Ping An Smart City Launches Intelligent Medical Consortium Remote Ward Platform to Accelerate Smart Healthcare Integration

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned that on April 24, the National Clinical Research Center for Metabolic Diseases at the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University officially launched a smart healthcare collaboration with Ping An Smart City, a subsidiary of Ping An Group, and unveiled the Smart Medical Consortium Remote Ward Platform. The two parties will also accelerate in-depth cooperation in fields such as intelligent healthcare, medical cloud, blockchain, medical big data research, and Internet-plus-medical comprehensive financial service models, to promote standardized diagnosis, treatment, and management of metabolic diseases across China.

Leveraging Ping An Smart City’s technologies—including artificial intelligence, medical cloud, and blockchain—along with Ping An’s financial-grade data security protections, the National Clinical Research Center for Metabolic Diseases at Xiangya Second Hospital of Central South University utilizes the Smart Medical Consortium Remote Ward Platform to conduct remote consultations and remote ward rounds. The platform also implements intelligent quality control over the department’s diabetes diagnosis and treatment processes, providing timely feedback to clinicians. This initiative aims to enhance primary healthcare capabilities and help patients with chronic diseases across various regions access superior diagnostic and therapeutic services.

“The most significant difference between the ‘Remote Ward’ and ‘Telemedicine’ lies in strengthening routine connections with primary-care hospitals,” introduced Professor Zhou Zhiguang, Director of the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University and Director of the National Clinical Research Center for Metabolic Diseases. Currently, there are over 100 million patients with diabetes in China, and diabetes management primarily relies on patient self-management. The “Remote Ward” platform routinely breaks through temporal and spatial constraints, pioneering a new “Smart+” model for collaborative medical consortiums and comprehensive chronic disease management in China.

Primary care hospitals should promptly and appropriately refer patients to specialized medical services at hospitals of all levels across China, based on the stage of their condition. This aims to establish a comprehensive, whole-course management service platform for diabetes patients through standardized treatment, thereby gradually developing standardized clinical guidelines for metabolic diseases tailored to China’s national context and improving the quality control of primary care diagnosis and treatment. Furthermore, applications such as “remote ward rounds” and “remote departmental consultations” can extend educational resources to primary care institutions, alleviate the imbalance in medical resource distribution, promote discipline construction in primary care hospitals, enhance overall clinical medical standards, and truly provide greater medical convenience for patients.

Currently, Shenzhen Second People's Hospital and the First Affiliated Hospital of Henan University of Science and Technology are also operating on a trial basis. Every Tuesday at 7:20 a.m., departmental physicians participate in case conferences organized by the National Clinical Center to discuss rare and complex conditions, align with the most advanced international medical knowledge, and jointly learn and progress with experts from the National Clinical Center. The platform currently manages over 500 patients, who demonstrate high levels of reliance on and trust in the service. The monthly active rate exceeds 70%, patients’ understanding of diabetes has improved significantly, and their conditions are under steady control.

“Through remote ward rounds, some patients who previously needed to be transferred to other hospitals were able to stay, giving us the opportunity to provide more comprehensive medical services to a broader population,” said Nie Guohui, President of Shenzhen Second People’s Hospital. “By participating in remote ward rounds and remote departmental case conferences, we have continuously enhanced the professional skills and broadened the horizons of primary-care physicians, while also addressing practical problems for patients. We hope to see this initiative expanded to more healthcare institutions, so that the public can access affordable and high-quality medical care.”

Professor Zhou Houde from the Second Xiangya Hospital of Central South University introduced that the Smart Medical Consortium Remote Ward Platform released this time is not merely a remote ward in the conventional sense. It also incorporates artificial intelligence, blockchain, and big data—particularly structured medical records—to enable comprehensive patient management through these advanced technological means.

Gao Mengxuan, Co-General Manager of Ping An Smart City, stated that Ping An Smart Healthcare is committed to leveraging leading healthcare technologies—such as artificial intelligence, blockchain, and cloud computing—to help medical institutions enhance the quality of clinical care, support primary healthcare facilities in improving their diagnostic and treatment capabilities, and enable ordinary citizens to access higher-quality medical services.

Ping An Smart City · Smart Healthcare leverages leading artificial intelligence technologies as its core and Ping An Cloud as its infrastructure. It has perfected an end-to-end solution matrix covering the entire patient journey—pre-diagnosis, during diagnosis, and post-diagnosis—including intelligent medical quality control, intelligent disease prediction, intelligent triage and guidance, intelligent medical imaging screening, intelligent assisted diagnosis and treatment, intelligent ICU critical care management, and intelligent follow-up with patient education. This is achieved through two main approaches: supporting governments in implementing smart healthcare initiatives and assisting medical institutions in improving healthcare efficiency. The platform covers intelligent assisted diagnosis and treatment models for thousands of common diseases, serves approximately 800 million patients, and features a comprehensive medical knowledge graph (including drugs, diseases, prescriptions, risk factors, etc.). Ping An Smart City · Smart Healthcare has established close collaborations with health administrative authorities in nearly 20 provinces and municipalities, covering thousands of medical institutions.

Ping An Smart Healthcare Delivers a Value Proposition of “Three Increases and Two Decreases”: Enhancing Efficiency and Liberating Physicians; Improving Patient Care Experience and Easing and Optimizing Doctor-Patient Relationships; Elevating Medical Quality and Ensuring Patient Safety; Reducing Missed or Misdiagnoses; Lowering Healthcare Costs.