IHH Healthcare Quality Summit 2026 spotlights value-driven care

KUALA LUMPUR – More than 400 employees and partners gathered in Kuala Lumpur on 15 and 16 October 2026 for IHH Healthcare’s annual Quality Summit, its flagship platform to showcase quality improvement projects, celebrate excellence, and advance patient care and outcomes across its network.

Under the theme “Outcome by Design”, the Summit explored how healthcare can be intentionally designed around patient needs and priorities across the full care journey. 

Delivering the keynote address, YB Datuk Seri Dr Dzulkefly Ahmad, Minister of Health Malaysia, highlighted the importance of measurable improvement: “I commend IHH Malaysia’s work on value-driven outcomes and shared learning across its hospitals. These are important disciplines for any healthcare system that wants improvement to be measurable, transferable and sustained.”

He also called for public-private partnerships to extend beyond hospital capacity into prevention, primary care, education and research. “Partnership should not only help us treat sickness better. It should help us build health better,” he said. “I therefore welcome IHH Malaysia’s efforts to work beyond its hospital walls, including with primary care providers and academic partners.”

Dr Prem Kumar Nair, Group Chief Executive Officer of IHH Healthcare, highlighted how IHH’s scale can translate into better care for patients, saying: “Our footprint becomes powerful when knowledge transfers across teams, hospitals, and even markets. By bringing our people together and creating a culture of shared learning, we can better understand why outcomes vary, identify leading practices and uncover lessons that can improve care for more patients.” 

Dr Kamal Amzan, Chief Executive Officer of IHH Healthcare Malaysia and Chairman of the 11th IHH Quality Summit, added: “Good outcomes come from how every part of care is put together around the person who needs it. Quality cannot be inspected at the end; it has to be designed into the way we work. The teams at this year’s Summit have shown what that looks like. Our task now is to make sure a good idea does not stop at the hospital where it began, and its benefits are extended across the IHH network.”

Better design, measurable outcomes

This year, a total of 34 IHH teams and individuals from Malaysia, Singapore, India, Türkiye, Hong Kong and Brunei were recognised across 11 award categories.

These include

• Quality Improvement Project Awards spanning clinical excellence, patient safety, service/ operational excellence, and environmental and social sustainability; 

• Medical Excellence Awards; 

• Patient Safety (Best Catch) Awards; 

• Service Excellence (Individual) Awards; 

• Innovation Awards; 

• AI Hackathon Awards; and 

• Laboratory Advancement Poster Awards.

Among the winning projects were initiatives that improved patient outcomes, workforce productivity and sustainability across multiple markets: 

Malaysia

• Gleneagles Hospital Johor & Premier Integrated Rehab: Shorter hospital stays after colorectal surgery – A redesigned care pathway based on Enhanced Recovery After Surgery (ERAS) principles halved the average hospital stay from 10 days to five. The pathway recorded zero readmissions and zero surgical site infections.

• Pantai Hospital Ipoh: Fewer infections after heart surgery – A multidisciplinary ERAS pathway for coronary artery bypass graft (CABG) patients cut surgical site infections from 12.2% to zero, sustained over six consecutive months.

• Premier Integrated Rehab: Less time on administration, more time for patients – A digital workflow across 15 rehabilitation centres cut daily census processing from 420 minutes to six, freeing staff for patient-facing care while eliminating paper forms.

• Premier Integrated Labs: Greener laboratories – Its Reference Core Laboratory in Ampang adopted internationally recognised My Green Lab practices and cut electricity use by 24% and paper use by 55%.

Singapore

• Gleneagles Hospital Singapore: Smoother discharges – A digital tracker linking nursing, pharmacy, billing, environmental services and bed management cut average bed turnaround time from 212 minutes to 144, improving patient flow, staff productivity, and patient experience through a scalable digital solution.

• Mount Elizabeth Novena Hospital: Safer surgery – Standardised drape removal, better access to positioning aids and improved tourniquet padding cut perioperative skin injuries from 0.74 per 1,000 surgeries to zero. The changes have since been adopted across all IHH hospitals in Singapore.

• Mount Elizabeth Hospital: Faster breathing support – Redesigned workflows, centralised equipment and staff training cut the time to start high-flow oxygen therapy for high-dependency patients from 43 minutes to 17.6. Every patient now starts within the 20-minute target, and none treated within it needed transfer to intensive care for ventilation support.

India

• Gleneagles Hospital Parel: Water resilience – Transformed the hospital’s water management system through wastewater recycling, water conservation measures and enhanced treatment plant performance, raising treated-water reuse from 32.2% to 41.6%, and avoided an estimated 7.34 tonnes of CO₂ emissions annually.

• Fortis Hospital Vashi: Design for comfort and recovery – Designed a reusable bolster that replaces traditional pillows used for patient positioning and limb elevation, improving the comfort and healing outcome of bedridden patients, reducing nursing workload, and enhancing patient safety. 

• Fortis Hospital Mulund: Earlier warning – Introduced an Enhanced Remote Monitoring Unit using wearable devices and a central command centre to monitor high-risk patients after they leave intensive care, reducing returns to intensive care and bringing emergency Code Blue events close to zero.

Turning improvements into practice

The Summit featured two leadership panels focused on how healthcare organisations can translate innovation, insights and outcomes into better care for patients. 

Moderated by Dr Stefan Larsson, Chairman and Co-Founder of the International Consortium for Health Outcomes Measurement (ICHOM), the first panel explored what value means for patients and how outcomes measurement, including patient-reported outcomes, can guide improvements in care. Panellists from Joint Commission, ProtectHealth, University Malaya Medical Centre (UMMC) and IHH Healthcare Malaysia shared their perspectives. 

The second panel, moderated by Adjunct Associate Professor Keith Lim, Group Chief Medical Officer of IHH Healthcare, brought together leaders from medicine, nursing, pharmacy and allied health to discuss how multidisciplinary teams can turn good ideas into lasting improvements for patients.

The Summit also showcased the Future of Work: AI Agents in Action Hackathon, where teams across IHH transformed more than 200 ideas into AI agents. Launched in February this year, the initiative explored how AI could streamline workflows, enhance productivity and support new ways of working, demonstrating how technology can complement quality and workforce productivity across the Group. 

By sharing measurable results, proven practices and lessons learned across its network, IHH aims to help more teams improve outcomes and experiences for the patients and communities they serve. For more information on the 11th IHH Quality Summit, including award-winning projects, panel highlights and event outcomes, visit: www.ihhqualitysummit2026.com.