Fourth Nandu River Smart Healthcare and Rehabilitation Industry Summit Successfully Concludes, Highlighting Opportunities in Digital Therapeutics, Brain-Computer Interfaces, and Rehabilitation Robotics

2025Year11Month11On the day, by the Haikou Municipal Science and Technology Industrial Information Bureau,Haikou International Investment Promotion Bureau, Haikou National High-Tech Industrial Development Zone Administrative Committee,Hosted by VeriSilicon Microelectronics (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. and organized by VeriSilicon Microelectronics (Hainan) Co., Ltd.“The 4th Nandu River Smart Healthcare and Rehabilitation Industry Summit Forum” Held in Haikou

In his address, Dai Weimin, Founder, Chairman, and President of VeriSilicon, noted that the Nandujiang Forum has been held consecutively for four sessions in Haikou. VeriSilicon aims to leverage this platform to promote the integrated development of the integrated circuit (IC) industry and the general health industry, ensuring that chip technology truly serves the public’s health needs. VeriSilicon Hainan is one of VeriSilicon’s nine global R&D centers and the first chip design enterprise to establish its presence in the Haikou High-Tech Industrial Development Zone. It is actively driving the development of Hainan’s IC industry, with a focus on smart healthcare and smart elderly care. Dai Weimin emphasized that, by leveraging Hainan University and local policy support, VeriSilicon will continue to facilitate the implementation of technological innovations, promote industrial development and talent cultivation, and provide sustainable technical support and talent reserves for Hainan.

During the event, leading smart healthcare companies gathered along the Nandu River to engage in in-depth discussions on three key topics—digital therapeutics, brain-computer interfaces, and rehabilitation robotics—seeking new pathways to accelerate the development of these industries in the age of artificial intelligence.

In 2024, the General Office of the People’s Government of Hainan Province issued the Three-Year Action Plan for High-Quality Development of Hainan’s Digital Health System and Digital Health Economy (2024–2026) (hereinafter referred to as the “Three-Year Plan”), which provided specific planning and deployment for the construction of Hainan’s overall digital health system, including digital therapeutics, thereby effectively promoting the development of Hainan’s digital healthcare industry. However, to achieve scaled commercialization of digital healthcare, China’s digital healthcare sector still needs to overcome challenges such as insufficient clinical evidence and slow approval processes.

In the panel discussion titled “Development Opportunities and Challenges of Digital Therapeutics,” participants at the event argued that the root cause of the difficulty in commercializing digital health lies in the technology itself. Theoretically, digital therapeutics should achieve both broad population adaptability and individualized differentiation, seeking to deliver precision medicine for patients while meeting regulatory approval requirements. In practice, however, most companies are only able to accomplish the former, struggling to develop personalized solutions tailored to each individual patient.

To upgrade algorithms, the key lies in collecting more comprehensive patient lifecycle data. Taking psychological and sleep-related disorders as examples, companies need not only to integrate data from conventional wearable devices but also leverage innovative technologies such as brain-computer interfaces to gain insights into the root causes of these conditions.

Currently, companies such as Juejue Health Technology and Jueming Technology have achieved notable results in related fields. Chen Liang, founder of Juejue Health Technology, stated during the roundtable discussion that their non-invasive brain-computer interface technology has accumulated over 90,000 monitoring data points, enabling precise identification of 34 cognitive and emotional indices, and allowing for customized intervention strategies based on users’ sensory sensitivity. Sun Xiangjie from Beijing Jueming Technology proposed that defining the scope of AI-driven conversations can enhance the precision of interventions, a model that has demonstrated favorable outcomes among patients with epilepsy and individuals in high-stress occupations.

Of course, breaking through the bottlenecks in digital therapeutics requires not only the support of brain-computer interface (BCI) data but also the integration of additional data sources to deliver personalized intervention plans tailored to each individual patient. To achieve this goal, digital health must foster multidisciplinary innovation and enhance industry acceptance, thereby enabling true collaborative implementation across the entire industrial chain.

In the 15th Five-Year Plan released in October 2025, brain-computer interfaces were explicitly included among the six key future industries, officially elevating them to the level of national strategy. It is evident that brain-computer interfaces represent not only a technological breakthrough but also carry multiple missions, including economic transformation and social progress.

At the roundtable forum on “The Development and Challenges of Brain-Computer Interfaces,” participants discussed topics including the selection of technological pathways for brain-computer interfaces, chip technology, and regulatory review and approval processes.

Regarding the choice of technological pathways, Chen Jiangang, co-founder of CraniumShen Medical, believes that expert consensus views invasive and non-invasive approaches not as competitive but as complementary and synergistic. Invasive methods target patients with severe conditions such as amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) and severe paralysis, serving as an ultimate solution; non-invasive methods cover a broader population and are suitable for early disease intervention and preventive treatment. In the future, these approaches are expected to integrate into a closed-loop system combining “neuromodulation + real-time monitoring.” On-site voting indicated that non-invasive technology is regarded as the pathway most likely to achieve large-scale clinical application within the next 3–5 years.

Closed-loop neuromodulation represents a core bottleneck in the industry. Currently, basic closed-loop systems have been implemented in deep brain stimulation (DBS) for treating conditions such as Parkinson’s disease and epilepsy. The ultimate goal is to achieve real-time, adaptive closed-loop control characterized by “sensing–feedback–modulation.” Ultrasound and electromagnetic stimulation are the mainstream modalities; ultrasound offers advantages in deep-brain targeting and high precision, while electromagnetic stimulation is more clinically mature. Both approaches require integration with navigation systems to enhance accuracy.

In terms of chip technology, Wang Zhiwei, General Manager of the Custom Chip Platform Division at VeriSilicon, believes that brain-computer interfaces urgently require custom chips featuring low power consumption, high throughput, and integrated acquisition and stimulation capabilities. General-purpose chips are difficult to adapt to all indications; therefore, customized development is required based on specific application scenarios. The reliability of medical-grade chips must advance in alignment with the overall standards for medical devices.

From a regulatory and approval perspective, Professor Zhang Xu from the School of Biomedical Engineering at Capital Medical University believes that there are currently issues such as lack of industry standards, insufficient risk assessment mechanisms, and non-standardized clinical certification. There are no cases of domestically produced invasive brain-computer interface products obtaining certification. To accelerate the development of brain-computer interfaces, regulatory agencies should establish differentiated regulatory channels and form an independent regulatory system for brain-computer interfaces to safeguard the development of the industry.

Overall, while the panelists discussed numerous challenges that remain to be addressed, the achievements in the commercial implementation of brain-computer interfaces (BCIs) cannot be overlooked. With the continued advancement of multidisciplinary collaboration, iteration of core technologies, and refinement of standard systems, BCIs are poised to deliver breakthrough solutions for medical applications such as neurological rehabilitation and the treatment of major diseases.

As China’s aging process continues to advance, the silver economy has entered a period of explosive growth. Today, seniors’ rising expectations for quality of life have driven surging demand for home health devices, propelling the domestic rehabilitation healthcare sector to transition from a “hospital-led” model to a “home-led” one.

The development of rehabilitation robots is precisely aligned with this trend, and empowered by AI, existing rehabilitation robots have to some extent met users’ needs for safety, ease of use, and intelligent companionship.

Nevertheless, significant challenges remain for the large-scale deployment of rehabilitation robots. Hua Xuyun, Chief Medical Officer at Shanghai Aoyi Information Technology Co., Ltd., believes that current constraints are concentrated in three main areas: high costs and maintenance barriers, the absence of a medical insurance reimbursement system, and the disconnect between clinical and home-based data.

The metaverse may be the key to solving this problem. By seamlessly transmitting real-time data collected from home devices to physicians, who can then provide precise guidance through remote interaction, it not only addresses patients’ difficulties in using medical devices but also alleviates physicians’ concerns about “remote diagnosis and treatment.”

Certainly, for rehabilitation robots to gain user acceptance in practice, the key lies in delivering capabilities that conventional therapeutic methods cannot provide. In other words, future rehabilitation services should not be limited to post-disease treatment but should also extend to daily health monitoring and prevention, thereby establishing a complete closed-loop system of “prevention–rehabilitation–follow-up.”