for PEC personnel, ambulance standards and audits, raising community responsiveness, identifying PEC-related research themes and enabling IT integration. These PEC initiatives were developed in the following key strategic domains:

• Medical Oversight and Operations Coordination

• Professional Training and Development

• Policy and Professional Standards

• Community Responsiveness

• Strategy Research and Development

• Information Technology and Simulation Training

Our initial key achievements include the collaboration between the Singapore Civil Defence Forces (SCDF) and MOH to emplace medical nurses in SCDF operations centre to assist on cardiac arrest calls; setting up of the first continuing medical education (CME) modules for paramedics; worked closely with MOH in developing the enhanced 2017 MOH Standards for Emergency Ambulance service and Medical Transport service; designed and implemented the Dispatcher-assisted first Responder (DARE) programme to teach the community basic CPR+AED skills; establishing a research and policy operation which will soon host the PAROS cardiac arrest database for quality improvement; and launching the implementation plan of the Operational Medical Network Informatics Integrator (OMNII) project.

In 2022, there were 4,057 cases, compared to 3,637 cases in 2021 . With the implementation of our various national PEC initiatives, we were heartened to observe that our OHCA Bystander CPR and Defibrillation rates have climbed from 59.4% and 9.5% respectively, in 2021 , to 62% and 14% respectively, in 2022 . There was also a corresponding increase in our Utstein survival rate to 20.2% in 2022 , compared to 19.9% in 2021.