According to a report in Yangcheng Evening News, China's first
smart hospital featuring artificial intelligence (AI) has opened
in Guangzhou.
The AI system can provide recommendations to patients before
they arrive at the hospital and help them make appointments, as well payments through
the WeChat account of the Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital.
A smart diagnosis system helps doctors prescribe
medications. In addition to paying for bills online, patients can also
establish their medical profile through facial recognition on WeChat.
Ycwb.com reported that the hospital's deputy chief Li
Guanming expects the AI to reduce the time of patient inquiries by as much as
50%. The system can diagnose around 90% of illnesses that are treated at
community clinics.
Guidelines on AI application for all major hospitals in
Guangdong Province are being drafted.
Accelerating AI
adoption in healthcare
The State Council of China laid
out an AI strategy in 2017, with the aim of growing the country’s core AI
industries to a scale of over 1 trillion Yuan (USD 150 billion; a 100 times
increase over the 2016 number), driving related industries to exceed more than
10 trillion Yuan by 2030.
Subsequently in December 2017, The Ministry of Industry and
Information Technology (MIIT) of China released a
three-year action plan (2018 -2020) setting it out specific targets
for different technologies and sectors including healthcare.
For instance, by 2020, there is a target for AI systems to
be able to diagnose more than 95% of common diseases, related to brain, lungs,
eye, bone, cardiovascular system etc., with false negative rate of less than 1%
(not detecting disease when it is present) and the false positive rate of less
than 5% (Detecting disease when it is not there).
The plan also envisions the widespread use of AI-enabled service
robots in China within three years, with helping seniors and children being a
priority.
China Daily reported
recently that the First Affiliated Hospital of the University of Science and
Technology of China, also known as Anhui Provincial Hospital, launched a pilot
programme in August 2017 in collaboration with iFlytek Co Ltd, a leading
Chinese AI company. As part of the pilot, AI systems are helping doctors with
medical diagnosis and treatment. The AI-enabled system has helped to diagnose
more than 47,000 CT images as of March 2018. The accuracy for the detection of
lung nodules, one of the indicators of potential lung cancer, has reached 94
percent.
A speech EMR (Electronic Medical Record) system transfers doctors'
advice into structured records. The conversation has an accuracy of 95%. It
frees doctors from time-consuming documentation work so that they can dedicate
more time to caring for patients.
AI-enabled robot guides are assisting patients. For
instance, the robot guide asks patients about their symptoms and directs them
to the correct department to go to.
In another example of the use of AI for diagnostics, the
National Clinical Research Center for Cancer (NCRCC)
in China signed
a deal last year with the Institute of Computing Technology under the Chinese
Academy of Sciences (CAS)
to use AI in medical imaging.
The first area of focus for the cooperation will be to use
the AI technology for reading breast scans and mammograms, two common methods
used in breast cancer screening. Deep learning technology will be used to build
models based on the experience of radiologists. The machine would be trained on
hundreds of thousands of breast scan reports before it assists the doctors in
diagnosis.