How Should Imaging Value Services Evolve Amid Diverging Digital-Intelligent Medical Imaging Demands?

Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) is currently the information system within hospital information systems that handles the largest volume of operational data, demands the highest data precision, and requires the most real-time data transmission. Medical images generated by imaging equipment such as DR, CT, and MR are all stored via PACS, forming a data repository characterized by large scale, rapid growth, multi-structure, and high value.

Standardized medical imaging datasets, as a scarce resource, continue to impact the pace of research and industrial development in related fields. Data silos and poor generalizability of research findings are current industry challenges, while the shortage of physicians, their heavy workloads, and the difficulty in improving efficiency constitute the dilemmas faced by medical research.

How can we deeply mine the underutilized value from massive clinical big data to enhance the capabilities of hospital-based clinical specialties? How can we achieve cloud-based collaborative sharing of high-quality medical resources to accelerate the digital transformation and intelligent upgrading of healthcare institutions?

At the “Cloud Summit on High-Quality Development of Smart Hospital Imaging Services” held at 14:00 on August 19, 2022, Shanghai United Imaging Healthcare Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “United Imaging”) and director-level experts from the Information Departments, Imaging Departments, and Radiology Departments of Peking Union Medical College Hospital, West China Tianfu Hospital of Sichuan University, Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, and the Affiliated Hospital of Shaanxi University of Chinese Medicine,Reexamining the Value of Imaging Data from the Perspectives of Industry and Top-Tier Tertiary Hospitals: Jointly Exploring High-Quality Development of Imaging Services and Deep Integration Pathways for Medical Breakthroughs and Independent Innovation, to Uncover New Possibilities in Medical Imaging.

As hospitals continue to expand in scale, the lack of unified planning when individual centers procure PACS systems has led to increasingly severe data silo problems over time.

Wang Yining, Deputy Director of the Department of Radiology at Peking Union Medical College Hospital and Director of the Shuaifu Radiology Department, delivered a presentation titled “Cross-Disciplinary Exploration and Practice in Medical Imaging and Communications.” From the perspective of digital healthcare applications, she discussed the challenges and approaches associated with the application of communication technologies in the medical field.

Wang Yining stated:“During the digital evolution of healthcare, new demands for communication technologies are emerging at an accelerated pace. Hardware must possess robust forwarding capabilities to enhance data transmission speed and efficiency, ensuring that data remains within private networks rather than traversing the public internet, thereby addressing challenges associated with high traffic volumes and low latency. In terms of edge intelligence, including AI-based content recognition, hardware must be equipped with intelligent computing capabilities. Regarding edge-cloud collaboration, comprehensive management of both edge and cloud sides is required to ultimately establish an edge-cloud collaborative ecosystem for medical imaging private networks, characterized by global intelligence and local decision-making.”

In addition to the need for enhanced hardware capabilities, Wang Yining also pointed out that the application of network and communication technologies in China’s medical sector lacks unified standards and a sound legal and regulatory framework. Once medical risks arise in online consultations, it is difficult to determine liability under China’s existing medical laws.

In the future, it is necessary to leverage robust industry standards and laws and regulations, along with the cross-disciplinary integration of medical communication technologies and artificial intelligence, to revitalize big data in healthcare. This will enable real-time monitoring of patients’ conditions and fully realize the application value of medical data in both clinical practice and scientific research.

“During the innovation and development of smart hospitals under the 14th Five-Year Plan, the construction of imaging platforms has become an indispensable component in facilitating digital transformation and upgrading, as well as promoting high-quality development in hospitals. However, as the coverage of medical imaging expands throughout the healthcare system, healthcare institutions are increasingly raising their requirements for image management.”How to Truly Translate Imaging Data Applications into Clinical Practice Remains an Unresolved Challenge.

Deng Wu, Chief of the Information Department at West China Tianfu Hospital of Sichuan University, delivered a presentation titled “Practical Pathways for an Integrated Multi-Campus Imaging Platform.” He shared in-depth insights into West China Hospital’s construction of its imaging cloud platform, highlighting the application of medical imaging across various departments to facilitate multidisciplinary team (MDT) collaboration, intelligent assisted diagnosis, research cohorting, and the integration of teaching with research.

Deng Wu believes, currently, the demand for platform construction stems from clinical departments, research teams, hospital patients, the system itself, and regional data storage. Clinical departments aim to implement follow-ups throughout the patient’s entire lifecycle, while also annotating special cases for long-term study, thereby further enhancing clinical medical capabilities. Research teams hope that, amidst the growing diversification of research needs, their collaborative R&D efforts with third parties and the requirements arising from scientific research and teaching processes can be effectively addressed. Patients generate demands such as scheduling appointments for examinations and tests, accessing test results online, and independently printing films and reports.

Therefore, issues such as the increase in system data access volume and the decline in system access speed under increased system traffic still need to be further addressed.

How to Address the Issue? Deng Wu Discusses Based on Practices at West China Hospital“The imaging platform must support clinical multimodal image viewing, integrate across all primary departments, and meet users’ high-speed access requirements, while ensuring data security. It should also seamlessly interface with mainstream AI systems—such as those for pulmonary nodules, bone tumors, and brain tumors—to provide comprehensive support for clinical care, medical education, and scientific research. In light of growing concerns over data security, we have engaged in discussions with United Imaging and concluded that the ‘dedicated cloud’ model offers an optimal solution to this challenge.”

United Imaging Cloud has established an integrated clinical and research imaging platform, creating three separate and independent workspaces for research, teaching, and clinical practice, while connecting all medical technologies, the entire course of disease, and the full workflow. For research, the platform meets the needs of radiology departments in managing internal research projects, subject enrollment, and research data export. For teaching, it supports daily radiology teaching scenarios and student examination requirements. For clinical practice, faced with complex multi-system environments, clinical departments can access patients’ full-course and all-medical-technology data through a unified interface.

Zhang Fang, an expert from the Information Center of Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University, delivered a presentation titled “Exploration and Practice of Hospital Imaging Platform Construction,” sharing insights on future development with a focus on the specific applications and value of smart imaging.

Zhang Fang shared the practical experience of Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University during the COVID-19 outbreak in early 2020., and it highlights the importance of establishing regional imaging platforms and remote medical imaging consultation platforms, with CT serving as the clinical diagnostic standard, in achieving vertical business collaboration, sharing high-quality medical resources, improving diagnostic efficiency and accuracy, and responding to “black swan” events such as epidemics.

Zhang Fang stated“During the pandemic, Zhongnan Hospital deployed a hospital-wide PACS system, connecting more than 40 imaging and ultrasound devices. Remote consultations were conducted through the regional imaging platform, effectively improving treatment efficiency and reducing the risk of infection among healthcare workers. Meanwhile, the intelligent imaging triage and control platform for COVID-19 not only enhanced diagnostic accuracy but also enabled timely and precise assessment of lesions, facilitating subsequent treatment. This demonstrates the value of hospital imaging platform construction as observed from our highly specific practical experience.”

With the development of imaging and traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), as well as the accelerated integration of the two, evidence-based TCM has begun to explore innovative practices in medical imaging.Medical imaging services, including AI and informatization,To a certain extent, it has enhanced the level of clinical diagnosis and treatment as well as theoretical research in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), enriched and developed the fundamental theories of TCM, and accelerated the modernization of TCM. The application of imaging technology in TCM clinical practice and theoretical research has also broadened the application scenarios for medical imaging and smart medical imaging services.

Yu Nan, Deputy Director of the Department of Medical Imaging at the Affiliated Hospital of Shaanxi University of Chinese Medicine, shared insights on innovative practices in evidence-based traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) within medical imaging, under the theme “Innovative Practices of Evidence-Based TCM in Medical Imaging.”

Yu Nan believes, information technology construction has played a crucial role in evidence-based research in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). Clinical practice not only generates imaging data and omics data during the TCM diagnostic processes of “inspection, auscultation-olfaction, inquiry, and palpation,” but also produces clinical information data, including records of outpatient visits outside the hospital. However, in the past, these data were not archived, stored, transmitted, or retrieved, nor was their value extracted. Only after classifying, collecting, organizing, and processing these data can hospitals establish evidence-based research models for TCM based on this clinical data.

However, in addition to imaging data, complete patient follow-up information, clinical visit records, and other data generated during this period—such as biochemical test results and medication side effects—are also of significant value.Amid the favorable conditions for the development of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM), how to seize opportunities to facilitate its modernization while addressing the challenges in building imaging data platforms is a question that the medical imaging industry needs to consider.

From the hospital perspective, as smart hospitals are built at an accelerated pace, new demands for PACS continue to emerge, presenting both opportunities and challenges for the industry. For industry players, it is not only essential to seize these opportunities and precisely meet hospital needs, but also to address obstacles such as system redundancy, inconsistent interfaces, and lack of data interoperability that persist after the basic completion of informatization construction.

In the insights shared by the aforementioned experts, the value of United Imaging’s cloud-based intelligent solution, “UIH Cloud,” was nearly universally highlighted. Today, UIH Cloud has integrated technologies such as 5G and artificial intelligence into key components of its platform products, empowering top-tier Grade A tertiary hospitals to achieve cloud-based collaboration in medical care, education, and research.At this conference, Dr. Gao Chuan, Vice President of the U+ Medical Business Unit within United Imaging’s Digital Technology Business Group, shared insights on United Imaging’s end-to-end digital solutions from an industry perspective, addressing current pain points in the sector.

In fact, at the inception of United Imaging, the company delineated three strategic spheres. These encompass United Imaging’s high-end imaging products, cloud-based intelligent solutions, and services derived from the future-oriented mobile application market—such as research imaging, mobile imaging, hospital-wide imaging, and intelligent equipment management—driven by the implementation of AI, big data, 5G, and other technologies.

The company aims to build United Imaging’s digital imaging ecosystem by deeply integrating mature digital technologies with practical medical applications, thereby innovating digital healthcare service models and establishing a complete closed-loop data system encompassing acquisition, transmission, and utilization across devices, cloud platforms, and software.

“United Imaging Cloud” primarily serves a connecting and collaborative role.On the one hand, achieve comprehensive data interoperability for images generated by medical devices to enable cloud-based synergy between devices and applications; on the other hand, facilitate vertical integration with hospital operations to realize the sharing of medical resources.

In realizing this concept, United Imaging Cloud proposed two concepts.First is the "private cloud" concept targeting large tertiary hospitals, National Medical Centers, and Regional Medical Centers; second is the "public cloud" concept targeting primary care medical alliances and medical consortia.

On "Dedicated Cloud", United Imaging Cloud provides an integrated platform for clinical imaging research and teaching, hospital-wide smart imaging services, whole-course disease management represented by oncology, and future-oriented meta-imaging construction solutions. On the “public cloud,” it offers a series of SaaS subscription services, including intelligent cloud diagnosis, cloud viewing, cloud intelligence, cloud film, cloud quality control, and cloud management.

Let us first examine the primary entities—large tertiary hospitals and National Medical Centers. These institutions represent a convergence of modern advanced medical technologies, integrating a vast array of software and hardware imaging equipment. However, different software and hardware systems employ disparate interfaces and generate data with varying dimensions, making it difficult for these institutions to classify and manage diverse internal data through unified means, thereby hindering efficient data utilization. Consequently, although these medical institutions possess substantial amounts of high-quality medical data, such data remains largely inapplicable to clinical practice, scientific research, and even teaching. The “Exclusive Cloud” solution proposed by Dr. Gao Chuan from United Imaging Cloud aims to establish a centralized platform based on cloud computing, AI, and 5G technologies, compliant with interoperability standards, to bridge these dispersed subsystems.

Having completed the classification and organization of in-hospital imaging data, United Imaging Cloud has only taken the first step. For hospitals, a valuable cloud platform must be secure and reliable, capable of leveraging this interconnected data to facilitate macro-level management for administrators, support clinicians with intelligent diagnostic assistance, and help physicians overcome challenges in research and education.

At the management level,United Imaging Cloud empowers hospital administrators with intelligent operations and maintenance. Built upon a centralized deployment architecture, it provides a unified interface that enables intuitive, centralized monitoring of system alerts and resources. By offering visualized log management, it allows administrators to gain real-time insights into hospital operations, facilitating agile management and targeted improvements, thereby ensuring that every decision is data-driven.

The most significant difference between the era of intelligence and the era of digitalization lies in “application.” At this level,The Advantages of United Imaging Cloud: “Integration of Imaging, Clinical Practice, Research, and Education” and “Hospital-Wide Smart Imaging Innovation Services,” striving to incorporate every imaging-related scenario into a comprehensive system and provide intelligent upgrades.

Taking an example related to chronic disease management, United Imaging Cloud has built a comprehensive cancer care management platform to better assist physicians in managing the entire course of treatment for oncology patients. The platform integrates cancer screening, diagnosis and treatment, regional collaborative care, and follow-up visits, deeply merging data flow with patient diagnosis and treatment processes. This enables physicians to gain a clear understanding of patients’ conditions, while patients can leverage available information to strengthen self-monitoring of their behaviors, thereby achieving improved prognoses.

Revisiting the “Public Cloud” for Primary Care-Oriented Medical Alliances and Medical Consortia: The national promotion of tiered diagnosis and treatment relies fundamentally on the capacity of primary care institutions to diagnose and treat patients.However, many primary healthcare institutions lack the capacity for complex IT infrastructure development and do not have comprehensive education and training systems—United Imaging Cloud’s “public cloud” is designed precisely to address these needs.

In simple terms,United Imaging Cloud provides a one-stop SaaS solution, including AI services for multiple diseases, remote diagnostic consultations, and consumer-facing services.Its core logic is to break down the geographical, informational, and medical resource barriers between primary care hospitals and tertiary (Grade A) hospitals through interconnectivity. This enables patients to access high-quality medical resources via the internet, while empowering primary care physicians with the capabilities of senior specialists through AI. Ultimately, it aims to address issues such as the insufficient service capacity of primary healthcare institutions, thereby encouraging patients to seek and remain within primary care settings.

To date, United Imaging Cloud has established a dual-track strategy combining dedicated cloud and public cloud services, offering end-to-end intelligent solutions for medical imaging that have been widely implemented across hospitals in China. Data shows that United Imaging Cloud solutions have been deployed in over 400 projects nationwide, serving more than 3,000 hospitals and connecting over 200 million individuals.

Moving forward, United Imaging will continue to collaborate extensively with hospitals to explore the potential of cloud-based intelligent solutions, leveraging cloud technology to seamlessly integrate complex imaging workflows across multiple departments and geographic regions. By fully deploying advanced cloud imaging applications and intelligent engines, the company aims to facilitate efficient, convenient, and precise cloud-based imaging diagnosis and treatment, thereby enhancing the quality of medical imaging services and progressively addressing various imaging-related challenges faced by healthcare institutions.

Furthermore, United Imaging Cloud will leverage the concept of “metaverse” medical imaging scenarios to explore a series of imaging use cases, including AI assistance and patient visual interaction technologies. This will enable physicians to visualize diseased organs in a virtual world, facilitating more precise preoperative analysis and judgment. During surgery, virtual imaging assessments and support can provide navigation, thereby further enhancing the value of medical imaging services.