AI, biotech seen transforming healthcare

AI is empowering not only screening and diagnosis, but also payment processes. In the past, when encountered with major illnesses, after spending a lot of money, patients usually needed to go to the healthcare insurer's counter and submit a series of materials to get reimbursement.

With the help of AI, patients can process claims and insurance paperwork much more smoothly. For example, when AI-enabled technology platforms are docked with huiminbao — a commercial healthcare insurance that supplements public healthcare insurance — patients no longer need to jump through hoops to process claims.

All things can be done online. AI-enabled optical character recognition realizes image sorting and recognition, guiding patients to upload materials needed for claims so as to avoid incorrect or repetitive submissions.

"AI's language and image processing capabilities can effectively increase work efficiency by as much as 50 percent. By matching claim rules under different scenarios, different policies and different customer groups, AI is able to process six claims per second, and issue claim reports within 8 seconds, with an accuracy of 99.8 percent. Moreover, AI helps to infer the risks of claim cases and gives corresponding suggestions, greatly cutting enterprises' operating costs," said the spokesperson of Shanghai-based MediTrust Health, a company that offered AI technology support to huiminbao.

With enterprises stepping up efforts to promote the application of advanced technologies in every facet of healthcare, there is still a huge gap between laboratory discovery and real-time applications.

"Speaking of AI, we physicians from the imaging department may be the ones that benefit the most. AI is able to replace our preliminary work, such as reading images in the first place and making primary assessments. However, we still need to read images and make diagnoses by ourselves," said a physician surnamed Qin, who works at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, Capital Medical University.

Zheng Shanjie, head of the National Development and Reform Commission, the country's top economic regulator, said that China will take solid steps to accelerate the development of new quality productive forces, boost industrial innovation via technological innovation, speed up the upgrading of traditional industries and foster emerging industries.

Zheng said the NDRC will constantly carry out practical measures, especially in the sectors of life sciences, high-end manufacturing and digital technologies, to facilitate companies doing business in China.

"China has now entered a high-quality development stage, which requires us to upgrade production quality. On the one hand, we should constantly promote the development of new technologies, such as AI, by further enhancing our independent R&D capabilities, innovative capabilities as well as scientific discovery abilities. The quicker we act, the more opportunities we will have," Wang from Tsinghua University said.

"On the other hand, we should think carefully about how we can better apply new technologies to all walks of life so as to make good use of them to serve us humans better. For example, it is important to think about what changes will take place and how we should react when we apply AI to diagnosis and other medical services."