Shaanxi Health Cloud: Accelerating Comprehensive Medical Services Across the Region

“Without a solid foundation, the earth shakes and mountains sway!” Currently, Shaanxi’s poverty alleviation efforts have entered a critical phase of decisive battle. To strive for greater achievements in advancing the Healthy China initiative, health-focused poverty alleviation, and the rural revitalization strategy, the Shaanxi Provincial Health Commission convened the “Provincial Training Conference on Health Poverty Alleviation” on November 22. This conference marked the first time since the establishment of the Provincial Health Commission that a provincial assembly of village doctors was held using 5G, cloud platforms, and telemedicine. It was also the largest and most widely attended conference in the history of Shaanxi’s health system since the founding of the People’s Republic of China.

The conference was convened via the Shaanxi Provincial Remote Health Cloud Platform, which linked 3,213 branch venues across four administrative levels—province, city, county, and township—throughout the province. More than 30,000 healthcare professionals from medical institutions at five levels (province, city, county, township, and village) participated in the training. Director Liu Baoqin attended the meeting and delivered a speech, while Liu Qinshe, Secretary of the Party Leadership Group of the Health Commission, presided over the meeting. The platform was built with the support of Medlinker, which also provides comprehensive operational services.

At the conference, Director Liu Baoqin emphasized that medical institutions and healthcare professionals must continuously innovate in their efforts to alleviate poverty through health initiatives, thereby better safeguarding public health. “The remote health cloud platform and 5G technology leveraged at this conference represent an innovation in our province’s medical informatization. They enable healthcare workers across the province to perform their duties efficiently with minimal effort—eliminating the need for travel by air or rail, as they can now work directly from township health centers.” The conference directed that, in the future, counties, townships, and villages throughout the province will strengthen training and enhance service capabilities via this remote health cloud platform, ensuring a decisive victory in the campaign to alleviate poverty through health improvements.

It is reported that health poverty alleviation efforts across Shaanxi Province are steadily accelerating, driven by the provincial remote health cloud platform. The first phase of system integration has been completed with leading institutions including the First Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, the Second Affiliated Hospital of Xi’an Jiaotong University, Shaanxi Provincial People’s Hospital, and Northwest Women’s and Children’s Hospital. Educational and consultation platforms have been connected for 7,762 medical institutions at the county, township, and village levels in 29 impoverished counties; remote education systems have been accessed by 1,688 medical institutions at the county and township levels in 78 impoverished counties, as well as by 10 municipal Health Commissions and 107 county-level Health Bureaus. To date, six province-wide training sessions have been conducted via the remote health cloud platform, with a cumulative participation of over 90,000 individuals, effectively enhancing the service capacity of grassroots healthcare facilities. Taking this training session as an example, Medlive International, in collaboration with China Mobile, leveraged 5G networks to deliver live-streamed remote education with interactive features, aiming to explore innovative applications that enable more efficient participation in training for grassroots healthcare providers.

By establishing a provincial cloud platform, Shaanxi Province has progressively achieved interconnectivity across its province-wide telemedicine service network. This has further broken down spatial barriers and accelerated the integration of high-quality medical resources, thereby enabling comprehensive coverage of healthcare services such as remote consultations, remote outpatient care, two-way referrals, remote appointments, and remote education. Leveraging telemedicine business supervision and quality control measures, the province has effectively achieved centralized management of key areas, including primary-level remote diagnosis and treatment, as well as imaging and electrocardiogram (ECG) diagnostics. Shaanxi is gradually completing a six-tier hierarchical telemedicine and referral system—spanning from villages to towns, towns to counties, counties to cities, cities to the province, and the province to the national level—alongside specialized telemedicine service systems for cardiology, cerebrovascular diseases, respiratory medicine, hematology, and other disciplines. These efforts have significantly enhanced primary healthcare capabilities, delivering tangible benefits to the people of Shaanxi.

In accordance with the overall planning of Shaanxi Health Cloud, Xinyi International will support the Shaanxi Provincial Health Commission in further exploring technological innovations and applications of 5G within the province’s telemedicine cloud platform. Furthermore, Xinyi International will assist the Shaanxi Provincial Health Commission in operational services by deepening the application of cloud-based departmental services through the clinical key specialty platform, strengthening primary care specialties, and facilitating the decentralization of high-quality medical resources. This initiative aims to build a more convenient and efficient healthcare cloud service platform for medical institutions at all levels in Shaanxi Province, ensuring that patients in grassroots and remote impoverished areas have access to affordable, high-quality medical care, thereby advancing special health poverty alleviation efforts.