Closing Remarks by Associate Professor Ding Yew Yoong, Executive Director, GERI at the Knowledge to Practice Webinar on Frailty Conversations: Intrinsic Capacity Matters (25 Jul 23)

Distinguished colleagues, partners, ladies and gentlemen, a very good late afternoon to everyone. 

Thank you for being a part of GERI’s Knowledge-to-Practice Webinar. This is our third this year. I would also like to convey my appreciation to our esteemed guest speaker, Associate Professor Dan Yock Young, Deputy Director-General of Health at the Health Services Group, Ministry of Health Singapore for gracing us this afternoon.

So, as we draw to a close, I would like to assemble some of my reflections into what I call the 3 ‘C’s.

The first “C” is “Call to action”. By now, we would have heard about the imminence of super-ageing in Singapore, and the increase in frailty in the older community that we are going to experience in the next few years. There is rightful cause for concern, given how frailty causes disproportionate health impacts to older adults and poses a significant obstacle to ageing-in-place.

Fortunately, there is a growing sense of urgency and a call to action for frailty management to be part of Singapore’s public health priorities. This is exemplified by the National Frailty Strategy Policy Report that was published and disseminated earlier this year. Also gaining momentum are calls to systematically target the intrinsic capacities of our older population, as you have heard. This is so that longer lives are lived well and not in poor health.

This brings me to my second “C”, “Collective”. We seldom get to hear both frailty and intrinsic capacity being discussed in tandem. This is partly why GERI brought these two topics into the same conversation today—this is because collectively targeting frailty and intrinsic capacity is paramount to the approach to healthy ageing. It is useful to consider frailty and intrinsic capacity as anchors along the same continuum of an older person’s health trajectory. Frailty may kick in at a later stage. Intrinsic capacity provides a holistic view of an older person’s physical, mental, and functional health right from the start. 

With Singapore embarking on HealthierSG, targeting intrinsic capacity can certainly support the push for preventive health amongst our older population.

The third “C” is “Contribution”. How can Singapore be frailty-ready and optimise the intrinsic capacity of our older population? No single actor can move the needle, but whole-of-society and whole-of-system contributions and partnerships are needed.

For our part, GERI continues to contribute to this effort throughout our translational research projects undertaken with our collaborators. We had a snapshot this afternoon, as we heard research on areas such as intrinsic capacity measurement and exercise interventions, conducted through methodologies ranging from rapid reviews to randomised clinical trials.

Beyond this webinar, we have also been working with partners across policy, acute care and community sectors to evaluate the Geriatric Services Hub, which is a multi-site programme that identifies and manages frail seniors in the community. Alongside the healthcare clusters, we are also studying the WHO (World Health Organization)’s ICOPE framework. This provides systematic guidance on how to guide the screening, assessment and management of deficits in intrinsic capacity.

As we depart, I hope that the word “translation” is top of our minds. Regardless of whether we are in clinical or community practice, policy or research, I hope that all of us will strive to translate the learnings that we obtained today into our different real-world contexts.

Finally, I would like to extend my gratitude to all the presenters today for their hard work, as well as to colleagues from Chapter of Geriatricians, Society for Geriatric Medicine and GERI for organising this session.

With that, thank you and have an excellent evening ahead.​