Baidu and People's Medical Publishing House Announce Strategic Partnership to Empower Medical Knowledge Graphs and Clinical Decision Support with AI

On September 10, 2019, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned that Baidu and the People’s Medical Publishing House (PMPH) had officially signed a strategic cooperation agreement. Leveraging Baidu’s leading and comprehensive artificial intelligence technologies alongside PMPH’s top-tier medical content and expert resources, both parties will jointly build China’s most authoritative evidence-based medicine knowledge system and work together to promote the continuous implementation of Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) tailored to China’s national conditions.

Furthermore, the two parties will engage in multi-dimensional, comprehensive cooperation in the generation, dissemination, and application of medical knowledge, working together to enhance primary healthcare services in China and promote healthy living for all.

Wang Xuening, General Manager, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee, and Director of People’s Medical Publishing House, and Huang Yan, General Manager of Baidu Smart Healthcare, signed a strategic cooperation agreement on behalf of their respective parties.

As a crucial component of ensuring public welfare, the provision of professional and efficient primary healthcare services has long attracted significant attention from all sectors of society. Among these efforts, enhancing the capabilities of primary care physicians is particularly critical. Only when the quality of primary care gains widespread and authoritative recognition will patients place greater trust in primary care institutions, thereby enabling the ultimate formation of a closed-loop tiered diagnosis and treatment system. The key to improving physicians’ capabilities lies in delivering standardized and regulated clinical decision support information to them in the most effective manner and at the most appropriate time within the clinical workflow. This requires, on one hand, a core knowledge base built upon authoritative medical evidence, and on the other, the integration of artificial intelligence technologies with real-world clinical practice to truly achieve efficient knowledge delivery and support for clinical judgment.

After proposing its artificial intelligence development strategy, Baidu has placed particular emphasis on empowering the healthcare industry with AI. In 2018, Baidu established its Smart Healthcare Division to leverage artificial intelligence technologies to strengthen primary care services. Recently, the company upgraded its AI healthcare brand to “Lingyi Zhihui.” With the vision of “empowering primary care through evidence-based AI,” Lingyi Zhihui is committed to serving all scenarios both within and outside hospitals, thereby enhancing the service capabilities of primary healthcare institutions. Notably, its Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS), designed to improve physicians’ clinical competencies, has been deployed in more than 1,000 medical institutions across China and has received widespread acclaim.

The two parties have signed a strategic cooperation agreement. Leveraging People’s Medical Publishing House’s extensive and authoritative medical knowledge resources—including textbooks, academic monographs, clinical practice guidelines, expert consensus statements, and clinical case reports—and harnessing Baidu’s leading artificial intelligence technologies, such as natural language processing, semantic understanding, knowledge graphs, machine learning, and deep learning, the partners will structure, tag, and cluster these medical content resources. Together, they aim to build the most authoritative evidence-based medicine knowledge system in the healthcare industry, enabling more primary-care healthcare professionals to access comprehensive and accurate medical information for reference and learning.

Furthermore, both parties will leverage their respective strengths to develop a Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS) tailored to China’s specific conditions by integrating Baidu Brain’s AI technology with medical knowledge, thereby providing effective support for primary healthcare professionals.

On one hand, People's Medical Publishing House is the World Health Organization’s sole global partner for health information and publishing, boasting high-quality, extensive resources in content, expertise, and users. On the other hand, Baidu, as a pioneer in China’s artificial intelligence sector, possesses comprehensive and advanced open technologies and development capabilities in speech, image recognition, natural language processing, and knowledge graphs, along with integrated AI solutions.

At the signing ceremony, Hao Yang, Chairman and Party Secretary of People’s Medical Publishing House, stated that Baidu is the world’s largest Chinese-language search engine and a leading global artificial intelligence company. The strategic collaboration between the two parties to build the most authoritative evidence-based medicine knowledge system in the healthcare industry holds significant infrastructural importance for implementing the State Council’s “Healthy China 2030” strategic plan and ushering in an era of “comprehensive intelligent connectivity in health applications.” Furthermore, a “clinical decision support system (CDSS) tailored to China’s national conditions for primary care” will help improve the efficiency and quality of primary healthcare services, thereby alleviating the burden on tertiary hospitals.

Huang Yan, General Manager of Baidu Smart Healthcare and “Lingyi Zhihui,” has once again publicly stated that the integration of the healthcare industry with AI technology will inevitably be fraught with challenges. Working in isolation is by no means the spirit of the AI era; instead, she expressed the hope to foster an open and win-win approach, collaborating with partners to jointly promote the application of AI in the healthcare sector. The People’s Medical Publishing House (PMPH) boasts large-scale publishing operations, high-quality products, and strong comprehensive capabilities, standing as a leading domestic medical and health publishing and media enterprise with significant international influence. On this occasion, the two parties are combining medical expertise with artificial intelligence technology to engage in close cooperation in areas such as medical knowledge construction and the development of clinical decision support systems for primary care. Together, they aim to contribute to empowering China’s healthcare system, particularly at the primary care level.

People’s Medical Publishing House and “Lingyi Zhihui” share broad consensus in the field of AI-driven healthcare. Leveraging artificial intelligence technologies, both parties will collaborate across multiple dimensions—including branding, research projects, marketing, and distribution channels—to co-create a shared brand, jointly own intellectual property rights, and cooperate on national-level research initiatives. They are committed to promoting the dissemination of authoritative and professional knowledge, actively expanding the scope of collaboration in AI healthcare, and sparing no effort to deepen and upgrade their partnership, thereby delivering valuable exploratory outcomes for the integration of AI and healthcare.