Smart tech to unify healthcare and insurance data

China will launch a pilot program this year to establish cloud platforms aggregating personal healthcare and medical insurance data, aiming to provide more intelligent services for insured individuals and accelerate the development of smart technologies in the sector, the National Healthcare Security Administration said on Sunday.

The platforms will be built on the unified national medical insurance information system established in 2012 and led by provincial or municipal authorities.

They will integrate core data from insurance-designated hospitals, including diagnosis and treatment records, settlement information, and the use of medicines and medical consumables.

Authorities will also seek to incorporate data from unconventional sources, such as wearable devices and home-based smart monitoring equipment, apart from health checkup institutions.

A key feature of the platforms will be the creation of dynamic, multidimensional profiles for insured individuals. These profiles will include medical histories — such as past surgeries, allergies and treatment records — along with real-time health monitoring data. They will also contain insurance and financial information, including contributions, medical expenditures, account transactions, family relationships and credit records.

By analyzing this data, the platforms will generate comprehensive personal healthcare profiles, assess the use of healthcare services and offer personalized health recommendations, the administration said.

Local authorities are encouraged to use the platforms to streamline procedures and improve public convenience. They may explore services such as chronic disease management and health risk monitoring based on personal profiles, as well as providing anonymized data analysis to industries including AI-driven companies, pharmaceutical research and development, commercial health insurance and smart elderly care.

The pilot program will run from February through the end of 2026.

The administration emphasized that the initiative must strictly comply with cybersecurity, data security and personal information protection laws, and that a security and access management system covering the entire data life cycle will be established.

The administration has been promoting innovation and accelerating the use of new technologies in recent years.

Zhang Ke, director of the administration, said at a conference in December that work is underway to promote cloud-based sharing of medical imaging data, with the goal of achieving nationwide mutual recognition of medical imaging by the end of 2027.

Several regions have already been supported in building personal healthcare cloud platforms for insured individuals, as part of broader efforts to expand the usage of AI in healthcare services.