Dear Colleagues and Friends,

It is with great pleasure that we welcome you to the ‘Up and Up: A Forum on Community Care’ on 11 & 12 January 2013 at the Grand Copthorne Waterfront Hotel, Singapore. The Forum is our first conference explicitly on care provided at the intermediate and long term care services.

While past conferences have looked at integration, population health management and clinical care, none has devoted an entire platform on the challenges, care models and operations within this sector. The main intent of this forum is to feature innovative and interesting programmes from both local and international colleagues that have helped clients and caregivers in the ILTC settings. As we are continuously find better and evidence-based way of doing things that will not only improve patient care, but will reduce cost and increase staff satisfaction, it is essential that we bring in programmes that will achieve such aims. Then, the sector will be better able to demonstrate good clinical care outcomes, and have systems in place to ensure safety and appropriate handling of patients, communicate with patients and their families and to provide programmes that will enhance the quality of life for their clients. These programmes are necessary for the well-being, quality of life, self-perception and health status of our clients in these settings. A focus on community mental health of the elderly is also included in the scientific programme, in particularly on dementia and depression. With the growing burden of dementia and depression, it is necessary that we also look at alternative forms of therapy and how it can benefit functional outcomes and recovery.

The forum will greatly benefit physicians, administrators, academics, nurses and allied healthcare professionals from the ILTC sector.  We also expect pharmaceutical and healthcare technology related companies to be interested in participating at this forum in view of the potential networking opportunities.

We look forward to your participation in this exciting forum.

Dr JASON CHEAH
Chief Executive Officer
Agency for Integrated Care