Yunnan plugs into high-tech era

Workers produce vaccines in a plant of the Institute of Medical Biology at the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. The institute is building a factory in the Chenggong New Zone, in Kunming's high-tech industrial zone. [Photo / China Daily]

Companies in Kunming industrial development zone earn income of $17b in 2011

What would come into your mind if someone asked you about Yunnan province in southwestern China? Perhaps beautiful natural landscapes, wild animals and various ethnic groups, but it's less likely that you would think of the high-tech industry.

However, the companies gathered in the Kunming National High-tech Industries Development Zone, which occupies an area of five square kilometers in the provincial capital, had an annual income of $17 billion last year.

Thanks to the support of the local government, companies in the zone are making a number of achievements that are putting Kunming and Yunnan on the high-tech map.

Improving healthcare

An undiagnosed illness that was found when he was a baby almost wiped out 15-year-old Cheng Jianfeng's family's savings.

When he was young, Cheng would often suffer from fevers, and fell into comas on several occasions.

As a result, his family in northeastern Yunnan province, with an annual income of no more than 3,000 yuan ($472), was plunged into debt.

However, the biggest problem his family faced was a lack of access to good doctors and decent healthcare.

It takes more than a day to travel from Cheng's home to Kunming, the provincial capital. And despite having received medical treatment twice at a hospital in Kunming, his condition failed to improve.

Events took a turn for the better in 2006, when doctors from Peking University First Hospital gave him a consultation.

However, rather than traveling the long distance from Beijing to rural Yunnan, which would have taken a great deal of time and money, the doctors conducted their consultation using telemedicine technology.

Telemedicine - the use of telecommunication and information technology in order to provide clinical healthcare at a distance - is still an unfamiliar word to most Chinese people.

But in Yunnan, Cheng is among the 626,000 telemedicine cases that Sunpa has handled in the past 14 years.

Thanks to telemedicine, Cheng was finally diagnosed with sequel encephalitis and returned to school after a couple of weeks of treatment.

Sunpa, in the Kunming National High-tech Industries Development Zone, is China's the largest developer and manufacturer of telemedicine systems and digital medical devices.

The company, established in 1998, has set up one of the largest telemedicine networks in the world centered on Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Kunming, and affecting more than 1,000 hospitals at different levels throughout China. It has gathered more than 6,500 well-known medical experts and 70,000 outstanding doctors, aiming to provide quality medical services for 500 million people.

"It will make a significant change to the medical services in a very large geographical area in China," said Liu Yong, chairman of the company.

"Especially in those remote areas, where transport and medical support are so scarce, telemedicine will provide patients with chances to get healthier while reducing costs."

It is estimated that in Yunnan alone, Sunpa has helped to save the government and patients more than $460 million over the past 14 years.

It also has successfully carried out several telemedicine projects in South Africa and India.

"Our medical service platform will also benefit doctors, bringing convenience to medical education. Even physicians in county level hospitals can observe complicated surgery done by well-known doctors in other countries," Liu said.

He said the medical education services provided by Sunpa have saved the government and medical institutions $178 million.

Moreover, the company will further develop its portable wireless medical devices, providing various tests, and can immediately update information on its Internet database.

Sunpa is now working to develop a cloud-based medical service platform.

"We will build an all-in-one solution for health information systems," he said.