|
 The system, which involves sending information to a centralized
computer linked to the city's transport networks, is part of a trial
by Alibaba Group Holding Ltd. The Chinese tech giant is hoping to
use its cloud and data systems to tackle issues hobbling China's
healthcare system like snarled city traffic, long patient queues and
a lack of doctors.
Alibaba's push into healthcare reflects a wider trend in China,
where technology firms are racing to shake up a creaking state-run
health sector and take a slice of spending that McKinsey & Co
estimates will hit $1 trillion by 2020.
Tencent-backed WeDoctor, which offers online consultations and
doctor appointments, raised $500 million in May at a valuation of
$5.5 billion. Ping An Good Doctor, a similar platform backed by Ping
An Insurance, raised $1.1 billion in an IPO this year.
"The opportunity is growing very fast," said Min Wanli, the Hangzhou-based
chief machine intelligence scientist at Alibaba's cloud division.
Alibaba is working with a hospital in Shanghai using data to predict
patient demand and allocate doctors. In Zhejiang province, the
company is working on AI-assisted diagnosis tools to help analyze
medical images such as CT scans and MRIs.
"You need to go through very specialized training in order to read
these images, but we know that experts are a very scarce resource,"
said Min.
Chinese hospitals are increasingly using technology to bridge the
gap between urban centers and remote parts of the country where
doctors are in short supply. Using document-sharing systems and
livestreaming video, specialists can direct more junior medical
staff on-site doing patient diagnoses.
DXY, one of China's biggest online networks of doctors, offers
consultations on the WeChat social media platform for patients with
chronic diseases such as diabetes, with a team of nurses and doctors
providing medical advice.
China is pressing to reduce healthcare costs that are soaring as the
population ages, putting huge strains on the state insurance system.
At the same time, Beijing has been promising better access to
healthcare and improved grass-roots care - despite a lack of family
doctors - which has brought technology into the spotlight as a way
of maximizing stretched resources.
"Educating doctors is going to take too long," said Rogier Janssens,
Beijing-based general manager of Germany's Merck KGaA's biopharma
business in China. He added that smartphones could help deliver
primary care faster and cheaper.
"There are hundreds of millions of people who still go without care
for relatively simple diseases."
China's healthcare system has long grappled with a shortage of
doctors, exacerbated by low wages and a dearth of local clinics and
general practitioners. That means patients often crowd into large,
specialist hospitals for even minor ailments.
Beijing has been trying to fix the problem, setting targets to
increase the number of family doctors across the country.
However, the government has been slow to embrace technology within
the healthcare system, held back by the challenge of digitalizing a
sprawling, fragmented hospital system still dominated by public
hospitals and state-run firms.
ONLINE DRUG SALES
The policy winds may be starting to change. Beijing has enacted
legislation over the last two years that has included strong support
for internet-based basic healthcare services.
Premier Li Keqiang said this year that healthcare tech could "help
alleviate the problem of inaccessible and expensive public health
services that have long been a big concern".
Now, Beijing may be about approve the sale of some prescription
drugs online, creating a major opportunity for local and global
firms, according to companies in the sector.
Janssens of Merck KGaA said the company had "good indications" that
policymakers were addressing the issue of pharmaceutical e-commerce
"as we speak".
[to top of second column] |
Li Tiantian, the founder and chairman of DXY, said the health
ministry had met with healthcare companies like his own and planned
to soon release a policy on "internet hospitals", which would open
up some online sales.
"I think the new policy will be released very soon, potentially in
July," he said.
The policy would allow approved hospitals to consult, prescribe and
sell drugs to chronic disease patients online. However, regulatory
concerns over safety and pushback from state-run distributors sank a
similar plan several years ago.
Li added that Ningxia autonomous region, in north-central China, had
already been approving some internet hospital providers on a test
basis.
Global drugmakers are taking notice. A move to open up online sales
- if approved nationwide - would help shake up a drug market
dominated by state-owned distributors and public hospitals, where
most medicines are still prescribed and sold.
Merck KGaA, for example, recently announced a tie-up with Alibaba
Health focused on systems to help track medicines to avoid
counterfeiting, but also on online drug sales and potential
direct-to-patient sales online.
FALSE HOPE?
In the United States, technology firms like Amazon, Google and Apple
have made pushes into healthcare, with mixed results, often finding
sprawling medical markets tougher to crack than entertainment or
media.
Technology firms in China also face major obstacles.
One is convincing patients to see doctors online or getting
hospitals to spend extra money on high-tech tools that promise
efficiency boosts or improvements for patients. And regulators still
have concerns about drug sales online.
Doctors and industry insiders also said that technology alone could
not solve the issues facing the sector.
"Technology is important but is not enough on its own," said DXY's
Li, a former doctor. He said the most immediate benefit was creating
new channels for simple primary care.
Wang Aihu, a cardiologist at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, said medical
centers were increasingly using online appointment and payment
systems, and that he conducted internet consultations for patients
in remote regions.
He added that his hospital may eventually have "AI-powered medical
imaging systems or robot doctors", but these could not replace
medical staff.
"These promising technologies will help accelerate and improve
diagnoses, but will not replace good doctors, who are still needed
to verify and correct diagnostic results," he said.
That hasn't stopped one hospital in Beijing doing a "man vs machine"
standoff this month to detect neurological disorders including brain
tumors. A robot developed by the prestigious Tsinghua University and
iFlytek, a local firm, has also taken and passed China's medical
exam for doctors.
For most people in China, however, AI ambulances and robot doctors
may need to wait a bit longer.
Tony Li, 55, a cancer patient in Shanghai, said he had seen little
cutting-edge tech in Chinese hospitals in regular visits over the
past few years.
"From what I heard, some of the newest technologies can help doctors
identify tumors at earlier stages, and that's great," he said. "But
the internet has a tendency of exaggerating things, giving us
enormous false hope."
Alibaba Cloud's Min acknowledged the company was still working to
prove the value of its technology, and that many hospital
administrators were still suspicious of things like cloud computing.
But, he said, "In China, once a new technology is proven useful then
everybody is crazy about it."
(Reporting by Adam Jourdan; Additional reporting by Shanghai
newsroom; Editing by Philip McClellan)
[© 2018 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.] Copyright 2018 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Thompson Reuters is solely responsible for this content. |
