(Chinese Version)

In early 2017, the biggest health IT conference in the world, HIMSS17, was held in the U.S. Among all sessions, the most eye-catching speech was probably IBM’s president and CEO Ginni Rometty’s talk on how to use cognitive computing and data analysis to transform the heath industry and revolutionize customizable health products. In her talk, she introduced IBM’s flagship product Watson Health and showcased IBM’s ambition to enter the global smart health market.

On March 28th, it’s reported that IBM had signed a strategic agreement with Baheal Pharm (Bai Yang Medicine Group) in Beijing, introducing Watson Health to the Chinese health sector. According to the agreement, Baheal Pharm’s Baiyang Smart Technology will exclusively own Watson’s distributorship in China for three years.

So how exactly will Watson Health land in China? And why did IBM choose Baheal Pharm over powerful Internet companies such as Baidu, Alibaba and Tencent?

The penetration of AI powered smart health starts now

The cooperation of IBM and Baheal Pharm includes six health services centering cancer, covering lung cancer, breast cancer and cervical cancer etc. It provides customized and precise medical solutions for clients.

Powered by incredible information analysis and natural language processing capacity, as well as self learning ability, IBM Watson is capable of providing medical solutions and insights. Through cloud computing analysis, IBM Watson is able to extract useful information from complex data, and acquire deeper insights and evidence after running logic authentication. It can examine and assess a patient’s case thoroughly. Watson also possesses powerful learning ability, which enables it to continuously improve itself through interacting with the user and bring about solutions based on facts and evidence. Compared with the treatment solutions from top experts in the world, Watson’s solutions are over 90% similar to them.

In China, 4.3 million people are diagnosed with cancer every year, accounting for 25% of the world’s total cases. Deaths caused by cancer in China take up 20% of that of the world. Baheal Pharm’s board chair Fu Gang believes that Watson’s ability to process 12 languages and learn by itself will prove to be the cancer treatment solution provider with the most potential.

IBM chooses to enter the field of cancer first for the fact that Watson has a leading advantage in cancer cases among the whole Watson Health line. As a matter of fact, heath and medicine is the first field that IBM’s cognitive intelligence entered. Early in the 90s, IBM’s technical team started to refine Watson on health and medical use cases. Up till now, Watson Health has become the most matured product in its family line. American Cancer Society, is also using Watson to mine relevant data to provide customized treatment solution for cancer patients.

It’s worth noting that this isn’t IBM Watson Health’s first commercial application in China. On August 12th 2016, IBM had already partnered with Hangzhou Cognitive Care to help Chinese medical institutes acquire customized cancer treatment solutions via the Watson for Oncology trained by MSCKCC through cognitive computing. MSKCC is the first commercial application center for IBM Watson in the world. At present, the AI system assist 90% of the nurses there with their daily works.

When asked what makes the cooperation with Hangzhou Cognitive Care different, Fu Gang pointed out it’s the scope of cooperation. Hangzhou Cognitive Care is only a client for IBM, while Baheal Pharm is also a distributor. That being said, Baheal Pharm will begin helping hospitals, enterprise and insurance companies build connection with IBM to crack open the market based on Watson’s power. IBM is not going to explore potential clients of its oncological line itself.

But why Baheal Pharm?

Why a traditional company like Baheal Pharm could still win over IBM when faced with immense competition from emerging and influential Internet health forces such as BAT etc.?

As a matter of fact, it’s not a coincidence that Baheal Pharm was picked from the crowd. Early in 2016, Baheal Pharm had already forged cooperation with IBM. Baheal Pharm’s Bodhi Health chose IBM’s Linux ONE to build the strongest brain in the health industry: Bodhi Health Cloud. This HIP-backed platform integrates all the scattered systems in the hospital into one cloud data center. It connects the information isolated islands in the hospital and increases doctors’ efficiency. Externally the system also aligns different medical institutes and constructs an Internet of medicine via third-party information sharing platform, achieving hierarchical diagnosis and treatment.

“Once a hospital connects to this platform, it becomes a cloud hospital,” Fu Gang said.

At present, Bodhi Health Cloud is actively helping Qingdao Municipal Hospital build an IoT cloud hospital. Baheal Pharm’s medical data center and Watson Health’s support will help these hospitals go smart on cancer treatment, management of chronic diseases and image examination etc.

Secondly, Baheal Pharm’s powerful IT operation capacity is leading in the industry. The company has an IT team of 600 talents, providing four major solutions for vertical medical industry chain: after-diagnosis management tool YiFuZhen, which provides a digital prescription transfer platform for patients and doctors; DoctorPDA, which boasts 400,000 doctor users and is the most used self learning tool for Chinese doctors; EXAM, a talent assessment tool that’s most popular in China, with over two million doctors and nurses currently using it to take professional exams; and SmartDoc that helps out doctors.

Years of accumulation of resources will no doubt shorten the time Watson Health needs to take off in the Chinese market. These will also strengthen Watson’s deep learning ability.

In the realm of offline retail, the scale of Baheal Pharm cooperated pharmacies is also huge. The Minute Clinic co-established by Baheal Pharm and Jinwanjia Pharm for example fits the global tendency of pharmacy-to-clinic, which provides health management solutions. Similar to American franchise pharmacy brand CVS, it opens up data on patient behaviors, clinical data, data on medicine purchase and insurance etc. to Watson to predict health risk and provide more pin-to-point treatment solutions.

At present, Baheal Pharm now owns over 12,000 medical organizations, 230,000 pharmacies, and 750 cooperation partners. As a Buddhism lover, Fu Gang believes that besides these quality resources accumulated through out the years, Baheal Pharm and IBM’s similar corporate gene also contributes to the cooperation. Fu Gang thinks Baheal Pharm’s cultural icon is a camel. From his perspective, the health industry can’t go as fast as the Internet industry, but needs stable progress and takes up social responsibility. Camels endure hardships and follow through, which is exactly the spirit that will represent Baheal Pharm’s mission in smart health. That’s also similar to IBM’s corporate culture.

Opening an era of smart health

To bring Watson Health into application fast, Baheal Pharm has recently invested an AI training base in Qingdao to enhance Watson’s response, learning ability and interaction with the user.

From Fu’s perspective, cognitive healthcare will first benefit both the patients and doctors. For the doctors, it’s like jumping from the sword and shield area to the modern armory. In the past, some diagnoses are made based on previous experience and skills, and therefore misdiagnoses are inevitable. But with the support of AI’s super brain, doctors can better assess and treat patients. That’s how both groups are benefited.

It’s apparent that AI will not only change the doctor-patient relationship, the structure of hospital and even the whole heath industry chain in China will be altered. Drug abuse and inappropriate diagnosis will then naturally be exposed and banned. A group of innovative technologies and medical enterprises powered by AI will then rise and sweep the market. In the future, new smart clinics, drug development and medical information development will undergo profound improvement.

“The development of every new drug requires software to process data. In the past two or three decades we have thousands of Chinese patients volunteering for clinic trial for the upcoming drugs. Watson can provide better insights and assess appropriate candidates based on previous successful cases and chemical analysis,” Fu Gang said.

Of course, installing an AI is not an easy task. On the HIMSS conference early this year, attendees discussed that deploying a set of AI system would cost around $15-$20 million, which is quite a budget for most medical institutes. Many representatives from small-sized hospitals spoke frankly that it’s simply unaffordable. However, Fu Gang has confidence: “The investment is sure big, because you need to set up infrastructure and tools to analysis. But this is a long term trend for smart health.”

Fu Gang revealed that after taking off in China Watson would first target comprehensive hospitals of level three first class. In his opinion, these hospitals have relatively mature systems and possess more medical data.

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[The article is published and edited with authorization from the author @Hu Jianglu, please note source and hyperlink when reproduce.]

Translated by Garrett Lee (Senior Translator at PAGE TO PAGE), working for TMTpost.