United Imaging Establishes Wuhan Headquarters in Optics Valley with $700 Million Investment to Build a World-Class Intelligent Healthcare Ecosystem

Optics Valley at 30: The River City Has Become a Tech Hub, and United Imaging’s Arrival Adds Further Luster

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) learned at the keynote forum of the opening ceremony of the inaugural World Health Expo that United Imaging Chairman Xue Min unveiled for the first time the company’s overall development strategy in Wuhan: establishing United Imaging Healthcare’s Wuhan headquarters base in Optics Valley, with an investment of RMB 5 billion and a total floor area of 200,000 square meters.

The base will complete its infrastructure construction within the year. At that time, it will become the largest and most distinctive R&D, production, and operations center in the industry.

This is a significant endeavor. In the future, United Imaging will build Wuhan into a fully intelligent healthcare ecosystem covering the entire cycle of prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation, thereby comprehensively driving the development of Wuhan’s trillion-yuan big health industry cluster.

According to Xue Min, United Imaging will build an industrial internet-enabled, digitally driven smart factory for high-end medical equipment in Wuhan. The facility will carry out R&D and intelligent manufacturing of a series of innovative products, including core components and complete systems for high-end medical equipment, intelligent surgical robots, fully intelligent ultrasound devices, medical-grade wearable devices, and 3D printing.

“These initiatives will not only generate an industry scale worth tens of billions, but also drive the coordinated development and resource aggregation of the entire upstream and downstream supply chain, involving hundreds of enterprises, thereby creating greater economies of scale,” Xue Min cited as an example. “Merely the local R&D and production of a single core component involves more than 1,800 categories and nearly 30,000 underlying elements, which can spur the collaborative growth of nearly one hundred surrounding suppliers, further promoting the joint upgrading of related industries such as chips and sensors.”

In addition, the headquarters of United Imaging’s Smart Healthcare Cloud is also located in Wuhan, where it continuously explores new models of cloud-based intelligent health services to support the development of China’s tiered diagnosis and treatment system. Currently, this cloud platform connects more than 1,700 medical institutions across 19 provinces and municipalities nationwide, serving a population of over 100 million. In Hubei Province, United Imaging has assisted local governments in Dangyang, Xiangyang, and Shishou in building their tiered diagnosis and treatment systems, linking over one hundred medical institutions and storing more than 10 million medical records, thereby helping to ensure that “minor illnesses are treated at the township level and major illnesses within the county.”

Furthermore, United Imaging has established a Big Data and Artificial Intelligence Research Center in Wuhan to comprehensively and systematically empower physicians and medical equipment. Currently, United Imaging is collaborating with medical institutions such as Tongji Hospital in Wuhan to conduct annotation, analysis, and management of medical big data.

The clustered development of the broader health industry requires deep collaboration among government, industry, academia, research institutions, and medical providers to create a powerful synergy for industrial innovation. Alongside establishing an industrial base, United Imaging, together with the Wuhan Municipal Government and the Institute of Physics and Mathematics of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, took the lead in jointly establishing the Wuhan Zhongke Medical Technology Industrial Research Institute (“Medical-Engineering Institute”) in partnership with Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Tongji Hospital Affiliated to Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Union Hospital Affiliated to Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Renmin Hospital of Wuhan University, and Zhongnan Hospital of Wuhan University. This initiative fully integrates the research capabilities of scientific and educational institutions as well as clinical hospitals in the Wuhan area, promoting the emergence of advanced technologies and scientific achievements and their translation into industrial applications.

The Medical Engineering Institute plans to develop, over the next five to six years, into an industrial hub, innovation center, and technology and enterprise incubation center with an annual output value of RMB 10 billion. To date, the Institute has successfully incubated two technology-based startups and aims to launch a 9.4T high-field animal magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) system by the end of next year, helping establish Wuhan as a world-class hub for scientific instruments.

“The clustered development of the broader health industry will continue to drive cross-sector integration across pharmaceuticals, medical devices, finance, insurance, and elderly care, sparking profound transformations in value chains and service models and generating new momentum for growth. United Imaging is committed to joining hands with peers from all sectors to contribute our full strength to this endeavor,” said Xue Min.

The high-end medical equipment industry is a national strategic sector vital to the nation’s economy and people’s livelihood, serving as a key indicator of a country’s technological advancement and capacity for universal health protection. At such a large-scale exhibition, the presence of “United Imaging Strength” was naturally indispensable.

In 2018, the prestigious UK science magazine Physics World released an authoritative list, naming United Imaging’s world-first total-body dynamic scanning PET-CT, the uEXPLORER, alongside “magic-angle” graphene as one of the “Top 10 Scientific Breakthroughs of 2018.”

This marks the debut of the “Explorer” in Wuhan. Hailed as the “Hubble Telescope” for exploring the human body, it is the world’s first PET-CT scanner with an axial field of view approaching two meters. It can perform dynamic whole-body scanning with a single patient bed, offering sensitivity 30–40 times greater than that of conventional equipment. With this device, humanity can, for the first time in history, clearly observe with the naked eye the entire process of drug flow, diffusion, and eventual uptake and metabolism by tissues and organs within the human body, opening up boundless possibilities for precision diagnosis and treatment, new drug development, and brain science research.

Behind United Imaging’s ultra-high-end innovative products lies its arduous effort to master the core technologies across its entire product portfolio. At the expo, United Imaging showcased more than ten core components from its full product line, including a series of products that fill gaps in both the domestic and international markets. For instance, the digital photon-counting detector—the “heart” of China’s first domestically produced PET/MR system—serves as the foundation for achieving the world’s highest resolution. Additionally, China’s first independently developed and commercialized MR gradient power amplifiers and RF power amplifiers, which function as the “engine” and “radar” of magnetic resonance systems, determine the technical performance ceiling of the entire MRI system. These components are now integrated into United Imaging’s full product lineup and have been deployed in thousands of clinical and research institutions worldwide.

United Imaging Showcases Over Ten Core Components Across Its Full Product Line

In addition to traditional high-end medical equipment, United Imaging is also striving to plan some innovative medical devices. The research and development of a series of innovative products, including intelligent surgical robots, fully intelligent ultrasound equipment, medical-grade wearable devices, and 3D printing, are also within United Imaging's planning. This is a technical force that United Imaging closely follows the world trend and cannot be underestimated.

Xue Min believes that artificial intelligence has undoubtedly become the focus of the entire industry. By empowering both healthcare and manufacturing, a fully intelligent comprehensive health industry is no longer a distant goal.

As the scope and reach of the broader health industry continue to expand, the advantages of clustered development are becoming increasingly prominent. Cross-sector integration is accelerating across pharmaceuticals, genomics, finance, elderly care, and other fields, driving corresponding transformations in value chains and service models. As an active participant in this landscape, United Imaging looks forward to deepening collaboration with all stakeholders.

Aligning with the broader trends of industrial development, and with favorable timing, geographic advantages, and human resources all in place, United Imaging will comprehensively expand its presence in Wuhan, making tangible contributions to the city’s grand strategy of building a world-class health industry cluster.