MBBS, MMed (Int Med), FRCP (Lond), CBNC (USA), FACC (USA)
Group Chief Risk Officer
SingHealth
Lead
Asian Institute for Healthcare Leadership & Management
Prof Ong Biauw Chi is Group Chief Risk Officer at SingHealth, and Senior Consultant at Singapore General Hospital (SGH) Department of Anaesthesiology, and headed the department from 2009 to 2014. Additionally, she serves as a Visiting Consultant at the Department of Cardiothoracic Anaesthesia at the National Heart Centre and other SingHealth institutions.
She was Director of Patient Safety and Director of Clinical Governance for a period of 9 years during which she set up the Clinical Governance framework in SGH. She is actively involved in the Joint Commission International process and organizes and promotes quality improvement, safety, and peer review in the hospital. In 2014, she was involved in the planning and building of Sengkang General Hospital, a public hospital which opened in 2019 with the capacity to support 1000 acute beds, 31 Operating Rooms and 400 Community hospital beds, and was appointed as its first Chairman Medical Board.
With a passion for teaching and mentoring, Prof Ong also teaches and trains undergraduates and postgraduate trainees in both Anaesthesia as well as patient safety and clinical quality and holds the appointment of Clinical Associate Professor with the Faculty of Medicine, Yong Loo Lin School of Medicine and Professor at Duke-NUS Medical School, where she holds the position of College Master since 2008. She chairs the National Anaesthesiology Residency Advisory Committee and was named Master Academic Clinician in the inaugural 2021 award by Duke-NUS Medical School.
Combining her experience as a leader in the health system and her passion for teaching, Prof Ong contributes to the Asian Institute for Healthcare Leadership & Management (Asian HEAL) as its Lead, where she steers its curriculum development, identifying opportunities for learning, and developing courses to share knowledge in healthcare leadership and management. She is also the Programme Director for its flagship Executive Masters programme.
As the lead anaesthesist in the separation of the Nepalese Craniopagus conjoined twins (2001) and the Iranian Craniopagus conjoined twins (2003), Professor Ong strongly believes in the power of collaboration and envisions Asian HEAL to be a collaborating and knowledge exchange platform where Asian healthcare leaders can learn from one another to tackle its region’s unique health challenges.
Prof Ong was awarded the National Day Public Administration Silver Medal in 2013 and the National Medical Excellence award for National Outstanding Clinical Quality Activist in 2014. More recently, she was awarded Woman of the Year 2020 for her work in management of the dormitory outbreak during the COVID-19 pandemic, and received the Public Administration Gold Medal (COVID-19) in 2023 in recognition of her efforts.