China relies on AI to find a cure for its struggling health system



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With over 2,000 different skin diseases, it is impossible for non-specialists to know them all. That's the problem Shi Jiang has been facing for two decades as a general practitioner in a community health clinic in Shanghai, where most of his patients are elderly

"Sometimes they showed me their aging spots or moles , worried if they were abnormal.But it's been a long time since I did not study dermatology at university, says Shi, 45.

When he heard last month on Quality Skin, an experimental application for dermatological diagnosis powered by AI, Shi jumped

In China, health care has become one of the most recent applications of AI, with the security and the new retail trade, where technologies such as natural language processing and computer vision are being applied, greatly improving efficiency in a country where there is an acute shortage of doctors and qualified nurses. The e Chinese companies, from start-ups to technology giants, seize the opportunity to apply AI solutions to the automatic reading of CAT scanners and the processing and analysis of medical applications.

How AI can help China meet its growing needs According to Cui Yong, head of research at the China-Japan Friendship Hospital, which was chosen by the authorities to experimenting with medical consultations on the Internet and has developed the application Quality Skin that can produce "There are more than 2,000 types of skin diseases, while new graduates can only recognize 100 of them and even the the most experienced doctors would meet only 800 in their case, the whole career, "he said." Most doctors avoid giving their opinion on an illness they do not know, and until 39, 60% of cases are likely to be misdiagnosed. "

While only 7.7% of Chinese hospitals are classified as A", they treated half of all outpatient visits in 2016, according to estimates of the industry cited in the recent prospectus of Ping An Doctor. Most doctors only receive early training and do not have the opportunity to follow new medical developments.

In China, the Dermatology Departments of Hospitals and Clinics Represent About 3% of the 240 Million

China Closely Comes Closer to the National Health Care Network

"China is already far ahead the United States in AI diagnostics, "said Ni Hao, general manager of Yitu Technology, a Shanghai-based AI start-up specializing in facial recognition systems. There are two reasons for this, according to Ni. First, the shortage of doctors in the United States is not as serious as in China, and second, US start-ups can not afford to have a large medical team because the US doctors earn between $ 250,000 and $ 300,000 a year. Yitu supports a team of about 400 doctors, most of whom work part-time for about 10 hours a week to help with data labeling, while one-fifth of his full-time employees have a medical history.

The company has partnered with West China Hospital of Chengdu for an AI-led lung cancer diagnostic system, able to exploit approximately 280,000 actual cases of lung cancer – the world's largest database – and provide a diagnosis in seconds. [19659002] Yitu is one of dozens of Chinese start-ups that have emerged in recent years, and many are now focusing on health care. In November, a smart robot developed by iFlyTek, a company listed in Shenzhen, passed the country's national medical qualification exam

How technology helps improve health care in rural China

[19659002] Tencent Holdings, operator of the ubiquitous WeChat messaging platform, was selected by Beijing last November to take the lead in AI applications in healthcare. He has since teamed up with more than 100 triple A hospitals across the country.

Last week, the Shenzhen-based company launched its first open platform for medical diagnosis AI. Using computer vision and artificial intelligence analysis, the Tencent Shadow Chaser covers 700 diseases that account for 90% of the most common ambulatory patient cases.

Similar to the training of doctors, the platform has gone through three stages. training. "First, the natural language processing and in-depth learning of medical textbooks, health records and diagnostic directories to produce a stock of medical knowledge, followed by the development of new technologies. Diagnostic algorithms and optimization of algorithms with the help of human medical specialists.

Shadow Chaser, which has been included in about 10 million health databases, is a step towards building the next generation of intelligent health services, said Vice President Tencent Chen Guangyu in a statement Baidu, the first Chinese search engine, offers open source AI technologies to help pathologists detect breast cancer , while Alibaba Group, the number one e-commerce company in China and owner of the South China Morning Post, announces partnerships with hospitals for healthcare platforms. e intelligent diagnosis. In October, Alibaba Health launched its first AI medical laboratory in cooperation with affiliated hospitals of Zhejiang University and Xinhua Hospital. He also announced a blockchain-enabled public platform to serve as a secure data sharing network for hospitals.

The China-Japan Friendship Hospital, which launched in March an AI-assisted diagnostic platform for skin cancer, has received more than 10,000 requests from doctors wishing to be diagnosed with the disease. adopt automated consultations. "There are more than 20,000 patients in China who are diagnosed with melanoma each year, but many of them do not find out until too late," Cui said.

"The algorithm is now ripe It's time to transfer what the machine has learned in the diagnosis of other skin diseases," said Cui, adding that the Team is working on adding a new skin disease every three months to the platform. walking forward, regulators are lagging behind. None of the diagnostic services authorized by the country's AI has received approval from the Food and Drug Administration of China (CFDA) – a prerequisite for commercial adoption. The diagnostic systems of West China Hospital and China-Japan Friendship Hospital are experimental and currently free, so they do not require the approval of the authorities.

"We want to show the industry what the diagnosis and treatment of AI allow The system will be like," Ni said of Yitu, adding that though his lung cancer program is likely to be approved next year, the process has been "difficult to manage" because of regulatory requirements.

Even with the delay in regulation, patients benefit.Shi, the doctor of Shanghai , was able to identify a potentially malignant condition in a 68-year-old patient after the Quality Skin application indicated a 70% chance of the most common form of skin cancer. , uses it every day.

"Once you start working as a general practitioner, it's hard to keep track of different disciplines," said Shi.

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