Lin Min

linmin67@hotmail.com

THE push by Chinese tech giants to develop health-care technology amid the country’s all-out battle against COVID-19 has won admiration from U.S. media.

“While U.S. technology firms from Apple to Microsoft have spoken publicly about their push into health tech, China’s companies have been quietly working in the background,” a CNBC report titled “China’s giants from Alibaba to Tencent ramp up health tech efforts to battle coronavirus” said last week.

The story said Chinese technology giants are accelerating their efforts in the field of health-care technology in areas from cloud computing to artificial intelligence (AI) amid the COVID-19 outbreak.

Shenzhen-based Tencent and Huawei, as well as Alibaba, Baidu and DiDi, have all launched new health tech features aimed at diagnosing infection cases and finding a vaccine for COVID-19, the CNBC report said. Alibaba’s research arm developed a new AI algorithm that, through analyzing CT scans, is able to provide a diagnosis within 20 seconds at an accuracy rate of up to 96 percent. Tencent has also opened up its supercomputing facility to help researchers find a cure to the virus, CNN reported.

Tech companies in Shenzhen are representative of China’s efforts in developing various technologies and products to aid the battle against the virus.

Huawei and ZTE have used their cutting-edge 5G technology to help several major hospitals in Wuhan and Beijing realize real-time, long-distance medical consultation, enabling the institutions to share their elite medical expertise. Huawei, in partnership with China Telecom, completed the installation and testing of a long-distance consultation platform at Wuhan’s Huoshengshan Hospital on Jan. 31 within 12 hours.

In January, Shenzhen’s BGI developed a real-time fluorescent RT-PCR kit for detecting the novel coronavirus. It donated 20,000 test kits to Hubei on Jan. 29, and then donated a further 100,000 test kits in cooperation with charities.

Jianguo, a robot developed by Ubtech, headquartered in Nanshan District, has been deployed to detect passengers with high body temperatures. With an error margin of less than 0.5 degrees Celsius, the robot has proved to be very helpful in screening passengers at crowded transport terminals, saving manpower and reducing contact between people compared with handheld temperature-checking devices.

DJI drones have also been given more roles, such as spraying disinfectants at industrial zones in Longgang District.

During a fact-finding trip to Shenzhen on Feb. 18 and 19, WHO experts were impressed by Shenzhen’s epidemic control efforts and noted in their report the good use of technologies in the city’s battle against COVID-19.

The WHO experts thought Shenzhen’s “finger-tip reporting” app was easy to use, according to a report by the experts following the conclusion of their fact-finding mission to China. Since Feb. 1, more than 8 million people in Shenzhen have registered with the app, enabling the government to identify high-risk groups among those who have arrived in the city from other parts of the country more easily. The app, developed by Tencent, has been used in many other provinces and cities. It has attracted 700 million users who have voluntarily reported their travel history since Jan. 1. The app also enables users to show a “health code” when entering an office building, factory or housing estate.

Shenzhen’s technological prowess in dealing with the COVID-19 challenge shows we can leverage technology to its fullest potential in tackling one of the world’s gravest challenges.

While the numbers of infections have been on the decline in China, the epidemic has surged in some other countries recently. It is time China extended a helping hand to those countries in need.

The Chinese Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, the country’s top industry regulator, said Friday that China will help countries facing inadequate supplies in their battle against the epidemic by encouraging domestic producers to export their products.

The move is part of China’s broader efforts to facilitate the global fight against COVID-19, and it comes as the country’s production capacity of crucial medical supplies, including face masks and protective gear, is rapidly rising.

Countries hit hard by the epidemic can also learn from Shenzhen how to make good use of technology in the fight. Apps that can track people who have had close contact with COVID-19 patients and record the specific carriage number of every Metro rider’s trip help health authorities limit additional infections. These apps can be localized easily and quickly. While some countries are short of test kits, an increasing number of Chinese biotech companies are producing test kits that are not expensive and produce reliable results very quickly. Such kits, temperature monitoring devices and other epidemic-fighting equipment can be exported to help the world win the battle.

(The author is a deputy editor-in-chief of Shenzhen Daily.)