A-TECH Innovation Secures Tens of Millions in Funding Led by Bison Capital to Advance Medical Informatics Solutions
VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that Shenzhen Antai Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. (“Antai Innovation”) recently completed a new round of financing amounting to tens of millions of yuan. The round was led by Beisen Capital, with Mihe Capital participating as a co-investor. Probe Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor for this financing round. Previously, Antai Innovation had also received investments from prominent institutions such as Honghui Capital, Fenghe Capital, and SoftBank China.
Following this round of financing, Shenzhen Antai Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. will continue to deepen its core business, leveraging the interoperability of medical data to support the development of internet hospitals for physical hospitals, and expanding innovative applications of medical big data, such as AI in medical imaging and clinical diagnosis and treatment data.
Shenzhen Antai Innovation Technology Co., Ltd. specializes in innovative applications of healthcare informatics. As one of the earliest enterprises in China to engage in healthcare informatization, its core products have been granted multiple national invention patents. Currently, the company has established partnerships with nearly one-third of the top 100 hospitals in China and holds a market share of over 10% among tertiary hospitals nationwide.
With 2018 as the turning point, a large number of offline physical hospitals expanded into online services, and the construction of internet hospitals began to enter a critical phase. Amidst the fierce competition in the informatization of internet healthcare, how did Antai Innovation break through and win the favor of Beisen Capital? VCBeat conducted an exclusive interview with Shao Yuan, founder of Antai Innovation.
Break Down Data Silos to Achieve Filmless Medical Imaging
Acquiring complete patient health data is a prerequisite for precise diagnosis and treatment by physicians, and it represents the first critical hurdle in the digital transformation of physical hospitals. As is well known, there are two major persistent challenges in this digitalization effort: first, hospital foundational databases are massive and heterogeneous, with complex data application systems and disparate interfaces that hinder data sharing; second, the exponential growth of medical imaging data has led to significant difficulties in storage, transmission, and utilization.
To address the industry's pain points, Antai Innovation has proposed two solutions:
I. Independently Developed “Panoramic Medical Big Data Application Platform.” This platform employs non-invasive technology, enabling complete integration of data from a hospital’s various systems within two weeks without replacing existing infrastructure, while effectively ensuring information security.
Following data integration, physicians can access complete patient data via smartphones or tablets to conduct high-quality remote consultations. This technology significantly enhances the operational efficiency of medical consortia. Currently, the system has been deployed in hundreds of hospitals across dozens of medical consortia nationwide, facilitating over 20,000 remote consultations to date.
II. “Medical Cloud Imaging Technology Platform” with National Invention Patents. This technology enables the opening of a complete, lossless original DICOM image at millisecond-level speed over standard 4G networks.
Earlier this year, Antai Innovation’s newly launched “Cloud Imaging Filmless System” went live at the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi Medical University. Shao Yuan, founder of Antai Innovation, told VCBeat that with this technology implemented, doctors and patients can view complete medical images directly within WeChat, truly achieving a filmless hospital environment. He estimates that the technology will help hospitals save millions of yuan in annual costs.
“Digitizing film for hospitals is not difficult; the challenge lies in making traditional film obsolete,” said Shao Yuan. This requires comprehensive digital transformation across every corner of the hospital, penetrating various scenarios such as operating rooms, outpatient clinics, and physicians’ offices.
Shao Yuan stated that Antai Innovation’s panoramic big data platform technology and medical imaging cloud technology comprehensively integrate patients’ medical data information. Its future medical value is not limited to serving physicians but extends from the B-side to C-side patient populations, thereby becoming a platform for the practical application of medical artificial intelligence technologies. This represents an important strategic development direction for Antai Innovation in the future.
Beisen Capital: Antai Innovation Is on the Eve of an Explosive Surge in a New Emerging Sector
Chen Bo, a partner at Beisen Capital, told VCBeat that Beisen has been focusing on the field of healthcare informatization for quite some time. In their view, internet-based healthcare informatization is currently at a new inflection point. The key drivers behind this development opportunity are primarily threefold:
First, favorable policies. In 2018, the National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) issued the Action Plan for Further Improving Medical Services (2018–2020), requiring medical institutions to establish systems for appointment-based diagnosis and treatment, telemedicine, clinical pathway management, mutual recognition of examination and test results, and medical social workers and volunteers. On April 28 of the same year, the NHFPC stipulated that medical institutions could use “Internet Hospital” as a secondary name. Building upon physical hospitals and leveraging internet technologies, they are permitted to conduct online follow-up consultations for certain common and chronic diseases. Once physicians have access to patients’ medical records, they are allowed to issue online prescriptions for certain common and chronic conditions. These policy directions will extensively promote interconnectivity among medical institutions at all levels through medical information technology. In the future, the migration of offline diagnosis and treatment to online platforms will become the norm, driving medical informatics companies forward amid strong demand for digitalization from healthcare providers.
Second, there is strong market demand. In China’s context of scarce medical resources, high-quality care is heavily concentrated in large tertiary hospitals in first-tier cities, while secondary hospitals, community health centers, and township health stations face relative shortages. Only by leveraging internet-enabled online hospitals and medical consortia, along with telemedicine approaches, can the drawbacks of excessive concentration of high-quality medical resources be effectively addressed, thereby delivering equitable benefits to the public.
Third, technological upgrades are enhancing medical informatics, which involves the transmission of vast amounts of data. Currently, network hardware infrastructure in many remote areas struggles to support real-time needs such as teleconsultations. However, with the rapid market adoption of 4G and 5G technologies, information transmission capabilities for real-time video, medical imaging, and large volumes of clinical data will be significantly improved. Furthermore, the integration of widely used personal mobile devices with internet-based informatics solutions will greatly promote the application of medical informatics.
Chen Bo stated, “The distinguishing feature of Antai Innovation is that it does not merely develop informatization products; rather, it focuses on expanding the informational application of medical data. By leveraging medical data to understand patient needs, the company aims to penetrate the trillion-yuan medical services market. Currently, many healthcare IT enterprises in the market primarily offer customized informatization solutions for specific niche areas, such as Hospital Information Systems (HIS), Radiology Information Systems (RIS), Electronic Medical Records (EMR), Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS), and Laboratory Information Systems (LIS). These products are typically sold as one-time transactions. In contrast, Antai Innovation integrates comprehensive existing patient diagnosis and treatment data from hospitals while ensuring patient information security. By linking doctors on one end and patients on the other, and by gaining deep insights into the needs of both parties, the company develops strategies to enter the subsequent medical services market, such as through patient data delivery services. This type of revenue represents a steadily growing cash flow, constituting a business model fundamentally different from the one-off income generated by purely selling products. Capital markets tend to assign higher evaluations and valuations to businesses capable of generating sustainable and stable cash flows. The potential value that can be derived from complete patient diagnosis and treatment data is limitless, which is one of the key reasons why we are optimistic about Antai Innovation.”