NUH deploys MedBot for counselling
- Singapore’s National University Hospital is rolling out MedBot, an artificial intelligence pharmacy assistant, across two pharmacies to handle routine medication counselling before collection. - Pharmacists had been spending three to 20 minutes per patient, and MedBot now serves 66 selected drugs after starting with 10. - The project sits inside NUH’s new innovation hub as Singapore hospitals push AI tools to ease staffing pressure. (nuh.com.sg)
National University Hospital in Singapore is using an artificial intelligence tool called MedBot to deliver routine medication counselling before patients collect prescriptions. (hospitalmanagementasia.com) Medication counselling is the standard explanation pharmacists give on what a drug is for, how to take it, how to store it, and which side effects to watch. At NUH, those sessions had been taking three to 20 minutes per patient. (hospitalmanagementasia.com) (nuh.com.sg) That workload adds up fast at a hospital dispensing about 2,500 prescriptions a day across outpatient and satellite pharmacies. NUH said the counselling step was contributing to longer waits and pulling pharmacists into repetitive work. (hospitalmanagementasia.com) MedBot is a generative artificial intelligence virtual pharmacy assistant built on Amazon Web Services’ Healthcare Commercial Cloud and linked to NUH’s electronic medical records and medication database. It currently produces counselling content for 66 selected medications. (hospitalmanagementasia.com) NUH did not start with 66 drugs. Jack Lim, a data scientist at the Kent Ridge Office of Innovation, said the team began with 10 medications and expanded only after safety checks were met. (hospitalmanagementasia.com) Those checks included allergy acknowledgements before use, pharmacist review panels, and escalation paths when a patient needs a human pharmacist. Goh Sok Hiang, NUH’s principal clinical pharmacist and MedBot clinical lead, said every AI-generated counselling entry is reviewed by pharmacists before it enters the database. (hospitalmanagementasia.com) Patients are identified for MedBot counselling when pharmacy staff take medication orders, then directed to dedicated kiosks at the dispensing counter. NUH said the kiosks are operating at the Kent Ridge Wing Pharmacy and the satellite pharmacy at the National University Centre for Oral Health, Singapore. (hospitalmanagementasia.com) The hospital says the tool has been live since July 2025 at the Kent Ridge Wing pharmacy and has since been extended to the oral health centre’s satellite pharmacy. Healthcare IT News reported MedBot has saved about 28 man-hours a month. (nuh.com.sg) (healthcareitnews.com) MedBot is also being presented as one of the first showcase projects inside NUH’s Innovation Hub, which the hospital launched on March 31, 2026. NUH said the hub is meant to test and scale AI and digital tools as Singapore’s health system faces an ageing population, higher care complexity, and workforce shortages. (nuh.com.sg) (healthcareitnews.com) The technical problem underneath MedBot is less about chat interfaces than moving sensitive hospital data safely. NUH’s broader digital work has included a secured private channel between its intranet zone and internet-facing services, a network design described in a GSMA case study on Singtel’s work with the hospital. (gsma.com) That makes MedBot a narrow hospital workflow with clear boundaries: routine counselling first, human pharmacist review throughout, and only selected medicines in scope. NUH is betting that approach is easier to validate inside a live clinical setting than a broad, open-ended assistant. (hospitalmanagementasia.com) (healthcareitnews.com)
