2022 Digital Medical Technology and Application Innovation Competition: Deep Dialogue with Healthcare to Drive Technological Innovation and Transformation

The digital transformation of healthcare has become a major trend.

As an increasing number of medical institutions and traditional healthcare enterprises establish internal digital transformation departments to expand their frontiers, startups and research teams are flocking in large numbers into the tide of intelligent industrial upgrading. Through cross-sector collaboration and integration, various stakeholders are proposing numerous cutting-edge technologies and innovative models tailored to multimodal data generated across diverse scenarios, covering the entire lifecycle of healthcare—from prevention, screening, and diagnosis to treatment and rehabilitation.

Making digital healthcare truly “take root” requires the support of multiple stakeholders, including clinical institutions, research organizations, enterprises, and government bodies. It is essential to break down entrenched industry perceptions and technological barriers, promote the deep integration of digital technologies with clinical medicine and the life and health industries, and jointly build a new ecosystem for digital healthcare.

To achieve this goal,Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory and Ruijin Hospital, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, jointly launched the “2022 Digital Medical Technology and Application Innovation Competition”。

With the goal of building a “world-class model hospital in Asia” for the future, Ruijin Hospital has been actively advancing its digital transformation in healthcare. As a representative of China’s new-type research institutions in the field of artificial intelligence (AI), the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory has been dedicated since its inception to breaking through fundamental AI theories and mastering key core technologies. Now, these two powerhouses have joined forces to launch this competition under the theme “A New Ecosystem of Medical Intelligence, Collaborating for a Shared Future.” The initiative seeks innovative cases of digital medical technologies and applications from around the world, aiming to unite more outstanding teams to co-build an integrated ecosystem encompassing medicine, industry, academia, and research.

Closely aligned with clinical needs, the “Digital Medical Technology and Application Innovation Competition” features two major challenge tracks:

Develop an AI-driven, evidence-based clinical decision support system for the diagnosis and treatment of chronic, common, and frequently occurring diseases, based on the fusion analysis of multimodal medical data. Achieve key technological breakthroughs and innovations in the fusion analysis of multimodal data (including but not limited to radiology, pathology, ultrasound, electrophysiology, and endoscopy) or in the construction of diagnostic and therapeutic knowledge graphs (which can be built using multimodal electronic health records, pre-consultation clinical assessments, follow-up data, and other relevant information).

Develop key technologies or novel wearable and non-contact smart devices for proactive, full-lifecycle health management, enabling health monitoring and management across diverse scenarios such as home, workplace, and elderly care. These solutions include, but are not limited to, early disease screening, disease warning, post-diagnosis follow-up and rehabilitation, physical fitness assessment, diagnosis and evaluation related to exercise and diseases, nutritional status assessment and intervention, and mental health assessment and intervention, thereby promoting proactive health management throughout the entire lifecycle.

The two major competition topics stem from specific needs in clinical practice. In China, medical resources are scarce and unevenly distributed; in particular, inadequate infrastructure and limited educational and training opportunities for primary-care physicians constrain the diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities of primary healthcare institutions. By integrating multimodal data analysis with artificial intelligence algorithms, it is possible to establish homogeneous, standardized diagnostic and treatment pathways, reduce misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis of common diseases, improve the quality of primary healthcare services, and alleviate the imbalance in the allocation of medical resources.

Meanwhile, shifting the focus of health management upstream to precisely reduce the likelihood of health impairment, with the aim of achieving fewer illnesses, fewer severe diseases, and healthy longevity, as well as striving to provide lifelong healthcare and health services to the public, is also a key concept outlined in the Outline of the “Healthy China 2030” Plan. Its realization depends on intelligent solutions integrating hardware and software to enable multi-scenario health monitoring and management both inside and outside hospitals, along with continuous health monitoring and risk early warning. By providing the most intuitive data and insights, these solutions encourage the public to seek medical attention or take intervention measures in a timely and proactive manner, thereby expanding from traditional diagnosis and treatment to lifelong health management.

However, existing solutions still have room for improvement in the aforementioned two areas, leaving substantial space for innovation and significant application value for the research and development of technologies such as artificial intelligence, big data, the Internet, and 5G in healthcare scenarios.

Adhering to technical innovation capability and clinical application value as the core evaluation criteria, this competition is open globally. Clinical and research teams from enterprises, medical institutions, and research institutes may form teams of three or more members to register independently. Based on the development stage of the submitted projects, entries are categorized into Group A (Early-Stage Innovation) and Group B (Application Implementation). The competition seeks promising solutions and application cases tailored to two specific challenge scenarios.

Ruijin Hospital has received the highest A++ rating in the “National Performance Appraisal for Tertiary Public Hospitals” for four consecutive years. In recent years, it has actively promoted digital transformation in healthcare. The Shanghai Digital Medicine Innovation Center was established at Ruijin Hospital last year, providing a digital clinical “ecosystem” for this competition.

Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory is a new-type research institution in China’s artificial intelligence field, dedicated to conducting strategic, original, and forward-looking scientific research and technological breakthroughs. It aims to achieve major advances in fundamental AI theories and core key technologies, building an integrated, large-scale comprehensive research base that is “breakthrough-oriented, leading, and platform-based,” thereby providing digital scientific “nutrients” for this competition.

The two organizations will provide comprehensive support to outstanding teams across multiple dimensions, including financial backing, scientific research collaboration, technical training, and investment and financing matchmaking. For each competition category, 12 winning projects will be selected, comprising two First Prize winners, four Second Prize winners, and six Third Prize winners, with cash awards of RMB 30,000, RMB 20,000, and RMB 10,000, respectively.

Excellent teams can gain access to resources or financial support, including in-hospital scenario validation, expert guidance, and targeted research collaboration. They will also have the opportunity to leverage the open-source ecosystem and training support from the Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory, and to apply for collaborative projects on laboratory demonstration applications. Furthermore, teams are poised to join the digital healthcare ecosystem of the organizing institutions, facilitating investment and financing exchanges with entities such as the competition’s cooperation fund and industrial parks.

Registration for the 2022 Digital Health Technology and Application Innovation Competition is still open and will close at 17:00 on November 16! We sincerely invite high-quality digital health projects from around the world to participate, join hands with Ruijin Hospital and Shanghai Artificial Intelligence Laboratory to build a new ecosystem integrating medicine, industry, academia, and research, promote the clinical implementation of innovative digital health technologies, and collaboratively create a smart future! You can register via the competition’s designated website:www.thegaiaa.org, or scan the QR code below to register.