How to Implement Smart Healthcare? Xiantao Medical Cloud Provides the Blueprint

“Since March 2018, Xiantao City has partnered with Kingsoft Cloud to build a smart healthcare system in Xiantao. After approximately one year, we have basically established a secure, efficient, and shared Xiantao Medical Cloud,” said Zhang Xin, Deputy Director of the Xiantao Municipal Health Commission, at the Kingsoft Cloud China Tour Partner Conference.

Currently, the development of medical clouds in China has reached maturity in terms of policy and technical solutions, officially entering a fast track of construction. The Xiantao Medical Cloud stands out as a prominent representative of medical clouds in China. Zhang Xin, Deputy Director of the Xiantao Municipal Health Commission, introduced that the Xiantao Medical Cloud fully leverages next-generation information technologies, including cloud computing and big data, to rapidly establish a “Healthcare Information Service Application Network.” The Xiantao Smart Healthcare System has been initially built.

Currently, China’s healthcare system is undergoing large-scale reform. Smart healthcare has become a key instrument for deepening these reforms and is regarded as an effective approach to improving and resolving the longstanding challenges of “high medical costs and difficult access to care.” However, smart healthcare is also a daunting and complex systems engineering endeavor. After years of development, the healthcare informatics landscape is characterized by fragmented governance among medical institutions, overly complex and disparate information systems, and stagnant progress in data interoperability. Therefore, top-level design is crucial for the advancement of smart healthcare.

Deputy Director Zhang Xin revealed that Xiantao City’s smart healthcare initiative has prioritized top-level design from the outset, formulating a “1115” smart healthcare blueprint and adopting a development strategy characterized by “top-level design, coordinated planning, pilot-first implementation, and phased rollout.” The “1115” top-level planning framework comprises: one medical and health big data cloud center, one national population health information platform, one resident electronic health card, and the development of five major categories of platform-based business applications.

In the “1115” top-level planning framework, Xiantao City first leverages existing cloud-based data center resources to build a Medical and Health Big Data Cloud Center, thereby enabling legacy computing resources to support upper-layer platforms. Second, it establishes a population health information platform covering three tiers—city, township, and village—and constructs three major databases: comprehensive population information, electronic health records (EHRs), and electronic medical records (EMRs). Third, it issues a unified resident electronic health card across the city to facilitate identity verification, storage of health information, cross-regional medical care, and expense settlement. Finally, it develops five categories of platform-based business applications, namely: integrated primary care services, regional collaborative healthcare applications, comprehensive health supervision and management applications, internet-based convenient and beneficial public health services, and IoT-enabled health management applications.

Figure: Zhang Xin, Deputy Director of the Xiantao Municipal Health Commission

“Xiantao City has preliminarily established a ‘Medical and Health Information Business Application Network,’” introduced Zhang Xin. He explained that Xiantao City has horizontally built a population health information platform covering multiple business lines, including public health, medical services, health resources, intelligent supervision, and tiered diagnosis and treatment. Vertically, it has established medical service systems that connect four levels—province, city, town, and village—such as remote imaging, remote electrocardiography, and remote consultation and referral. “It can be said that this medical application network provides strong support for achieving the goals of universal access to basic medical and health services and population health services.”

During the development of smart healthcare, the primary challenges include: achieving data interoperability among existing legacy business systems; integrating primary healthcare services with mobile payment solutions; and incorporating emerging smart devices and intelligent applications into regional healthcare operations to enhance medical efficiency and outcomes.

Deputy Director Zhang Xin stated candidly that data unification posed the greatest challenge in the construction of the Xiantao Medical Cloud. “Resident information varies significantly, and data formats across different business systems are inconsistent. Kingsoft Cloud helped achieve data comparison, integration, and standardization, thereby enabling interoperability of regional medical data in Xiantao City.” It is reported that after more than a year of development, the Xiantao Medical Cloud has been effectively supporting routine medical operations such as tiered diagnosis and treatment and patient referrals. “Existing mature business systems at medical institutions have already been integrated with Kingsoft Cloud. In the future, interfacing the Xiantao Medical Cloud with the provincial cloud platform will also be feasible.”

In fact, regions like Xiantao City have a substantial volume of primary healthcare services, yet funding for grassroots medical care remains severely limited. The benefits of data interoperability and shared coordination not only facilitate the integration of primary healthcare operations but also enhance the efficiency of grassroots medical services and the effectiveness of medical applications. Within the Xiantao Medical Cloud, Kingsoft Cloud’s Cloud-based Hospital Information System (CloudHIS) has played a pivotal role. As China’s first healthcare information system truly built on cloud computing technology, CloudHIS fully complies with national health standards. It enables data sharing and application linkage between clinical care and public health services, featuring one-click installation, zero local deployment, and user-friendly operation, making it highly suitable for use by primary healthcare institutions.

It is reported that by the end of 2018, Kingsoft Cloud’s CloudHIS had provided services to 29 township health centers and 668 village clinics in Xiantao City, handling over 257,000 outpatient visits and establishing 1.21 million personal health records.

According to Deputy Director Zhang Xin, the Xiantao Medical Cloud has been preliminarily established after overcoming numerous difficulties, featuring three key characteristics:

Public Convenience: The general public can access online appointment booking, online consultations, and virtual medical visits, enabling them to receive services from various healthcare institutions from the comfort of their homes.

Huiyi: Electronic family doctor records have been implemented citywide. Family doctors can input service details on-site via devices and upload them to the information platform with a single click, significantly improving the service efficiency of village doctors and family doctors, and completely liberating them from the tedious task of filling out paper-based records.

Enhance capabilities to reverse the previous trend of “overcrowded large hospitals and declining small hospitals,” achieve homogenized management of medical quality through medical cloud platforms and remote diagnosis, and alleviate the problems of high costs and difficult access to healthcare for the public.

“Now, residents in remote rural areas can access services at their local township health centers. Through the remote imaging and remote ECG diagnosis centers, Xiantao No. 1 People’s Hospital—the city’s premier medical institution—can issue a draft ECG diagnostic report within three minutes of data upload and an imaging diagnostic report within eight minutes, truly reducing the need for patients to travel long distances,” said Deputy Director Zhang Xin.

Smart healthcare has, to a certain extent, promoted the integration of life sciences and information technology. Technologies such as the Internet of Things (IoT), cloud computing, big data, artificial intelligence (AI), and mobile internet will serve as critical foundational infrastructure. In particular, once data interoperability and shared applications are achieved, smart healthcare will have fertile ground for innovative applications. Zhang Xin, Deputy Director, stated frankly that after the initial establishment of the system, Xiantao’s smart healthcare initiative will focus on exploring intelligent applications based on big data.

It is reported that Xiantao City’s smart healthcare initiatives will primarily focus on the following four areas:

Establish Electronic Health Cards for Residents. Residents can use their Electronic Health Cards to seek medical care at healthcare institutions across the city. The Electronic Health Card also features payment functionality, is linked to the medical insurance card, and enables medical insurance settlement.

Establish online medical consultations and home delivery of medications. For common and frequently occurring diseases among residents, physicians can issue prescriptions and facilitate medication dispensing based on patients’ historical medical records and verbal descriptions, ensuring that medicines are delivered directly to patients.

Leveraging the Internet of Things (IoT) and wearable devices to help monitor chronic diseases among the elderly in remote rural areas: Distributing wearable devices to seniors enables at-home health indicator monitoring, while backend systems track these metrics and standardize medication management, providing patients with services such as health consultations and emergency assistance.

Exploring the Application of Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Technologies in Medical Devices and Primary Care Diagnosis to Promote the Development of Intelligent Diagnostics.

In fact, artificial intelligence (AI) technology holds immense potential for application within primary healthcare systems. Once data interoperability is achieved, AI can undergo continuous training on such data to enhance its disease diagnostic capabilities. Furthermore, it can translate expert clinical experience into algorithmic models, enabling the low-cost replication of such expertise. Primary healthcare institutions precisely lack this level of expert experience and diagnostic judgment; therefore, the application of AI will undoubtedly strengthen their capabilities in diagnosis, screening, and testing, thereby significantly elevating the overall medical service capacity of primary healthcare facilities.

Deputy Director Zhang Xin stated, “Kingsoft Cloud has accumulated extensive expertise in big data and artificial intelligence technologies. Xiantao City will actively explore intelligent applications in collaboration with Kingsoft Cloud.”