China Emerges as a Global Hub for Online Medical Exchange Amid Pandemic-Driven Growth of Digital Academic Platforms
Professor Zhang Jinnong, Director of the Department of Emergency Medicine at Wuhan Union Hospital, remarked, “Each individual’s knowledge and experience are limited; therefore, frequent participation in academic exchanges, particularly international ones, is a vital avenue for physicians to broaden their knowledge base, share diagnostic and therapeutic experiences, and enhance their clinical expertise.”
Academic exchange is the lifeline of a physician’s career. Previously, offline conferences served as the primary channel for medical communication, with large-scale online meetings being rarely held. Attending in-person conferences often involved long-distance travel and physical and mental exhaustion, leading to a growing preference among physicians for online communication platforms.
During the pandemic, lockdowns and quarantine measures across various regions brought offline conferences to a halt. As a result, numerous events migrated to the “cloud,” creating opportunities for the rapid growth of online academic exchange platforms. Consequently, online medical communication platforms have gradually become the mainstream trend.
Among these initiatives, the Global Multi-disciplinary COVID-19 Consultation (GMCC) platform, launched by the Jack Ma Foundation, Alibaba Foundation, and AliHealth, served as a primary hub for healthcare professionals to exchange anti-epidemic experiences and share treatment protocols during the pandemic. To date, the platform has brought together more than 10,000 physicians worldwide and hundreds of medical institutions to collaboratively share and discuss knowledge, technologies, and experiences related to epidemic control. Since its launch four months ago, it has attracted nearly 10 million views.
How did GMCC overcome numerous obstacles during the pandemic to successfully launch? How does it provide medical professionals with timely, comprehensive, and accurate information for epidemic control and prevention? Amidst the booming trend of online medical exchange platforms, what is the future development path for GMCC? To address these questions, VCBeat conducted interviews with Alibaba Health and expert representatives participating in online academic exchanges.
As the main force on the front lines of the fight against the pandemic, global physicians’ demand for online medical exchange platforms began to stand out during the epidemic.
As the pandemic began to rage abroad, overseas regions faced immense pressure in epidemic prevention and control. As one of the first hospitals to admit suspected cases in Wuhan, Union Hospital affiliated with Huazhong University of Science and Technology served as a primary frontline in the early stages of the fight against the epidemic, accumulating extensive experience. “During the period of shortage of domestic anti-epidemic supplies, overseas Chinese donated substantial amounts of materials to China. As the epidemic started to spread internationally, many ethnic Chinese doctors contacted us, hoping that we could share our experience in combating the virus,” said Professor Zhang Jinnong, Director of the Emergency Department at Union Hospital, Wuhan.
“It is China’s bounden duty to share its epidemic control experience with the world and support global efforts against the pandemic.” Dr. Zhang Jingnong and other physicians conceived the idea of establishing an online group to exchange insights on epidemic response. This initiative received unanimous support from their peers, leading to the rapid creation of a 500-member WeChat group. The sharing group attracted doctors from around the globe, quickly reaching full capacity, prompting the swift establishment of second and third groups, and so on.
Due to factors such as member limits in group chats, sharing via this channel has not yielded satisfactory results. Professor Zhang Jingnong has been consistently seeking a more professional international medical exchange platform.
On another front, Alibaba is also working to promote the global sharing of information on epidemic prevention and control. On March 18, driven by the Jack Ma Foundation, Alibaba Foundation, and Ali Health, the “Handbook for COVID-19 Prevention and Treatment” was launched. The handbook was warmly welcomed by a wide range of medical professionals immediately upon its release. Shortly thereafter, its global access portal attracted hundreds of thousands of visitors from more than 100 countries and regions worldwide.
The growing number of requests from overseas hospitals for exchanges on the GMCC platform has also made Alibaba Health, the platform’s operator, aware of the strong demand for epidemic prevention information among healthcare professionals in countries across Asia and Africa, prompting it to begin preparing a specialized platform for international medical exchanges. Zhu Shunyan, Chairman and CEO of Alibaba Health, stated, “We hope to share Chinese doctors’ anti-epidemic experience openly with healthcare workers worldwide through this platform, contributing to the global fight against the epidemic.”
The primary key to the International Medical Exchange Center is to attract Chinese doctors with extensive experience in epidemic prevention and control. After Alibaba Health issued a call for support to countries in Asia, Africa, and Latin America, a large number of doctors“Drawn by its reputation,” Professor Zhang Jingnong is one of those who voluntarily joined GMCC. At GMCC, Professor Zhang conducted multiple seminars, sharing his anti-epidemic experiences and treatment protocols with medical professionals and epidemic prevention experts from Sri Lanka, Australia, the United States, Turkey, Iran, and other countries.
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Ma Li, Senior Vice President of Alibaba Health, noted that the process of inviting Chinese doctors went smoothly, as experts in China were more than willing to share their experience with global peers. “The real challenge lies in the management and operation of complex projects.”
Establishing the International Medical Exchange Center required cross-departmental collaboration across Alibaba, with participation from AliHealth, DingTalk, Alipay, UC, and other units. How could an operational mechanism be rapidly established? How could various departments be coordinated to ensure information transparency and efficient communication? Additionally, challenges included poor communication quality in countries with inadequate network infrastructure and unstable audio performance. After countless late-night discussions, urgent deployments, and repeated debugging, the International Medical Exchange Platform has begun to operate stably.
The live stream that left the deepest impression on Ma Li was the seminar co-hosted by the Africa CDC and China-Japan Friendship Hospital. This broadcast facilitated online exchanges among staff from the Africa CDC, personnel from the CDCs of 22 African countries, and over 1,600 physicians. It required coordinating across multiple nations and with numerous guest speakers, and despite encountering various challenges, the live stream was ultimately completed successfully.
After the live broadcast ended, an African doctor told Ma Li, “After listening to the broadcast, our hospital set up a fever clinic overnight to implement patient triage and management.” It was a simple remark, but it deeply moved Ma Li: “The establishment of the International Medical Exchange Center is indeed meaningful.”
As a global platform for sharing practical experience and resources in the fight against the pandemic, GMCC primarily focuses on timeliness, comprehensiveness, and accuracy.
GMCC has established a Resource Sharing Center to disseminate authoritative guidelines on pandemic treatment; an International Physician Exchange Center to facilitate real-time sharing of the latest clinical experiences in epidemic prevention and control among healthcare professionals; an Overseas Chinese COVID-19 Consultation Center to provide real-time health consultations and online Q&A services for overseas Chinese communities; and a Technology-Enabled Pandemic Response Center to accelerate vaccine development through cutting-edge technologies such as cloud computing solutions.
To precisely address the pain points of epidemic prevention and control in overseas countries, every live broadcast by the International Doctor Exchange Center is carefully curated by Ali Health and medical experts. For countries in the early stages of the outbreak, the content primarily focuses on infection prevention, resource allocation, and the rapid establishment of standardized protocols. For countries experiencing the progression of the epidemic, the focus shifts to clinical treatment and nursing care for severe cases. For countries in the later stages of the epidemic, the discussions center on the timing for lifting quarantine measures and strategies to prevent a resurgence of the outbreak.
Meanwhile, Ali Health edited the live stream into multiple short videos optimized for dissemination and categorized them by content tags, enabling users to precisely retrieve needed information and thereby reaching more healthcare professionals who independently access the platform for inquiries. Additionally, GMCC has integrated extensive resources and partnered with professional organizations such as Elsevier to further enrich the platform’s content.
Through its comprehensive section layout, GMCC has established an efficient, real-time, and authoritative information exchange platform for epidemic prevention and control, serving medical professionals worldwide and overseas Chinese communities. To date, the platform has attracted over 10,000 doctors from around the globe and hundreds of medical institutions, published nine multilingual prevention and treatment handbooks, and hosted nearly 20 live webinar seminars. Since its launch four months ago, it has garnered nearly 10 million page views.
With the global pandemic stabilizing, GMCC’s next steps in development have become a focal point of attention. “Alibaba’s medical exchange platform will never go offline!” stated Zhu Shunyan. “This pandemic has revealed the enormous demand for online platforms in medical communication. Digital modes of interaction, by breaking down barriers of time and space, are certain to become the mainstream trend in domestic and international medical exchanges in the future.”
Going forward, GMCC will evolve into a medical information sharing and communication platform. On one hand, it will facilitate broader international medical exchanges in the fight against COVID-19 and other fields; on the other hand, it will promote academic exchanges between tertiary hospitals and primary care hospitals in China, helping primary care hospitals enhance their specialized capabilities.
Professor Zhang Jingnong expressed optimism about GMCC’s development. “The pandemic has upended the traditional model of academic conferences. We hope that GMCC will grow into a globally leading international platform for medical exchange, serving as an efficient and rapid channel for healthcare professionals worldwide to communicate.”