Ping An Energizes Smart Healthcare With Technology, Healthcare Ecosystem to Be a Future Highlight

The Chinese government launched an initiative to support Shenzhen in building a pioneering zone. It supports Shenzhen in building major innovation carriers such as 5G, AI, life information and biomedical laboratories, and exploring the establishment of international center for scientific and technical information and the academy of medical sciences.

“In the future, we believe that the AI medical market will usher in a new round of integration.”

As a Shenzhen-based company, how does Ping An Group grasp these opportunities and use smart healthcare to truly benefit the people? Geoff Kau, co-president of Ping An Smart City and president of Ping An Health Technology, revealed the answer for us.

Fundamental Technologies + Four Application Scenarios = Unique Advantages

Ping An ultimately benefits hundreds of millions of patients through supporting the construction of medical institutions. Kau explains that we use AI and cloud technologies to provide end-to-end solutions for pre-, mid-, and post-treatment in different level medical institutions.

It is worth noting that the underlying technology platform that Ping An relies on involves the largest knowledge base in China, including drug library, risk factor library, disease library, treatment prescription library, and expert database of doctor and hospitals.

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The application is divided into four phases:

First, disease prediction, which is dominated by 35 chronic diseases, includes some infectious diseases. Cooperate with Chongqing and Shenzhen to predict the incidence of influenza, hand, foot and mouth disease with the accuracy rate up to about 88%, and the accuracy rate of high incidence about 92%.

Second, disease screening. For example, the data of the uploaded physical examination report is structured by OCR, then the customized prediction is realized through the risk model. Through three-dimensional retinal scanning, the image screening ophthalmic OCT can observe 17 focuses with the accuracy rate of above 97.6%, such as sugar net, glaucoma, cataract, and age-related macular.

Third, the diagnosis and treatment engine. Doctor assistant AskBob is a smart assisted auxiliary diagnosis tool covering 1,800 diseases. For example, it can give the examination recommendations based on the electronic medical records; more than 29 million medical literature data can be structured, and intelligent comparisons can be made for cases to facilitate self-learning by doctors.

Fourth, chronic disease management. The Ping An knowledge base has collected common problems concerned by more than 70 million patients and keep updating. The base engine of the Q&A is built by machine training, which achieves over 90% satisfaction. Ping An also has an automatic follow-up engine, such as timing calls for diabetics, supervising blood glucose measurement and insulin injection.

At present, Ping An focuses on three types of diseases including cardiovascular diseases, respiratory diseases and endocrine diseases. Ping An hopes to perfect end-to-end capability building in these three areas in two to three years.

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Research Strength is the Core of Smart Healthcare Development

As a technical team, talents are the base of scientific research. Ping An Smart Healthcare currently owns more than 700 R&D personnel with 65% technicians, and established Institute of Medical Science and Technology with Tsinghua University. In the past two years, it has won six awards only in the field of medical imaging.

Kau believes that there are many players in a single field in the market, but Ping An focuses on end-to-end solutions, integrating government public health departments, hospitals, and primary medical institutions. In addition, based on information technology, Ping An Smart City collects data with the intelligent brain as an entry point and benefits from the internal inspection and testing center, thus forming a synergized ecosystem.

However, the concept of diagnosis and treatment relying on AI has not been fully accepted. Kau believes that user’s mentality, their acceptance and regulatory policies are the key factors to promote the progress of the industry.

Boxing Combinations to Fight a Good Fight

As a pioneer, Shenzhen has hatched many of the world leading companies and technologies. In April this year, Ping An and Shenzhen Municipal Health Commission signed a strategic cooperation agreement. The company cooperates with the CDC to monitor the Shenzhen Health Index, conducts research cooperation with the Ophthalmology Medical Union, the Cancer Hospital and the Fuwai Hospital, helps more than 500 private medical institutions to build an integrated platform for service supervision in the pilot areas of Longhua District, and upgrades the e-health accounts of Shenzhen residents to let everyone have a virtual family doctor. In addition, Ping An also hopes to energize the Community Health Center through AskBob.

Kau said that the company hopes to use boxing combinations rather than a single punch to exploit its advantages and drive medical and health industry development in Shenzhen. “In the future, we believe that the AI medical market will usher in a new round of integration.”

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