Post by Edmund W. J. Lee

I am so proud of my former PhD student, Dr. Zhang Yichi (co-supervised with Dr. Wei-Peng Teo 张伟鹏), for publishing the article titled “Design, Implementation, and Evaluation of a Community-Based Phygital Telemonitoring Program for Older Adults: Multisite Retrospective Pilot Study in Singapore” at JMIR Formative Research. This paper represents five years of sheer persistence and faith in community-engaged research. I still remember meeting Yichi and some of the co-authors around 2020–2021, at the height of the COVID-19 pandemic. Some older adults in Singapore were reluctant to continue with their usual health screening as they were unfamiliar with telehealth services, and many were afraid to visit clinics/hospitals for fear of infection. To deal with this problem, the team decided to bring healthcare to the people. They designed physical telemonitoring kiosks that could be installed within the community, where older adults could check their health in a safe and familiar environment, with health ambassadors on-site guiding them. That idea became what was known as the Community Telehealth Services (CTS) initiative, and it has since evolved into FullHealth.asia, a social impact start-up in Singapore. You could check out the local media coverage here: https://lnkd.in/g8eJ72X2 Through this I gathered 3 major learning points: 1) Community-engaged research really takes time, you cannot rush it 2) In pursuing digital health solutions, having the human element (i.e., social connection) is important 3) Never give up even facing multiple rejections (for young scholars especially)! Your article will eventually find a home! A shoutout to all who were involved in CTS/FullHealth: Alvin Chew, Michelle Cheok Yien Law, Soon Keong Wee, Benjamin Sian Teck Lee, Gan T..