The National Ethics Capability Committee (NECC) was formed by the Ministry of Health (MOH) in 2014 to assess the ethics competency needs of healthcare professionals, and to design an ethics competency framework for these professionals and establish an implementation plan for the framework. The NECC submitted its final report to MOH in June 2017 with recommendations on the core competencies in clinical ethics and the proposed training roadmap, which were accepted by MOH in June 2017. The Healthcare Ethics Capability Committee (HECC) was formed in 2019 to continue the NECC’s work.

The members of the HECC consist of representatives from the various professional boards and councils, and professional associations, representing doctors, nurses, dentists, pharmacists, social workers and allied health professionals. It is chaired by A/Prof Roy Joseph, and Prof Julian Savulescu and Dr Sumytra Menon are the vice-chairperson and honorary secretary, respectively. CENTRES is the HECC’s secretariat.

The HECC oversees the implementation of the training roadmap for registered healthcare professionals in clinical ethics, including reviewing and approving suitable new training programmes in line with the established Ethics Competency Framework. Periodically, the HECC will review and update the clinical ethics competency framework for registered healthcare professionals, and ethics competency needs and training programmes for specialised ethics committees.