Yitu Healthcare Transitions from Single-Task AI to Full-Scenario Pediatric Solutions, Files IPO Prospectus
High-quality pediatric diagnostic and treatment resources in China have long been scarce.
According to the White Paper on the Current Status of Pediatric Resources in China, there are only 135,000 pediatricians in the country, while the number of children aged 0–14 during the same period reached as high as 260 million. This means that, on average, each pediatrician serves 2,600 children.
The significant imbalance between supply and demand has led to numerous problems: on the physician side, pediatricians have long been plagued by high stress levels and elevated professional risks, resulting in a substantial number of them transferring to other specialties or leaving the medical profession altogether each year; on the patient side, constrained by the scarcity of high-quality pediatric resources, parents often endure prolonged waiting times when seeking care for their children, making the pediatric healthcare experience a frequent subject of public criticism.
To address this pain point, companies in the medical and artificial intelligence sectors have been investing significant human and financial resources into pediatrics, aiming to capture a share of the market. Among them, Yitu Healthcare, China’s first unicorn enterprise in the fields of medical big data and artificial intelligence, unveiled its intelligent healthcare solution specifically designed for pediatrics on March 26, 2019, at the VB100 New Year Strategy Launch Event hosted by VCBeat.
Faced with the potential market in pediatrics, Yitu Healthcare is fully prepared.
What Are the Difficulties and Challenges in Implementing Full-Scenario Pediatric Care?
In the view of Dr. Fang Cong, Vice President of Yitu Healthcare, achieving full-scenario coverage in pediatrics requires addressing dozens of common pediatric diseases, developing schemas for approximately 6,000 disease entities, and conducting clinical validation for each data point. “Only when every single point is clinically validated can we build a comprehensive diagnostic system capable of resolving the closed-loop challenges across all scenarios.”
Dr. Fang Cong, Vice President of Yitu Healthcare
“All R&D efforts are ultimately aimed at integrating point-specific applications, progressing from single tasks to single diseases and single anatomical sites, and finally evolving into patient-centered, scenario-based solutions.” Dr. Fang Cong believes that only full-stack, multi-source heterogeneous data processing capabilities can effectively address the core challenges in clinical diagnosis and treatment within healthcare institutions.
When it comes to full-stack AI technology, mention must be made of the “2019 Huawei China Ecosystem Partner Conference” held in Fuzhou on March 21 this year. At the conference, Yitu Healthcare and Huawei jointly unveiled a major strategic collaboration achievement—the Intelligent Medical Cloud, which represents a deep integration of world-class medical artificial intelligence technology with Huawei’s powerful cloud platform and big data technologies.
“The Children’s Health Intelligent Cloud Platform integrates Yitu Healthcare’s robust technological expertise in three key areas—computer vision, natural language processing, and automatic speech recognition—and empowers pediatric healthcare institutions across China through a suite of AI products covering the entire pediatric diagnosis and treatment workflow, supported by a powerful intelligent cloud platform.”
It is reported that the platform offers AI-powered services across the entire care continuum—from pre-consultation to in-consultation and post-consultation—covering everything from child health assessments to pediatric diagnosis and treatment. This initiative aims to comprehensively enhance the efficiency of pediatric care in China and strengthen the diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities of primary healthcare institutions, thereby alleviating the workload of pediatric healthcare professionals and enabling more Chinese families to access high-quality pediatric medical services.
“Yitu has achieved full-scenario coverage in pediatric healthcare through its proprietary AI technologies in text, image, and speech, as well as its constructed medical knowledge graph.”
“After years of development, Yitu Healthcare has established a comprehensive portfolio of AI-powered pediatric products that spans the entire care continuum, both within and outside hospital settings,” stated Dr. Fang Cong. Yitu Healthcare’s pediatric solutions already encompass dozens of AI-driven services, including intelligent triage, smart pre-consultation screening, automated pre-diagnostic testing, and voice-enabled electronic medical record documentation, covering scenarios across pre-diagnosis, intra-diagnosis, post-diagnosis, hospital management, and clinical research.
Image source: Yitu Healthcare
Specifically, it is manifested in the following aspects:
During the pre-consultation phase, multimodal information can be utilized to interact with parents, enabling intelligent triage.
During consultations, the pediatric intelligent stratified diagnostic model, trained on massive datasets, and the cloud platform integrating the expertise of top pediatricians can intelligently assess children’s growth and development, enabling intelligent diagnosis of general pediatric conditions and significantly enhancing pediatric diagnostic capabilities;
Post-consultation, the cloud platform can continuously empower primary pediatric care by enabling intelligent follow-ups and facilitating smart referrals from primary facilities to central hospitals, ensuring that every child in China has access to high-quality medical services.
“This marks a major breakthrough centered on pediatric patients, following the AI healthcare industry’s successes in single-point tasks and individual diseases or anatomical sites.”
With strong products and technology, the key lies in effective implementation.
“Yitu Healthcare’s approach is to first target the B2B sector, and then expand into the B2C market after establishing barriers to entry and user stickiness,” stated Dr. Fang Cong. The rationale behind this strategy is:
I. The B-side can address a wide range of scenario-specific challenges; only after vertical applications for specific disease categories have become highly mature can comprehensive, generalist coverage be achieved.
II. For startups, building competitive moats is essential when developing consumer-facing products. This helps prevent being easily acquired or absorbed by large corporations when you have decent traffic but a relatively small user base.
In terms of implementation, Yitu Healthcare has initiated collaborations with multiple hospitals, including Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center, Zhongshan Hospital of Xiamen University, and Wenzhou Women and Children’s Health Care Center, covering the entire pediatric diagnosis and treatment workflow.
Taking Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center as an example, its internet hospital has been launched, offering a comprehensive suite of online medical services, including online triage, appointment registration, and AI-powered consultations. As of December 2018, Yitu Healthcare’s consumer-facing product, “Xiao Yi Pre-consultation,” had been available for seven months, serving over 77,000 users and accumulating more than 210,000 minutes of online service time.
Intelligent Solutions for Pediatric Consultation Processes and Intelligent Diagnostic Systems for Child Growth and Development
Furthermore, Yitu Healthcare’s SaaS-based health scenario services, built on its Pediatric Health Intelligent Cloud Platform, have been implemented at iKang Guobin. Currently, the Pediatric Health Intelligent Cloud Platform is also undergoing pilot trials in multiple regions, including Guangdong, Zhejiang, and Shanghai. “The care.ai®️ Intelligent Diagnostic System for Child Growth and Development has been deployed for pilot use in over 100 medical institutions. Among the top ten pediatric hospitals listed in Fudan University’s 2018 Hospital Rankings, nine have adopted our Intelligent Diagnostic System for Child Growth and Development,” revealed Dr. Fang Cong. Looking ahead, several iKang Guobin chain clinics will roll out Yitu Healthcare’s SaaS-based intelligent diagnostic system, leveraging the Intelligent Diagnostic System for Child Growth and Development to enhance more health checkup scenarios and support the healthy growth of more children.
Dr. Fang Cong stated, “Yitu Healthcare will continue to contribute to China’s pediatric healthcare sector with high-quality medical AI products, empowering every stage of care both within and outside hospitals, supporting both doctors and patients, and alleviating the challenges of pediatric consultations. We aim to provide robust AI technical support for the development of pediatrics in China, further advancing the intelligent transformation of the country’s pediatric field.”