We Are StarHub

As Singapore's first fully integrated info-communications company, our aim has been, is, and will always be focused on providing every person, every home and every business in Singapore with world-class information, communication and entertainment services.

StarHub Limited is a full-fledged telecommunications company providing a full range of services over mobile, internet and fixed platforms in Singapore

StarHub is Singapore's fully-integrated info-communications company, offering a full range of information, communications and entertainment services for both consumer and corporate markets. StarHub operates a mobile network that provides 4G, 3G and 2G services. It also manages an islandwide HFC network that delivers multi-channel pay TV services (including HDTV, Internet TV and on-demand services) as well as ultra-high speed residential broadband services. StarHub operates an extensive fixed business network that provides a wide range of data, voice and wholesale services. Over Singapore’s fibre-based Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network, StarHub offers a broad range of home and business broadband plans along with a host of advanced media-rich value-added services, such as IPTV for commercial entities.

Launched in 2000, StarHub has become one of Singapore's most innovative info-communications providers, and the pioneer in 'hubbing' - the ability to deliver unique integrated and converged services to all its customers. StarHub, listed on the main board of the Singapore Exchange since October 2004, is a component stock of the Straits Times Index and the MSCI Singapore Free Index.

StarHub was awarded the licence to provide fixed network and mobile services on 7 May 1998, when the government announced that telecommunications sector in Singapore would be completely liberalised by 2002. In 2000, the government announced that the date for complete liberalisation would be brought forward to 2000, and the 49% cap on foreign ownership of public telecommunications companies in Singapore would be lifted.[1] StarHub was officially launched in April 2000 with ST Telemedia, Singapore Power, BT Group and Nippon Telegraph and Telephone (NTT) as its major shareholders.

In January 1999, StarHub acquired internet service provider CyberWay and it became a subsidiary within the StarHub group. It was renamed as StarHub Internet on 3 December 1999 in a move to integrate CyberWay into the StarHub brand.

In 2001, Singapore Power divested its shares in StarHub and sold its 25.5% stake to ST Telemedia for S$400 million. BT Group subsequently divested its 18% stake as a result of consolidation, after accumulating debt acquired during the bidding round for 3G licenses in the United Kingdom.

In 2002, the company merged with Singapore's sole cable television operator, Singapore Cable Vision. As a result of the merger, it acquired SCV's cable television as well as broadband internet access operations.

StarHub was publicly listed on the Singapore Exchange in October 2004, and a new wholly owned subsidiary known as StarHub Online was formed in 2005 to provide broadband internet services.

On 12 January 2007, Qatar Telecom acquired a quarter of ST Telemedia's shares in StarHub.[2]

On 1 May 2009, the Infocommunications Development Authority of Singapore announced that StarHub's wholly owned subsidiary, Nucleus Connect, was selected as the Operating Company (OpCo) to design, build and operate the active infrastructure of the Next Generation Nationwide Broadband Network.[3]

On 14 July 2009, StarHub announced the retirement of long-standing chief executive Terry Clontz.[4] Neil Montefiore, the former chief executive of the country's smallest telecommunications company M1 Limited, took over as chief executive on 1 January 2010. Terry Clontz remains as a non-executive director of StarHub.

On 1 August 2009, StarHub relocated its corporate office to StarHub Green building at Ubi from its previous office location at StarHub building at Cuppage.[5]

On 7 February 2013, StarHub announced the retirement of Neil Montefiore as chief executive officer by end February 2013. StarHub's chief operating officer Tan Tong Hai was appointed CEO on 1 March 2013.[6]

Services[edit]

Mobile services

StarHub provides mobile services through its subsidiary StarHub Mobile. Since its launch in April 2000, StarHub has been Singapore's fastest growing mobile operator. It has close to two million customers and is the second largest mobile network operator with close to 30% market share.[8]

Pay TV[edit]

StarHub provides cable television services through its subsidiary StarHub Cable Vision, and it is the sole cable television operator in Singapore. Its Hybrid Optical Fibre-Coaxial network reaches

99% of households in Singapore, with 536,000 households subscribing to its cable television services

Internet services[edit]

StarHub provides dial-up and broadband internet access through its subsidiaries StarHub Internet and StarHub Online respectively. StarHub Internet was formed after the acquisition of internet access provider CyberWay, while StarHub Online was formed after a merger with Singapore Cable Vision.

Healthcare is in the middle of a mobile revolution. Doctors are adopting mobile apps that make them more effective, and patients are taking to ones that give them more control over their healthcare

Transform Healthcare

Eric Savitz Eric Savitz , Forbes Staff

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Guest post written by Derek Newell

Derek Newell is CEO of Jiff, which provides a HIPAA-compliant social network and apps platform for healthcare.

Derek Newell

Earlier this year Kaiser Permanente leapfrogged the industry when it made its entire electronic health care system – the most extensive electronic medical record offering in the world – available to its 9 million members via an Android app. The country’s largest medical organization quickly announced that the app had garnered more than 95,000 downloads. Kaiser patients now make appointments, check lab tests, order medicines, and communicate with their physicians from the palm of their hands. CEO George Halvorson asserted that accessing health information on mobile devices is becoming the “new norm.”

The numbers support Halvorson’s prediction. Global sales of smartphones are expected to hit 1.5 billion units by 2016. Ten years from now everyone from teens to the elderly will be carrying a smartphone, and these mobile devices will be exponentially smarter than they are today. In addition to being location aware, the smartphone of the future will be situationally and contextually aware. This will allow it to present information directly to you when you need it, revolutionizing the way patients are engaged by the healthcare system.

These new capabilities coupled with the explosive growth in digital health apps – the market for mobile health apps is expected to quadruple to $400 million by 2016, according to ABI Research – promise to radically change the way health care is delivered and accessed. Doctors won’t go away, but they will have a lot more information about you and your health, and it will stream in from more sources than ever before. For healthcare delivery, we’re rapidly moving from a world of inbound patients to a world of inbound data. The impact of this shift on the healthcare system and how consumers use and act on health information should not be underestimated.

Here are five ways digital apps and smartphones will transform healthcare:

Improved access to care:

In a digital age, the requirement for patients and doctors to be in the same location is eliminated. Patients suffering from chronic diseases who live in rural areas or otherwise have limited access to doctors will be able to “visit” with primary care physicians or specialists located in the next major city or a half a world away. Increasingly, the patient will be in his or her home. Instead of having the government or insurance companies dictate that a visit must be in person, which may be either unnecessary or dangerous (for frail elderly patients), patients and physicians will decide together when a visit is best done live and when healthcare services can be delivered virtually.

Improved patient engagement:

Many aspects of healthcare discourage patient engagement – long lines, complexity, lack of transparency of cost and quality. Much of this is unnecessary. Why should accessing healthcare require a painstaking wait in the physician’s office? You could easily be notified via text that your physician is running late. Apps can also eliminate complexity. Imagine you are using a medication reminder app that knows how many pills you have taken and when you will take them next. It “knows” you are running low on pills and it automatically asks whether you want to pick up your prescription at the nearest Walgreen’s (because it “knows” your location and where your prescription is on file) or would prefer it mailed to your home. One simple answer and it automatically places the prescription for your chosen delivery method and charges your HSA.

New provider business models:

The explosion of inbound data from sensors and devices will create new opportunities for healthcare professionals. Today’s healthcare services and business models are ill-suited to a system dominated by an influx of patient data. Expect the need to manage inbound data to create a new set of companies focused on data management. Large call centers will house nurses, doctors, pharmacists and other healthcare professionals who watch, manage and respond to this inbound data. In addition, digital health apps will allow providers to effectively manage and coordinate patient care in a complex environment. This will be critical as the government and insurance companies increasingly “bundle” payments and determine other ways to shift risk to providers.

Reduced Medicare Fraud:

My experience is that Medicare is terrified of an explosion of costs that could result from digital interactions, primarily due to the increased patient access to care. However, the more impactful consequence of digital health will be in reducing fraud, currently estimated to drain about $60 billion annually from Medicare. One simple reason is that digital apps have an amazing ability to track people and transactions in space and time. In the future, digital apps will allow Medicare to correlate claims data with location, and time data from the digital health apps to look for fraud. Imagine visiting a pharmacy – one of the most common locations for Medicare fraud – scanning in your Medicare card and conducting your purchase digitally. An app would allow Medicare to instantly trace that transaction. Hotspots of activity could be identified and investigated in real-time rather than months after the money is in the criminal’s offshore bank account.

Improved Patient Safety:

Digital apps will make health care safer by giving patients tools to manage their own health. Today, patients leave the hospital with a stack of papers and very little memory of what they’re supposed to do when they arrive home. Imagine if all the information you needed for a safe and healthy recovery were handed to you on an app. You could tend to the most urgent tasks and the one or two items most important to remember – and the app would take care of the rest. Apps can remind you to take pills, monitor side effects and transfer the knowledge to your provider. This would be a huge advance for patient safety.

In the future, everything that can be done digitally will be done digitally. Digital health apps will schedule appointments, tell you the doctor is running late, help monitor medications’ side effects,

and help you follow your care plan accurately. These changes will engage patients with their health and healthcare in new ways. It will also radically reform healthcare delivery.

Health care providers should be making use of new mobile technologies that can facilitate higher quality of care in every patient interaction. A look at what’s available now.

FORTUNE — Our country is facing a health care crisis. States are divided on Obamacare and Medicaid, and new legislation is not making any clear progress in increasing access to affordable health care. According to findings by the Urban Institute, nearly two out of every three uninsured low-income individuals — some 9.7 million people — who would have qualified for subsidized coverage under Obamacare might not receive it next year because their states have not expanded Medicaid. Also, according to a study by The Association of American Medical Colleges, we’ll be facing a shortage of more than 90,000 doctors in the next five years.

While there have been a lot of gloom and doom articles about these significant health care challenges we’re grappling with, there has been surprisingly little talk about the incredible technology solutions that are being developed specifically to combat these issues. Legislation is slow, but technology is fast. And there are many ways that we can begin to increase access to affordable care with technology.

A doctor’s time is increasingly scarce and expensive. The only scalable, near-term solution is to enable physicians to be more efficient and manage more patients, while empowering them to improve the quality of care they can provide.

What if doctors used powerful mobile applications to remotely track their patients’ treatment compliance and progress? What if they could provide patients with remote access to their expertise, or to other medical knowledge they trust? What if they kept in- person office visits to the time they’re really required for longer, in-depth consultations?

MORE: Health apps don’t save people, people do

Health care providers should be making use of new mobile technologies that will empower physicians to become “coaches of care,” and facilitate significantly higher quality of care in every patient interaction. Instead of people waiting for weeks or months to get a rushed appointment where they receive second rate care, health care facilities can support the wide adoption of

technologies that will enable doctors to remotely connect, monitor, and interact with hundreds, even thousands of patients.

And the technology behind this is not just conceptual—it’s here. Forget flat screen televisions and laptop computers – without a doubt, our mobile smartphones and wireless tablets are the most powerful devices we own. With Google GOOG -0.14% reporting an astonishing 1.5 million new Android devices activated every day, the future of health care truly is in the palm of our hands.

There are already some incredible startups developing mobile products that facilitate more efficient (and more economical) delivery of care. While these products, some of which are still in the early stages of development, won’t replace or automate a doctor’s job, they are great precursors for fostering a more transparent doctor-patient relationship.

For example, through patient monitoring and self-tracking, smartphones may help doctors catch early signs of disease. Ginger.io has developed a mobile platform that collects active data (patient-reported) and passive data (who you interact with through your phone and how far you travel during the day), right from a smartphone. This data is available via a web dashboard to authorized doctors and other health care providers who can use it to efficiently manage hundreds of patients. By tracking personal behavioral data, doctors can better understand the health of their patients, provide improved diagnoses and care recommendations, and be alerted quickly to signs of pending health issues.

CellScope also aims to help doctors diagnose diseases through innovative mobile hardware and software. The company, whose products are still in beta development, is creating optical attachments that turn smartphones into diagnostic-quality imaging systems. For example, their clip-on otoscope helps pediatricians work with parents to diagnose and treat a child’s ear infection from home, and their clip-on dermascope lets patients capture high-magnification images of the skin and transmit them to doctors instantly, instead of having to visit a digital skin-imaging lab.

MORE: Chris Malone: ‘Every brand is human, and every human is a brand’

Another huge problem technology companies are helping address is medication non-adherence. According to a study by the New England Health Institute, the total economic impact of medication non-adherence is estimated to be as much as $290 billion in the U.S. alone. Studies show that more than half of prescribed medications are never consumed, and it’s difficult and impractical for doctors to follow up and ensure that patients continue to take medications as prescribed. To battle this problem, digital health company Proteus recently received FDA approval to manufacture pills with

edible electronic sensors. The sensors transmit data to an online app, and the data can be used by doctors to monitor a patient’s medication compliance.

Imagine a world where these types of amazing remote patient examination tools, sensors, and apps are available to everyone, everywhere—to patients and parents, the young and the old, at home and on-the-go. Imagine a world where mobile tools passively collect data about patients with little-to-no active participation from the patients themselves. Imagine a world where people have immediate mobile access to the right doctor for them, who can access a platform that privately and securely aggregates this valuable data. Physicians will be able to monitor large numbers of patients remotely, answer their questions quickly, and invite them for an office visit when necessary. Moreover, doctors will make more informed—and therefore higher quality—decisions about the best care, because they will have more data that is digital and easily accessible.

This vision can become reality faster than you think, and the first buds of it are already here. Like the early Internet companies that emerged in the mid-1990s, the companies mentioned in this article represent the tip of the iceberg of the revolution in digital health. With help from the thousands of forward-thinking doctors who are already using mobile apps to engage with patients, cutting-edge venture capitalists who are shifting their focus from social media and online gaming to digital and interactive health, and incubators such as Rock Health that are supporting promising new ideas, mobile care technology is poised to completely transform health and medicine.

This transformation will overhaul our entire health care system, allowing doctors to deliver higher quality, more personalized patient care, efficiently and cost effectively, anytime, anywhere. Our path to avoiding a second rate health care system should choose real-time technology and mobile health to create easier, faster, and less expensive access so that more people can receive better care.

Is healthcare the future of mobile apps?

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At the beginning of 2013, Apple announced that its customers have downloaded more than 40 billion apps with 20 billion in 2012 alone. These are some staggering figures and show how influential these little super computers in our pockets are to humankind, after all that’s nearly 6 apps for every person alive today (calculated using the ever engrossing World Population Clock).

And with all these apps being developed and downloaded, there is burgeoning area that is beginning to stand out – healthcare.

ABI Research estimates that the market for mobile healthcare apps will be worth $400 million by 2016, while the market research company Research2Guidance claims 247 million mobile phone users had downloaded a health related app in 2012.

A recent article by Bill Yates from iMEdicalApps highlighted the overall Google search traffic since 2007 for specific keywords associated with healthcare / medical apps and the growth is undeniable.

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Apple has even launched an ‘Apps for Healthcare Professionals’ collection within its AppStore’s Medical Category which covers different sectors like nursing, monitoring, imaging and patient education. The Medical Category has 240 health topics on its front page alone and an estimated 13,000 individual apps. For all makes of smartphone and tablets, there are said to be around 40,000 healthcare apps available.

The difference between healthcare and wellness

Now, its important to emphasize the distinction between healthcare and ‘wellness’ which is something we deal with on a daily basis. The former is concerned with medical issues and include a host of regulatory issues while the former is concerned with achieving and maintaining general fitness.

Whats happening in healthcare?

Advancements over the past few years have opened up a whole new world for areas like entertainment, but as technology continues to move forward, it continues to open up the capacity for people from far-flung areas of the world to communicate as easily as if they lived in the same home. Twitter, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest and other services help link individuals to each other, facilitating instant contact and these lines of communication are also being leveraged by health care professionals.

The expanding use of electronic health records (EHRs) has allowed doctors to pass patient information along to colleagues and specialists for consultation. Flash forward a few years and now doctors and hospitals are using these tools to keep in touch with their patients and learn about them before they ever enter the hospital or office for examination or treatment in completely new ways.

Healthcare focused apps could potentially cut down the amount of time needed for gathering background information (the research is still being carried out), and if collected properly could be transferable in the event a patient switches doctors or health care providers.

Technology isn’t just for doctors anymore

Thanks to health informatics, patients are getting the ability to access their records, test their results and get recommendations from physicians over the Internet instead of having to go out (great for those with disabilities) to the doctor’s office and wait for printed reports, saving unnecessary paperwork and travel time.

Today, anyone with an Android or iPhone has access to different applications that allow them to monitor calorie count, track when they should take their medications, keep in touch with doctors and shop for insurance plans – all from the palm of their hands. We’re looking forward to the day when these apps can help doctors and patients collaborate on healthcare.

Health care cell phone apps gain popularity

Susan Becker View Photos

Susan Becker

Brittany Hart, DBJ Staff Reporter

If you need to refill your medication, there’s an app for that.

If you need to access your medical records, there’s an app for that, too.

And if your doctor needs to remotely monitor your vitals, there’s even an app for that.

Driven by efficiency, lowering costs and improving quality of care, mobile health care applications are gaining popularity among manufacturers, health care professionals and consumers.

More than 200 million mobile health applications are used by doctors and patients today, and more than 600 million medical apps will be available by 2012, according to a new report from Pyramid Research.

The report “Health Check: Key Players in Mobile Healthcare” features new mobile health applications hitting the medical market for smartphones such as Apple Inc.’s (Nasdaq: AAPL) iPhone, Google Inc.’s (Nasdaq: GOOG) Android and Research in Motion Ltd.’s (Nasdaq: RIMM) Blackberry.

Dayton-area physicians groups at doctors’ offices and hospital systems, including Kettering Health Network, Premier Health Partners and Providence Medical Group, are using smartphone applications to improve efficiency, costs and patient care.

Among the most popular apps for the Dayton region’s health care professionals are WebMD’s Epocrates and MedScape. Epocrates allows free access to medical software for drug interaction, drug prices, dosing, diseases and a medical dictionary. MedScape similarly features free access to clinical information.

Kettering Health Network and Premier Health Partners — the Dayton-area’s largest hospital systems — access their patients’ medical information through a smartphone app called Haiku, which is part of their respective $50 million conversions to Epic electronic health records.

Another unique app in use at Kettering Health Network is AirStrip, which allows doctors to track vitals of patients while they are in labor.

And now it’s not just doctors and nurses, but patients, who are consulting medical reference apps and using apps that monitor vital signs.

“People are hungry for the best sources for health care,” said Susan Becker, COO of Providence Medical Group.

About 70 percent of people worldwide are interested in having access to free — and even low-cost — health apps, the Pyramid report says.

Kettering and Premier provide an app called MyChart, which allows patients to schedule medical appointments, refill prescriptions, review health records and send notes to their physicians from their smartphones.

The app, which has launched at Premier and will be available at Kettering in April, is not only allowing patients to access their own medical records, but it also empowers them to show information — from their health history to their prescription list — to their doctors during appointments.

“(The apps) empower the patient to have easy access to their health care over time,” said Jon Russell, CIO of Kettering Health Network.

There is a certain level of expectation, particularly among younger patients who are familiar with using electronic information, to have access to their health care records since they went electronic, he said.

Nationally, mobile health care apps also are a trend.

For example, drug stores such as Walgreens (NYSE: WAG) and CVS (NYSE: CVS) have free mobile apps to refill prescriptions.

Health insurance companies, including Anthem Blue Cross Blue Shield, a unit of WellPoint Inc. (NYSE: WLP) and UnitedHealth Group Inc. (NYSE: UNH), also offer free apps.

Anthem Blue Cross Grocery Guide for Better Health is designed to help Anthem members make healthy food choices at the grocery store. UnitedHealth offers DocGPS, which allows patients to find doctors based on location, specialty and quality ratings.

On the horizon

There is a growing trend among consumers wanting medical devices that are more and more like consumer electronics, according to Chicago-based Product Development Technologies, a global medical design firm.

Consumers want health apps that are entertaining and easy to use, said Gilberto Cavada, the firm’s senior industrial designer.

Some of the new technology on the horizon to answer that demand includes apps to track elderly patients, cater to specific diseases, monitor every aspect of your own health and fitness and even serve as a “doctor” for self-diagnoses as the nation faces a primary care physician shortage.

As the baby boomer generation ages and needs more health care, Cavada foresees family members utilizing apps to track their elderly, homebound relatives, especially those with Alzheimer’s disease or another form of dementia.

And as diabetes continues to be the most rapidly rising and costly disease for the U.S., apps will not only help monitor the illness, but cater to it with engaging entertainment value, Cavada said. The smartphone apps will connect to video game systems and televisions, monitoring the patient’s blood sugar and reminding them to take insulin as they play a game or watch a show.

Stumbling blocks

Among challenges of the trend are syncing the apps and security issues.

As tech companies and health networks strive to move forward with technology while also saving money, many are launching different operating systems for mobile apps.

While technology has advanced enough to create millions of apps, not all of them are “reading the same language,” said George Guffy, lead user experience designer at Product Development Technologies.

And as more patients use mobile health care apps to monitor their health and view their medical records, Guffy said security will become an even greater concern.

Still, many Dayton-area health networks see the technology as a huge step forward in patient care.

Russell said Kettering physicians are constantly on the lookout for the next great app to help patients in their health environment.