Inspur Health Completes Series A Funding Round, Highlighting the Critical Role of Regional Healthcare Big Data Platforms in Pandemic Response

On February 18, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned that Shandong Health and Medical Big Data Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Inspur Health”) announced the completion of its Series A financing round, raising RMB 100 million. As a leading health and medical big data platform service provider in China, Inspur Health was established by Inspur Group, a domestic leader in the big data and cloud computing industries, and serves as an innovator in the model of regional health and medical data platforms.

This round of financing was jointly participated in by investors including Galaxy Securities, Yunhai Fund, Yinji Investment, and Qingkong Jinxin Blue Fund. The funds will be used to refine the company’s core competitive products, expand its core business, enhance Inspur Health’s capabilities in regional platform construction, technological R&D, and platform operations, and advance its brand development. Notably, this financing marks the first deal in China’s healthcare big data sector since the onset of the pandemic, serving as a boost to confidence in the capital markets.

Inspur Health’s completion of its Series A financing round fully demonstrates that Inspur’s “platform + ecosystem” industrial development philosophy has gained recognition not only from the industry but also from the capital market. Moving forward, Inspur Health will accelerate business incubation, leveraging synergies between its overall strengths and investors’ capital and resource advantages to achieve mutual benefit while driving rapid business growth and expansion.

“Following the successful completion of its Series A financing, the company will further accelerate talent acquisition and resource integration, expedite the R&D of a new-generation big data platform at an internationally advanced level, strengthen innovation in artificial intelligence and blockchain technologies, and enhance its capabilities in data value-added services and internet-based product offerings. The company will collaborate with more regional and large-scale medical institutions to advance the construction, service, and operation of health and medical big data platforms, thereby supporting the development of government-led public health and epidemic prevention and control big data service systems. Additionally, it will accelerate the creation of platform-based services for personal full-lifecycle health management, thereby generating commercial value,” stated Gao Chuangui, Chairman and CEO of Inspur Health.

Big Data in Health and Healthcare encompasses the entire collection of data related to human health, medical care, and hygiene that is generated and interactively produced throughout the full life cycle, all aspects of daily life, and the entire production process of individuals and human society. Ideally, such data should be digitized and electronic, enabling consolidated storage and interoperability.

Currently, China is still far from achieving this goal in terms of individual health and medical data. To date, test results from several hospitals or physical examination centers within the same city remain unable to interconnect, let alone achieve cross-regional interoperability. This status quo makes it difficult to support the national health strategy’s transition from a treatment-centered approach to a health-centered one.

Since 2017, Inspur has officially entered the health and medical big data sector by leveraging Shandong Health Medical Big Data Co., Ltd. as its platform, and has participated in the pilot construction of the National North China Center for Health and Medical Big Data in Jinan. By summarizing the lessons learned from the pilot project, and addressing the needs of the government, the public, and the development of the big data industry, Inspur Health has proposed an innovative model for regional health and medical big data development.

As a pilot city for the National Health and Medical Big Data Northern Center, Jinan has engaged in in-depth cooperation with Inspur Health. Leveraging the government cloud, Jinan pioneered the establishment of China’s first health and medical big data platform featuring comprehensive data aggregation and integration, thereby achieving the integration and interoperability of all health and medical data resources in the city.

Jinan residents can access local medical institutions, schedule appointments, and view consultation results through the “iHealth” app. These consultation results can be shared and accessed across different medical institutions while ensuring user privacy, thereby eliminating the hassle of redundant tests.

Meanwhile, third-party medical service providers can also integrate with the “iHealth” App to offer convenient and affordable medical services to the public.

Inspur Health positions itself as an operator of a big data platform for healthcare, not directly providing medical services but offering big data services, which represents a new model in the industry.

This innovative model establishes a city-level, official “Internet + Healthcare” unified service portal based on the regional health and medical big data platform, with operations outsourced to an enterprise. It serves not only as a collection of individual services but also as a comprehensive health service gateway, enabling numerous enterprises to integrate their internet-based medical services, thereby realizing a “Platform + Ecosystem” operational model.

Following the aggregation and governance of big data, and under the premise of ensuring security and privacy, the platform can effectively support government health management and decision-making, while providing pharmaceutical and insurance companies with various data value-added services to facilitate big data-driven R&D innovation and service delivery, thereby fully leveraging the integrative value of big data.

This innovative model has also garnered interest from other cities. Regions including Tianjin, Inner Mongolia, Xiamen, and Nanning have authorized Inspur Health to build and develop healthcare big data platforms. Currently, the big data platforms in Jinan, Tianjin, and Inner Mongolia are serving nearly 50 million people (8.5 million in Jinan, 16 million in Tianjin, and 24 million in Inner Mongolia).

In the current epidemic prevention and control efforts, high technology has become one of the powerful weapons against the outbreak. In particular, innovative technologies such as cloud services, big data, and artificial intelligence have been widely applied in areas including epidemic tracking and source tracing, transmission pathway analysis, predictive modeling of disease progression, and resource allocation.

Across China, big data was extensively utilized during this outbreak to conduct epidemiological investigations and track population movements with precision. Through such big data screening, individuals returning to their hometowns received follow-up calls from their local communities shortly after arriving home.

Inspired by big data, artificial intelligence technologies, and practical achievements, Inspur Health, in collaboration with partners such as Baidu, has freely opened its epidemic follow-up screening platform during the current anti-epidemic campaign. This platform enables major medical institutions, communities, and enterprises to conduct screenings and disseminate knowledge on disease prevention. It facilitates citizens’ regular reporting of their health status and provides an additional viable approach for frontline community work, significantly improving working conditions at the grassroots level, especially during periods of shortage in protective supplies. Inspur Health has also provided free registration and behavior analysis systems for hospital entrants to various medical institutions. In Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, it has launched internet-based fever clinic services and intelligent consultation activities. These services stem from the deep integration of big data platforms and the internet. Gao Chuangui noted that health and medical big data have long surpassed traditional medical informatization services and general internet services. Under normal circumstances, it aggregates data bit by bit; in times of crisis, it offers vast resources like an ocean. The role of big data in promoting human health development and socioeconomic progress will become increasingly prominent, and the health big data industry is poised for imminent explosive growth!

In addition to fully leveraging the advantages of big data platforms, the central government places great emphasis on data privacy. On February 9, 2020, the Cyberspace Administration of China issued the “Notice on Doing a Good Job in Personal Information Protection and Utilizing Big Data to Support Joint Prevention and Control Efforts.”

The notice requires that personal information must be de-identified when used for joint prevention and control purposes; during the aggregation and storage phase, personal information should be managed and processed in a relatively centralized manner to the greatest extent possible, with strict security measures such as access control, auditing, and encryption implemented, and deleted in accordance with regulations after the epidemic prevention and control period ends.

The regional health and medical big data platform development model proposed by Inspur Health, characterized by “government leadership, government supervision, enterprise-led construction, and industrialized operation,” has already demonstrated significant advantages in preliminary practice; indeed, it holds substantial potential for future exploitation.

Healthcare big data is becoming a critical foundational strategic resource for the nation. Advances in technologies such as data integration and artificial intelligence will empower big data to enhance every stage of the healthcare process, improving the efficiency and effectiveness of drug R&D, clinical diagnosis and treatment, insurance payments and commercial insurance design, as well as health management and public health services, while reducing costs across the industry chain.

As a key carrier of Inspur Group’s healthcare big data, Inspur Health participated in the pilot construction of the National Northern Center for Healthcare Big Data. During the pandemic, it established and improved a joint prevention and control system supported by big data, leveraging advanced technologies such as big data and artificial intelligence to aid epidemic prevention and control efforts.

“China Galaxy Securities participated in the Series A investment of Shandong Health Medical Big Data Co., Ltd. because, during the critical battle against the epidemic, we witnessed the extensive application of innovative technologies—such as cloud services, big data, and artificial intelligence—in areas including epidemic tracking and source identification, transmission pathway analysis, predictive modeling of disease progression, and resource allocation. We also recognized Shandong Health Data’s strong momentum in fully unlocking the commercial value of health and medical big data,” said Zhao Xiancheng, Deputy General Manager of Galaxy Innovation Capital, who spoke highly of this investment.

Yinji Investment is the first national-level venture capital fund focused on high-tech services in Shandong Province, as well as the first national-level venture capital fund in Jinan City. It also holds strong optimism about the future development of Inspur Health. “We highly recognize Inspur Health’s technological accumulation and innovative development capabilities in fields such as big data and artificial intelligence over the past two years, as well as its achievements in building an industrial ecosystem for healthcare big data,” said Li Jian, General Manager of Yinji Investment.

The Qingkong Jinxin Blue Fund, which has primarily invested in genetic testing, innovative drug R&D, precision medicine big data, and artificial intelligence, also holds an optimistic outlook. At the signing ceremony, Cao Da, Chairman of Qingkong Jinxin Blue (Qingdao) Investment Management Co., Ltd. and President of Qingkong Jinxin Capital, stated, “We believe that Shandong Health and Medical Big Data Company, as a leading national platform service provider for health and medical big data, will drive the development of China’s health and medical big data industry and foster the growth and refinement of its ecosystem.”