I had the privilege of attending as an invited panel speaker at this year’s SHAPE International Symposium, organized by the Society for Health Administration Programs in Education (SHAPE) and held at James Cook University (JCU) Singapore from 30th June to 2nd July 2025, where I met several good friends from La Trobe University and made new ones from institutions and organizations from the Asia-Pacific region and USA. This year’s symposium brought together a multi-disciplinary group of health management educators, practitioners, and researchers under the theme “Shaping health management practice, education, and research in the ever-changing environment.” This symposium gave me an insight to the field of health services management (HSM) – as Singapore does not specifically have such a profession – but more importantly, highlighted the evolution of this field and how effective health management extends far beyond traditional administrative roles, with the need to have a diverse ecosystem of clinical leaders including nursing managers, allied health professionals, pharmacy managers, and healthcare professionals in leadership positions.
The SHAPE symposium was different from other conferences that I have attended. The cozy, informal approach opened up many interesting conversations involving multicultural and multidisciplinary perspectives, about how healthcare administrators, health service managers and clinicians could transition from manager to leadership roles, and how new competencies could evolve these professions in an increasingly complex healthcare landscape. The themes below from the various speakers speak to the diverse pathways that healthcare managers and leaders would need in the upcoming digital healthcare future.
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