Pandemic as a Litmus Test: How HealthEngine Ensured Stable Operation of Medical Equipment Across Nearly 1,000 Hospitals

At the beginning of 2020, a sudden outbreak hit China, temporarily pressing the pause button on the nation. Many businesses suspended operations, awaiting resumption of work. Yet, despite the raging pandemic, employees of numerous companies remained steadfast at their posts, including those at HealthEngine Medical.

Amid the outbreak, the number of hospital patients surged, leading to increased utilization of medical equipment and a corresponding rise in failure rates. Consequently, hospitals have an even more urgent need for professional medical equipment management services. As a leading medical equipment asset management enterprise in China, HealthEngine has continued to serve hospitals across the country during the pandemic by leveraging its self-developed management platform and remote equipment management system. These tools have provided robust support to ensure the optimal operation of medical equipment, thereby safeguarding medical treatment efforts.

Notably, when medical equipment experiences major failures, engineers are inevitably required to visit the hospital site for repairs. In such cases,HealthEngine's engineers achieved zero infections while providing medical equipment management services, ensuring employee safety during the pandemic.

During the pandemic, what measures did HealthEngine Medical implement to safeguard employee safety? How did it provide services to hospitals located in areas severely affected by the outbreak? In the post-pandemic era, how should it seize opportunities for development? Recently, VCBeat conducted an exclusive interview with Wang Tongwei, Chairman of HealthEngine Medical, to address these questions.

On January 20, the number of confirmed cases across China stood at 291. The epidemic had not yet erupted on a large scale, and while the general public considered it “preventable and controllable” and had not yet taken it seriously, Wang Tongwei, Chairman of HealthEngine, posted on his WeChat Moments: “It is impossible to overemphasize or overstate the importance we should attach to this COVID-19 outbreak.”

As a clinical medicine graduate who experienced the 2003 SARS outbreak, Wang Tongwei paid particular attention to this epidemic: “In 2003, I had just graduated from university and started my career. My impressions of SARS remain vivid to this day.” Therefore, regarding the novel coronavirus, Wang Tongwei proactively implemented protective measures from the outset, donning a mask early on and canceling his Spring Festival travel plans.

Meanwhile, Wang Tongwei was also considering how the company should respond in the event of a large-scale epidemic outbreak.

Upon returning to the company from his business trip, Wang Tongwei immediately convened a meeting with the management team to define the key work priorities during the pandemic:First, to meet customers’ needs for medical equipment asset management during the pandemic; second, to ensure the safety and health of all employees, particularly frontline engineers.

HealthEngine is a high-tech enterprise that leverages intelligent technologies to achieve medical equipment management. By utilizing self-developed internet and IoT tools, such as its equipment asset management platform and remote equipment management system, and by mining and applying big data on medical equipment management, HealthEngine empowers hospitals and government regulatory authorities to implement intelligent and refined management of medical equipment.The company serves nearly 1,000 medical institutions. As guardians of medical equipment, our engineers remained at their posts even during the pandemic to provide customers with medical equipment management services.

CT and X-ray play a crucial role in the screening and diagnosis of suspected COVID-19 cases, while devices such as ventilators provide life support for patients with COVID-19 and are indispensable in their treatment. As the pandemic surged, a large number of patients flooded into hospitals, causing these devices to operate under excessive load. If not maintained in a timely manner, they are highly prone to malfunction, which could compromise diagnostic accuracy and delay patient treatment.

To ensure the normal operation of medical equipment while minimizing personnel movement, HealthEngine leverages the remote equipment monitoring tools within its Med • Pro intelligent management solution. This enables technical experts to monitor real-time equipment dynamics, analyze operational status, and read fault logs, thereby predicting service life for core spare parts and identifying potential safety hazards to achieve proactive equipment failure warnings.Replace reactive maintenance with preventive maintenance.Additionally, during the pandemic, HealthEngine Medical provided customers with free access to its remote expert guidance feature, enabling expert engineers to assist hospitals in troubleshooting equipment failures remotely.

For medical devices requiring on-site maintenance, HealthEngine has shifted its management approach from product-line-based to region-based.Engineers in the local area are responsible for repairing medical equipment for local customers.Avoid large-scale personnel movement to increase the risk of infection.

At the outset of the epidemic, Wang Tongwei predicted that domestic demand for protective supplies would surge as the outbreak progressed. In response, the company promptly procured substantial quantities of protective materials, equipped frontline engineers with professional personal protective equipment (PPE), implemented specialized protective measures, and intensified safety protection training.During this epidemic, not a single employee of HealthEngine Medical was infected, including frontline engineers who provided services to high-risk areas such as frontline clinical departments and hospitals located in hard-hit regions.

In addition, following the outbreak of the epidemic, many regions faced urgent shortages of epidemic prevention supplies. HealthEngine Medical immediately began customizing medical isolation face shields and other epidemic prevention materials based on hospital needs. To date, the company has donated epidemic prevention supplies to multiple provinces, including Hubei, Fujian, Guangxi, Guangdong, Sichuan, Shandong, Shaanxi, Heilongjiang, Liaoning, and Anhui.

Wang Tongwei believes that the epidemic has had a more positive impact on the medical equipment asset management industry.

“The most direct impact is that it has prompted governments and hospitals to place greater emphasis on the importance of intelligent management of medical equipment, ensuring that specialized tasks are handled by professionals.”Traditional medical equipment asset management relies on manual processes, requiring substantial manpower. This approach is clearly unsuitable during the pandemic. “During the pandemic, the greater the personnel congregation, the higher the risk of infection, making the importance of advanced medical equipment management methods and tools increasingly prominent.”

On the other hand, the pandemic has driven hospital infrastructure development and ICU expansion, indirectly promoting the growth of the medical equipment asset management industry. 

This outbreak has exposed the shortage of medical infrastructure in China. Wuhan ranks fourth nationwide in the number of Grade A tertiary hospitals, with a total of 44 such institutions; nevertheless, it still faced insufficient admission capacity and specialized diagnostic and treatment resources during the epidemic. The pandemic has prompted multiple regions to prioritize hospital construction. For instance, Suzhou has proposed that, during the 14th Five-Year Plan period, the number of tertiary hospitals should strive to increase by 50%, reaching 36, with an additional 10 Grade A tertiary hospitals.

The number of ICU beds is a key factor affecting the treatment of critically ill patients with COVID-19. Statistical data show that higher per capita ICU medical resources during the pandemic are associated with lower mortality rates and higher cure rates. China’s per capita ICU bed count is approximately 3.8 per 100,000 people, far below the level of developed countries. The current epidemic has highlighted the insufficiency of domestic ICU beds, and it is expected that the construction of ICUs in China will accelerate in the future.

Wang Tongwei stated that accelerating hospital construction and expanding ICU capacity will create substantial opportunities for medical equipment procurement. As the number of hospitals and the volume of in-house medical devices increase, so too will the demand for medical equipment asset management, constituting a significant benefit to the industry.“I believe that, driven by various favorable conditions, the company’s actual revenue in 2020 may exceed expectations.”

In addition, Wang Tongwei predicts that the construction of regional medical centers will accelerate in the post-pandemic era. Due to the uneven distribution of medical service capabilities among hospitals in China, patients tend to seek care at tertiary (Grade 3A) hospitals. During the pandemic, the massive influx of patients into these tertiary hospitals led to rapid viral spread and cross-infection. Regional medical centers can enable real-time sharing of patient medical data and interconnectivity of consultation information within the region, thereby avoiding crowd gatherings and reducing the risk of infection.

“To respond to emergencies, government authorities will strengthen supervision over regional medical institutions and enhance unified deployment requirements. Companies capable of implementing regional medical IoT and big data applications will seize new opportunities.”HealthEngine has carried out extensive practices in regional medical IoT and big data applications. For example, in 2019, the company installed the Med•Pro intelligent medical device system for 19 hospitals within Hanjiang District, Fujian Province, achieving intelligent management of medical devices across the region.

Currently, the epidemic situation has gradually stabilized, and HealthEngine Medical’s operations have returned to normal. Capitalizing on the positive impact of the epidemic on the medical equipment asset management industry, HealthEngine Medical will seize this opportunity to accelerate its development. Moving forward, the company will increase its investment in the Internet of Things (IoT) and big data, expand its sales channels, and provide intelligent medical equipment management solutions for regional medical centers.