Yitu Healthcare Showcases China's Medical AI Achievements at WAIC 2019, Leading the Industry into Deep-Implementation Era

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) reports live from the scene: The 2019 World Artificial Intelligence Conference, hailed as the “Olympics of the AI industry,” was held in Shanghai from August 29 to 31. The event is expected to draw more than 40,000 attendees from over 40 countries, with total visitor traffic exceeding 200,000. Top global AI companies gathered to exchange insights on hot topics such as autonomous driving, medical AI, and 5G technology.

As a representative of China’s AI healthcare enterprises, YITU Healthcare showcased its full-stack AI product suite under the care.ai brand at this prestigious event. Its comprehensive and mature multi-scenario healthcare solutions drew significant attention from attendees, with numerous application cases—such as the Smart Children’s Hospital Solution, the integrated “hardware-software” one-stop solution for growth and development assessment, the city-level health AI middle platform, and top-tier research papers published in Nature Medicine—frequently becoming focal points of discussion.

Medical artificial intelligence technology represents a significant leap in productivity for the healthcare industry. The level of intelligence within medical systems constitutes the core competitiveness of next-generation healthcare infrastructure. Relying on comprehensive, mature, and reliable medical AI solutions, the development of intelligent city-level, and even national-level, healthcare systems has become a global consensus.

Dr. Fang Cong, Vice President of YITU Healthcare, was invited to attend the themed forum “Navigating Medical AI: Solving Implementation Challenges” and delivered a keynote speech.

In his speech, Dr. Fang Cong stated that the progress of modern society is driven by three models: business model innovation, product innovation, and technological innovation. Among these, technological innovation, represented by artificial intelligence (AI), occurs least frequently but poses the greatest challenges. In recent years, with the rapid advancement and widespread deployment of technology, leading medical AI companies such as Yitu Healthcare have entered a more complex and competitive phase of industry development. To stand out in market competition, medical AI enterprises must evolve from offering isolated products to providing comprehensive, full-scenario solutions that align in both depth and breadth with diverse market demands across varying levels of economic development.

As a leading medical artificial intelligence enterprise in China, Yitu Medical’s care.ai full-stack AI products cover multiple fields, including intelligent clinical decision support, smart internet platforms, and intelligent medical big data. Its AI products and solutions have been deployed in over 300 Grade A tertiary hospitals across China, with coverage extended to county- and city-level regional medical centers in certain provinces and municipalities, truly serving as a valuable assistant and “second brain” for clinicians.

Furthermore, the “AI Cancer Prevention Map” initiative launched by Yitu Healthcare has been widely deployed across China. It has screened more than 10,000 high-risk individuals, identified over 50 high-risk cases, and enabled nearly 20 patients with early-stage lung cancer to undergo surgery, resulting in favorable survival prognoses. Medical artificial intelligence is becoming a powerful productivity tool for clinicians conducting large-scale early cancer screening, while also fostering collaborative synergy among healthcare institutions and enhancing the quality of primary care.

From breakthroughs in individual technologies to the widespread adoption of comprehensive, all-scenario solutions, YITU Medical continues to lead industry trends.

In 2018, Yitu Medical pioneered the global launch of the first comprehensive AI system at RSNA—the care.ai® Intelligent 4D Imaging System for Chest CT. This system broke new ground in nodule detection within the industry, with lesion detection capabilities covering the vast majority of findings on chest CT scans, including patchy opacities, fibrous streaks, cystic shadows, and pleural effusion. It also features functions such as morphological description, benign-malignant differentiation, and automated comparison with prior imaging, ultimately generating structured reports for clinical adoption by physicians.

In May 2019, Yitu Healthcare’s Smart Children’s Hospital Solution was officially implemented at the Shanghai Children’s Medical Center. This solution integrates multiple AI applications, including intelligent triage, clinical decision support, and pre-consultation, achieving end-to-end intelligence from appointment scheduling to diagnosis. It garnered widespread attention from top-tier media outlets such as CCTV and Xinhua News Agency.

Leaders Visit YITU Medical’s Smart Children’s Hospital Solution

(Second from right: Li Qiang, Member of the Political Bureau of the CPC Central Committee and Secretary of the Shanghai Municipal Committee of the Communist Party of China,

Third from the right: Academician Xu Kuangdi, Vice Chairman of the 10th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference,

Left: Zhao Liebin, Vice President of Shanghai Children's Medical Center, Shanghai Jiao Tong University School of Medicine, National Children's Medical Center)

In July 2019, Yitu Medical made another significant move by unveiling the industry’s first integrated hardware-software intelligent one-stop solution for child growth and development assessment at the National Summit on Smart Maternal and Child Health Big Data and Artificial Intelligence held in Ordos. This initiative aims to drive the intelligent and routine adoption of bone age detection and growth and development evaluation for children and adolescents in China. Additionally, Yitu Medical launched a smart maternal and child health solution covering pre-, intra-, and post-consultation pediatric care, growth and development assessment, and screening for breast and cervical cancers in women, thereby facilitating the intelligent upgrade of maternal and child healthcare institutions across China.

Dr. Fang Cong stated: “Leveraging its robust technological foundation and deep understanding of clinical needs, Yitu Medical has advanced within just a few years from the ‘single-task phase’—such as nodule detection and bone age assessment—to providing ‘disease-specific and department-specific solutions.’ The company has successively launched comprehensive, full-scenario solutions, including the Smart Children’s Hospital Solution, the One-Stop Solution for Child Growth and Development Assessment, and the Smart Maternal and Child Health Solution. By continuously achieving breakthroughs in both the depth and breadth of its offerings, Yitu Medical has expanded its application scenarios and clinical value, establishing itself as a trusted solution provider for healthcare institutions across China.”

China boasts world-class data resources, yet due to various factors, the collection, cleaning, and utilization of clinical medical data have long lagged behind international advanced standards. At this exhibition, several major scientific achievements presented by YITU Healthcare drew significant attention from attendees.

In June 2018, West China Hospital and Yitu Healthcare jointly launched China’s first intelligent disease-specific database for clinical research on lung cancer. The database aggregates full-cycle data from over 20,000 lung cancer patients, more than one million clinical reports, and tens of millions of raw medical images, with its data governance and utilization capabilities ranking among the most advanced globally.

In February 2019, the Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center, in collaboration with Yitu Healthcare, published research findings on clinical intelligent diagnosis using natural language processing techniques based on Chinese text-based electronic medical records in the top-tier medical journal Nature Medicine, titled “Evaluation and accurate diagnosis of pediatric diseases using artificial intelligence.”

“From intelligent clinical decision-making and smart internet platforms to intelligence-driven medical big data, AI technology is comprehensively empowering healthcare institutions to achieve intelligent upgrades. Only through deep integration with clinical practice and helping healthcare institutions resolve clinical challenges can the true value of artificial intelligence be fully realized. The future is promising, and it is already here,” said Dr. Fang Cong. “It is Yitu Medical’s vision to enable everyone to enjoy better healthcare through technology. Yitu Medical will continue to collaborate with healthcare institutions worldwide to promote the practical application of AI technology, making it ubiquitous and readily accessible.”