Zhang Yu

JeniZhang13@163.com

THE Shenzhen International Biotech Summit 2018 and the Biology and Health Industry Expo were held at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center on Thursday.

Nearly 100 guests, including biotech entrepreneurs, academicians and investors from home and abroad, attended the summit.

Hu Shengshou, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, and Wayne Hendrickson, a member of the National Academy of Sciences of the U.S., both delivered keynote speeches.

Hu opened his speech by introducing the development of smart medical treatment in China, before pointing out the existing problems in information security, algorithm transparency and data authenticity.

With the boom of artificial intelligence (AI), AI technologies have also made great progress in the medical field, according to Hu. “In this context and in terms of social environment, policy, technology and capital, smart medical treatment seems to be very close to our daily life,” Hu said.

However, in Hu’s view, despite the emergence of medical AI companies and soaring medical financing, we still have a long way to go to realize the application of AI technologies in the medical field.

“Statistics showed that the smart medical market in China is expected to exceed 20 billion yuan (US$2.91 billion) in 2018. However, up until now there haven’t been any real smart medical products in China approved by State-level certification and adopted for clinical application,” Hu said in his speech.

According to him, computing power, algorithms and data are the core of smart medical treatment. In particular, health big data will greatly enhance the capabilities of community medical services.

Hu said the National Center for Cardiovascular Diseases, Fuwai Hospital and the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences will cooperate with the Shenzhen Municipal Government to develop a system to improve medical service capabilities at the grass-roots level based on three databases, including those of the city’s population, medical insurance and hospitals.

According to Ai Xuefeng, vice mayor of Shenzhen, the output value of the city’s biomedical industry exceeded 240 billion yuan in 2017. In the first half of 2018, the growth of the industry’s added value increased by 23.8 percent, ranking first among the seven strategic emerging industries.