DaTu Medical Serves Over 50 Hospitals with AI-Powered Radiotherapy Workstations, Revenue Exceeds RMB 10 Million
Surgery, chemotherapy, and radiotherapy are the “three pillars” of cancer treatment. In terms of cancer treatment modalities, chemotherapy accounts for 47%, surgical treatment for 29.6%, and radiotherapy for approximately 19.9%. Due to its broad indications, minimal pain, non-invasive nature, and limited side effects on normal tissues, radiotherapy is playing an increasingly prominent role in oncology care.
According to data from the "China Medical Artificial Intelligence Industry Report," China currently has an average of only 2.1 physicians per 1,000 people, indicating a severe shortage of medical personnel. This scarcity poses particular challenges for radiotherapy, a process that heavily relies on physicians to delineate target volumes and design treatment plans. As an increasing number of cancer patients seek improved radiotherapy services in hospitals, the workforce of radiation oncologists has not grown proportionally. Data show that the annual growth rate of radiation oncologists is merely 4.1%.
AI is one of the solutions to address this growth mismatch. During radiotherapy, physicians typically spend several hours on target delineation and treatment planning, whereas AI can improve the efficiency of this process by 90%. In China, companies such as Shanghai Datu Medical Technology Co., Ltd. are focused on developing AI-driven radiotherapy solutions to enhance both the efficiency and efficacy of radiation therapy. As of 2019, Datu Medical had been deeply engaged in this field for six years, and its radiotherapy contouring software had obtained a Class III medical device registration certificate issued by the National Medical Products Administration (NMPA).
Currently, Datu Medical serves nearly 100 hospitals across China, covering 19 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions. It has partnered with nearly 10 medical device manufacturers, and its public cloud case repository exceeds 2,000 cases. Datu Medical has signed cooperation agreements with hundreds of radiotherapy institutions, and its annual revenue surpassed RMB 10 million last year.
How Does Automated Radiotherapy Software Achieve Precise Delineation? What Are the Differentiated Advantages of Datu Medical in the Radiotherapy Imaging Processing Market? Gu Weifeng, Deputy Product Director at Datu Medical, Provided Answers to VCBeat.
During radiotherapy, patients first undergo a CT scan. Based on the resulting images, the radiation oncologist delineates the tumor target volume and surrounding critical organs and tissues, while also prescribing the treatment regimen (specifying the radiation dose to the tumor site and dose constraints for adjacent organs). The medical physicist then designs the treatment plan on a computer according to the prescription, after which radiation therapists deliver the treatment using the therapy unit. Therefore, achieving efficient and accurate target delineation and treatment planning, as well as more precise evaluation of radiation dose, are key issues in improving the efficacy of radiotherapy.
In traditional workflows, target volume delineation and treatment planning consume a significant amount of physicians' time and energy. During the delineation process, physicians must annotate organs and tumor locations on each image slice. This step typically takes 3–5 hours using conventional methods. After identifying the tumor location, medical physicists must design specific radiation delivery plans based on the tumor's size, shape, and other characteristics, which involves assigning varying radiation doses to different regions.
If inaccurate target volume delineation or tumor changes result in ineffective treatment (less than 30% reduction in tumor tissue), the treatment plan must be modified, necessitating re-delineation and replanning for the patient.
AI can perform automatic target delineation and radiotherapy plan design based on learning from a large number of cases. Compared with traditional delineation, AI-based automatic delineation can improve efficiency by 90%.
Furthermore, to enhance the precision of target volume and organ delineation and more clearly reflect the patient’s tumor status, Datu Medical’s multimodal solution integrates CT, MRI, and PET/CT images. This enables physicians to visualize tumor location and morphology with greater clarity and perform accurate delineation. Meanwhile, leveraging the company’s proprietary deformable registration technology, the system provides physicians with more scientific and precise dose assessments, thereby ensuring the accuracy of radiotherapy.
Currently, Datu’s product supports the automatic segmentation of nearly 100 organs throughout the body, significantly enhancing physicians’ contouring efficiency. This capability stems from the cutting-edge deep learning technology adopted by Datu Medical, which has been trained on tens of thousands of historical cases, achieving an automatic segmentation accuracy of up to 95%.
Furthermore, Datu Medical’s software fully supports the evaluation of all radiotherapy plans, including brachytherapy, TOMO, proton therapy, and heavy ion therapy. Notably, the heavy ion radiotherapy treatment planning system is China’s first such system, jointly developed by Datu Medical and the Chinese Academy of Sciences.
The market for radiotherapy target delineation is not short of players, comprising both artificial intelligence enterprises and traditional radiotherapy hardware manufacturers. Overseas companies developing radiation-related products, such as MIM and RaySearch, also possess considerable strength.
As a local service provider, Gu Weifeng from Datu Medical stated, “In comparison, we have a deeper understanding of the work preferences and needs of domestic physicians, and are more adept at iterating our products to align with their requirements. Unlike traditional radiotherapy hardware manufacturers, our advantage lies in our ability to adapt to diverse application scenarios and meet the personalized needs of medical institutions. Furthermore, our product offers a one-stop solution; we not only optimize the target volume delineation process but also cover other stages such as plan evaluation. It is a product that truly enhances physicians’ efficiency and alleviates their workload.”
Datu Medical’s current product portfolio includes not only a physician workstation for radiation therapy, but also a patient big data management system and a remote collaboration platform.
Meanwhile, Datu Medical does not position itself in opposition to hardware manufacturers. On the contrary, Datu empowers equipment manufacturers through customized development, provision of core algorithms, software modules, and system integration, thereby jointly building a precision radiotherapy ecosystem.
Currently, Datu Medical has launched four major solutions: localized solutions, mobile solutions, customized solutions, and remote solutions. The localized solution, developed according to the specific characteristics of hospitals, ensures unified, secure storage and backup of all data, with unlimited scalability and permanent retention of all patient records. All complex computations are performed on servers, enabling a faster user experience through high-performance servers without the need for additional device configuration. Meanwhile, it remains compatible with existing hardware and software, ensuring the smooth operation of the original system.
In its mobile solutions, Datu Medical employs unique encryption technology and isolates internal and external networks via firewalls to ensure network security. This enables smooth operation over 4G networks, delivering faster transmission speeds while guaranteeing lossless image transfer.
Remote solutions are applied in telemedicine scenarios, enabling primary-care hospitals to collaborate with experts across China and allowing local patients to receive better treatment services.
In terms of team building, the core founding team of Datu Medical comprises numerous medical device R&D professionals and seasoned sales practitioners. Currently, Datu Medical has secured RMB 15 million in Series A financing from Yahui Precision Medicine and expects to launch a new round of financing in the fourth quarter of this year.