New Guidelines and Proposed Regulations for the Healthcare Sector
11 Nov 2014
This article discusses some of the recent developments in the healthcare regulatory landscape in Singapore.
Most recently on 6 November 2014, the Ministry of Health (“MOH”) issued a public consultation on the draft Human Biomedical Research Bill. The Human Biomedical Research Bill will regulate the conduct of human biomedical research as well as issues relating to human tissues and tissue banks. The MOH’s public consultation will close on 18 December 2014.
On 27 October 2014, the Health Sciences Authority launched a public consultation on two sets of proposed subsidiary legislation for the transfer of regulatory controls of certain pharmaceutical products (which are to be termed “Therapeutic Products”) to the Health Products Act. These subsidiary legislation relate to: (a) the advertisement controls for Therapeutic Products; and (b) licensing of retail pharmacies which sell, amongst others, Therapeutic Products. This public consultation will close on 23 November 2014.
Further on 11 September 2014, the Personal Data Protection Commission issued a set of advisory guidelines of the healthcare sector. These advisory guidelines were developed together with the MOH. They provide some illustrative guidance as to the obligations under the Personal Data Protection Act 2012 (“PDPA”) relating to consent, purpose limitation, notification, access and correction, protection, accuracy, retention limitation, transfer limitation and openness. Guidance in relation to the Do Not Call provisions under the PDPA is also provided within these advisory guidelines.
The MOH held a public consultation between 2 September 2014 and 2 October 2014 to seek public feedback on its draft home care and centre-based care guidelines, as part of its ongoing efforts to enhance the quality of care in the intermediate and long term care (“ILTC”) sector. The draft MOH ILTC guidelines were developed by two committees comprising service providers, healthcare professionals and policy experts, based on existing good practices in the respective sectors. The draft MOH ILTC guidelines are intended to set out the standard of care that all centre-based care and home care providers should aspire to achieve, in terms of delivering holistic and safe care, the dignity afforded to seniors and the organisational systems and management processes of these providers.
To read the update, please click here.