Neusoft Medical's CEO Wu Shaojie on Holistic Hardware-Software Solutions and Sustained Innovation for Inclusive Healthcare

2020It was an unforgettable year.

This year, the novel coronavirus pandemic has ravaged the globe, threatening human lives and impacting the global economy.

To combat the epidemic, numerous medical enterprises and research institutions have intensified R&D efforts and rapidly launched products such as contactless diagnostic equipment, wireless diagnosis and treatment devices, and telemedicine platforms. These innovations assist physicians in diagnosing and treating patients quickly and safely, with Neusoft Medical standing out as a leading example.

During the pandemic, Neusoft Medical successively launched 10 new products, including the “Leishen Fangcang CT,” developed in just seven days, and “Fire Eye AI,” an intelligent imaging screening assistance software specifically introduced for epidemic prevention and control.

How did Neusoft Medical assume responsibility and set an example during the pandemic? How has it maintained excellence in innovation and R&D capabilities? What is the future development direction of its medical imaging business?

To address the aforementioned issues, VCBeat conducted an exclusive interview with Wu Shaojie, CEO of Neusoft Medical.

On the eve of the Spring Festival, Neusoft Medical received an urgent call from the Dalian Municipal Health Commission: the local infectious disease hospital had admitted its first novel coronavirus (COVID-19) patient and urgently required a CT scanner for diagnosis. In response, Neusoft Medical acted swiftly, setting a new record by shipping the equipment within 3 hours and completing installation within 18 hours.

This order has provided Neusoft Medical with significant insights: CT equipment is undoubtedly essential for pneumonia diagnosis, and during the current COVID-19 outbreak, it serves as a highly effective tool for diagnosis and adjunctive treatment. In clinical practice, CT scans can determine whether a patient is infected and assess the progression of COVID-19 within the body, thereby providing diagnostic support to physicians in patient care.

Guided by this understanding, Neusoft Medical swiftly established an emergency command center led by its CEO. During the Spring Festival holiday, it mobilized personnel from production, sales, R&D, service, logistics, and procurement departments to ensure the uninterrupted production and delivery of CT and X-ray equipment. On February 5, the National Health Commission issued the “Diagnosis and Treatment Protocol for Novel Coronavirus Pneumonia (Trial Version 5),” which designated CT imaging findings as a diagnostic criterion for clinically diagnosed cases. As a surge of orders flooded into Neusoft Medical, the company engaged its entire workforce in a concerted effort to guarantee supply, successfully fulfilling every order without delay and sparing no effort in the fight against the epidemic.

As the epidemic intensified, Neusoft Medical decided to donate equipment to Wuhan, the epicenter of the outbreak. The company’s management submitted an application to the Board of Directors overnight, which was fully approved that same night. Following communications with the Wuhan municipal government, Wuhan Leishenshan Hospital, Tongji Hospital Affiliated to Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and the Red Cross Society, Neusoft Medical donated two high-end CT systems and advanced intelligent software products, valued at RMB 27 million, to the aforementioned two hospitals.

The donated high-end CT systems, NeuViz 128 CT and NeuViz Prime CT, are both equipped with Neusoft Medical’s intelligent medical imaging cloud platform, remote advanced post-processing software, and more than 40 image enhancement and post-processing tools. Clinicians can leverage these intelligent software solutions to improve diagnostic efficiency. Furthermore, this integrated hardware-and-software solution enables interconnectivity among hospitals, facilitating the timely sharing of epidemic information and clinical experience.

Neusoft Medical, as the first to donate, set an example for the entire industry, prompting widespread donations of daily necessities, medical equipment, and protective supplies to Wuhan and other epidemic-affected areas.

How Did Neusoft Complete the R&D of Cabin CT in Seven Days?

Wu Shaojie stated, “Neusoft Medical’s ability to develop the Leishen Cabin CT in just seven days and nights was fortunate, but it was also an inevitable outcome of years of technological accumulation and sustained effort.” There were two reasons for developing the cabin CT: First, during the screening and diagnosis of suspected cases, patients typically needed to visit outpatient departments at designated hospitals for examinations. This process often involved contact with multiple healthcare workers and other patients, posing a high risk of cross-infection. If designated hospital outpatient departments could be independently equipped with a CT scanner, minimizing patient contact with others during medical visits would significantly reduce the risk of infection.

Second, the installation of CT equipment requires specialized facilities. Although field hospitals have a critical need for CT scanners, conventional CT devices cannot be installed or used due to the lack of necessary site conditions, such as radiation shielding. Therefore, Neusoft Medical aims to develop a plug-and-play CT product that requires no installation.

The rapid development of the cabin CT was made possible by Neusoft Medical’s prior technological accumulation and experience in developing mobile CT systems. Previously, following instructions from leaders of the General Logistics Department, Neusoft Medical developed military-standard mobile CT units to meet the needs of field operations and emergency disaster relief. Mobile CT systems require the CT equipment to function normally within a vehicle compartment while also overcoming the challenges posed by harsh external environments encountered in disaster response and field conditions. This presented a significant challenge for the R&D department. After one year of development, the mobile CT was successfully launched on the market.

Compared with vehicle-mounted CT, cabin CT is much simpler as it does not require the equipment to be used during high-speed driving. Leveraging the R&D experience and technological accumulation from vehicle-mounted CT, Neusoft Medical rapidly developed the cabin CT based on its existing platform. As a result, Neusoft Medical completed the development within seven days and successfully delivered the first cabin CT unit, setting a new record for speed.

Wu Shaojie stated: ““I believe that enterprises should assume social responsibility, especially at times when the nation and its people are in need; Neusoft Medical must step up. Meanwhile, I also believe that during this epidemic, China’s domestic medical equipment enterprises have delivered an outstanding performance.””

During the pandemic, Neusoft Medical did not halt its innovation and R&D efforts, successively launching nearly ten products. Wu Shaojie told VCBeat, “In fact, apart from the ‘Fangcang CT’ developed in just seven days and the AI-powered imaging auxiliary diagnosis software ‘FireEye AI,’ all other products were rolled out according to the established R&D schedule.”

By the end of 2014, Neusoft Medical completed a RMB 1.6 billion financing round, with the funds primarily allocated to the research and development (R&D) of new products. Following this capital increase, Neusoft Medical established new R&D centers in Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou, and recruited a substantial number of R&D professionals. In response to market demand, Neusoft Medical has planned a diverse portfolio of products, including CT scanners, MRI systems, digital subtraction angiography (DSA) units, digital radiography (DR) systems, PET/CT scanners, ultrasound probes, and intelligent software solutions, aiming to introduce new products and expand its business volume.

After years of research and development, the company finally witnessed an explosive surge in new product launches this year. At the CMEF in October, Neusoft Medical unveiled nine new products, including a 512-slice panoramic multimodal CT, a 1.5T MRI system, a high-end floor-mounted DSA system, a vision-guided high-end ceiling-mounted DR system, a full-field dynamic panoramic PET/CT, a single-crystal probe ultrasound system, and an intelligent medical imaging cloud platform.

What measures has Neusoft Medical implemented to ensure sustained innovation and R&D capabilities? Wu Shaojie shared insights from six perspectives: industry characteristics, innovation strategy, organizational talent, incentive mechanisms, innovation ecosystem, and areas of innovation.

From an industry perspective, the medical equipment sector is a technology-intensive, high-tech industry. For instance, the development of a large-scale medical imaging device requires collaborative R&D efforts by multidisciplinary talents spanning mechanics, electronics, computer science, data transmission, materials science, engineering, and clinical medicine. Furthermore, high-end medical imaging devices rely heavily on new technologies, advanced materials, and innovative manufacturing processes; for example, the development of a magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system embodies the research achievements honored with five Nobel Prizes. The high-end medical imaging equipment industry often represents a nation’s most advanced level of manufacturing capability.

In response to the industry’s exceptionally high technological demands, Neusoft Medical has formulated an innovation strategy centered on market needs. This innovation strategy, together with its customer-centric strategy, operational excellence strategy, globalization strategy, and rapid-growth strategy, constitutes Neusoft Medical’s five core development strategies. Meanwhile, through independent innovation and patent protection, Neusoft Medical is actively overcoming “chokepoint” constraints, enabling its products to reach markets worldwide.

In terms of specific operations, Neusoft Medical extensively recruits talent and integrates an innovation-driven DNA into its core development strategy. To date, Neusoft Medical has assembled a R&D team of over 900 professionals, 44% of whom hold master’s degrees or higher. Furthermore, Neusoft Medical has established multiple R&D centers, including the Probe R&D Center in South Korea, the Innovation R&D Center in Beijing, the MRI R&D Center in Shanghai, the CT R&D Center in Guangzhou, the IVD R&D Center in Nanjing, and the R&D team in Houston, providing a robust platform for its researchers to unleash their innovative and developmental capabilities.

To stimulate the innovative capacity of its research and development personnel, Neusoft Medical has established a comprehensive mechanism for technological innovation incentives, supporting innovation from multiple perspectives—including career development, compensation, and innovation-specific rewards—to foster an internal corporate environment that encourages creativity. For instance, Neusoft Medical has implemented a management system for job grading and qualification standards, as well as a mechanism for career advancement pathways. It offers restricted stock equity incentives to key technical staff, encourages engineers across various specialties to translate innovative ideas from their work and research into patented inventions, and has set up special reward funds for innovative achievements. Neusoft Medical makes substantial annual investments in R&D, with R&D expenditure accounting for approximately 9% of its revenue.

Neusoft Medical has also integrated the “industry-academia-research-application” chain to build an “industry-academia-research-medicine” innovation ecosystem. Specifically, Neusoft Medical collaborates with various entities, including medical institutions, research organizations, and innovative enterprises, to jointly develop high-barrier technologies such as algorithms, cloud platforms, and core components. For example, Neusoft Medical partnered with Beijing Xuanwu Hospital to establish the “Joint Laboratory for Internet-based Intelligent Healthcare and Advanced Imaging Technologies,” which is responsible for building the eStroke National Thrombolysis and Thrombectomy Imaging Cloud Platform. Additionally, it joined forces with Academician Zhong Nanshan’s team at the Guangzhou Institute of Respiratory Health and the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University to form the “Joint Laboratory for Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Applications in Respiratory Imaging.”

In terms of achievements, Neusoft Medical’s innovative measures have yielded remarkable results. To date, the company has filed more than 1,460 patents, led or participated in 37 national and provincial research projects, and received 14 national and provincial science and technology awards.

In addition to technological innovation, Neusoft Medical has also established a framework for innovation across various domains. For instance, the company drives innovation in marketing, supply chain management, branding, and manufacturing processes to enhance product quality, efficiency, and safety, reduce production and management costs, and facilitate product promotion.

On October 12, at the 2020 Shaoxing Medical Device Industry Innovation and Development Conference, Wu Shaojie delivered a speech on the theme “Technological Innovation Drives the Development of China’s Domestic Medical Equipment Industry.” He stated, “Medical imaging equipment will evolve in five key directions: clearer images, faster scanning, enhanced safety, greater portability, and increased intelligence.”

All of Neusoft Medical’s hardware products are evolving in these five directions.

For example, the newly released NeuViz Epoch Infinity, a 512-slice panoramic multimodal CT scanner launched this year, offers a visual resolution of 0.17 mm for clearer images. Equipped with a custom X-ray tube and the Panoramic Light-Chaser detector, it achieves a gantry rotation speed of 0.259 seconds and provides scanning coverage of 16 cm in both helical and axial modes, enabling complete cardiac scans in just 0.2 seconds for faster imaging. Furthermore, the system supports multimodal data analysis through multiple parameters from a single scan, thereby reducing the need for repeated examinations and minimizing patient inconvenience. It also enables low-dose scanning at 60 kV, providing enhanced safety for pediatric CT exams. Additionally, the product features an intelligent workflow mode that covers the entire imaging process, making operations simpler and smarter.

Wu Shaojie stated, “The NeuViz Epoch is comparable to equivalent products from imported brands. It is an internationally leading, China’s most advanced 512-slice CT scanner.”

Furthermore, the NeuMR 1.5T Shengshi MRI system delivers more stable images and enables more accurate and efficient water-fat separation imaging. Leveraging its one-click quantitative brain imaging technology, the system acquires images from eight sequences in just four minutes of scanning time, four of which are quantitative sequences, representing state-of-the-art high-end MRI technology. Additionally, in response to feedback from clinicians and patients, the system features a wide-bore design that enhances comfort and safety for both doctors and patients, thereby improving examination success rates.

In addition to the aforementioned high-end equipment, Neusoft Medical leverages cutting-edge technologies to develop cost-effective products with optimal price-performance ratios. Wu Shaojie stated, “One of Neusoft Medical’s objectives is to promote the widespread adoption of large-scale medical diagnostic and treatment equipment, thereby extending the benefits of high-quality medical products and services to broader regions and populations.”

To make large-scale medical imaging equipment more accessible and affordable, Neusoft Medical has developed cost-effective, inclusive products using the latest technologies, alongside its top-tier equipment. At the CMEF conference, Neusoft Medical unveiled ten new products, ranging from high-end diagnostic and therapeutic devices for large hospitals—such as 512-slice CT scanners, 1.5T MRI systems, and floor-mounted DSA units—to economical equipment and services tailored for primary healthcare institutions. For instance, the NeuViz ACE SP digital spectral CT features a heat capacity of 3.5 MHU, a stable heat dissipation rate of 742 kHU/min, and rapid scanning in 0.71 seconds. Its 32-slice acquisition capability enables the detection of minute lesions. Furthermore, the device is integrated with the Digital Cloud Doctor platform, assisting primary care physicians in making efficient diagnoses.

In the post-pandemic era, a new wave of construction has swept through primary healthcare institutions across China. In addition to the NeuViz ACE, Neusoft Medical has launched a series of cost-effective hardware products to ensure affordability and ease of use for these facilities. Furthermore, to enhance the medical capabilities of primary healthcare institutions, Neusoft Medical provides internet-based specialty system solutions. These systems enable primary care facilities to connect with doctors and specialists located thousands of miles away, facilitating remote diagnosis and treatment guidance by experts.

Neusoft Medical has established software and clinical solutions as a separate business unit, forming its MDaaS solutions business.

Wu Shaojie introduced: “Neusoft Medical has built NeuMiva, an open intelligent medical imaging cloud platform. AI diagnostic software, lung cancer screening software, cardiovascular disease screening software, and other algorithm-based solutions from domestic and international partners can be integrated into the NeuMiva cloud platform. Hospitals at all levels can access various algorithm-based software on demand via the NeuMiva cloud platform and pay per use. In this way, algorithm and software providers can generate revenue by leveraging Neusoft Medical’s extensive user base, hospitals at all levels can enjoy a rich array of intelligent diagnostic software at lower costs, and patients will receive precise diagnosis and treatment, creating a win-win situation for all parties involved.”

In addition, the NeuMiva cloud platform enables interconnectivity among hospitals at all levels through remote diagnostic services, facilitating the decentralization of high-quality medical resources. It provides a platform for communication and learning among physicians via training programs, thereby comprehensively enhancing the diagnostic capabilities of primary care hospitals. For instance, after undergoing examinations at a primary care hospital, patients can have their imaging studies interpreted and receive consultations from experts located thousands of miles away via remote access.

The MDaaS solution also includes operational services for cloud-based diagnostic platforms, cloud storage services, and the joint establishment of imaging centers. Specifically, hospitals are not required to build independent data centers; their data can be stored directly on the cloud platform established by Neusoft Medical. Furthermore, Neusoft Medical has developed a regional public cloud, allowing hospitals within the region to upload their data to this platform. Local health commissions can monitor specific healthcare conditions in the region through this cloud platform. Notably, migrating hospital data to the cloud reduces the use of physical film. Meanwhile, patients can share electronic images with other specialists for review and diagnosis, thereby avoiding redundant examinations and reducing the waste of medical resources.

Neusoft Medical also provides comprehensive solutions for stroke centers tailored to county-level hospitals and establishes specialized medical consortia. For stroke diagnosis, Neusoft Medical offers equipment such as CT and MRI scanners; for treatment, it provides intelligent angiography systems. Additionally, Neusoft Medical delivers a complete suite of management systems, professional diagnostic software, green channel development, and training for diagnostic personnel. To enhance the medical capabilities of county-level hospitals, Neusoft Medical trains clinical physicians and collaborates with Xuanwu Hospital to build specialized medical consortia, enabling doctors to consult stroke experts when encountering challenges during emergency care, thereby ensuring timely and safe patient treatment.

To alleviate the financial pressure on hospitals, Neusoft Medical has partnered with many large hospitals to jointly establish third-party imaging centers. Under this model, hospitals purchase imaging services, and the centers simply transmit the data to the hospitals after scanning patients. This approach will significantly save hospitals on construction and procurement costs, while also enabling patients to access high-quality imaging services.

As a leading Chinese manufacturer of medical imaging equipment, Neusoft Medical has pioneered a new “Hardware + MDaaS + AI Algorithms” model in recent years. It has established a closed-loop ecosystem service chain covering the entire process from medical image acquisition to post-processing, thereby creating a win-win scenario for patients, hospitals, physicians, and ecosystem partners such as AI algorithm developers.

Looking ahead, Neusoft Medical will continue to strengthen its R&D efforts, with hardware equipment evolving toward greater clarity, speed, safety, portability, and intelligence. The company will develop inclusive products leveraging the latest technologies to ensure accessibility to high-quality medical imaging resources. Meanwhile, its software products will establish a new ecosystem to empower image post-processing providers and hospitals, ensuring that patients benefit from more affordable and cost-effective medical imaging services.