Alibaba Cloud, NVIDIA, VoxelCloud and Others Unveil Innovations at VB100 Launch Day to Foster a Collaborative Healthcare Ecosystem

On December 18, during the 2018 Top 100 Future Healthcare Forum, China’s inaugural healthcare industry launch day—the VB100 Launch Day—was established.

As a novel initiative, the VB100 launch day accelerates information equilibrium within the industry through the concentrated release of extensive data, fostering new technological innovations and breakthroughs. Furthermore, its aggregating effect enables those outside the sector to gain a deeper understanding of the healthcare industry. In this context, VCBeat, as a recorder and observer of the healthcare industry, has identified the core forces driving future transformation and development in the medical sector.

This VB100 launch event attracted seven companies and institutions—Alibaba Cloud, Deshang Yunxing, VoxelCloud, NVIDIA, Yixu Medical, Health Youyi, and DHIC—to make new announcements across five areas: new products, financing, reports, strategy, and partnerships.

50+ media outlets at the press conference

At the press conference, Li Hong, Senior Solutions Architect of Alibaba Cloud’s Healthcare Division, unveiled Alibaba Cloud’s Imaging Cloud Solution. This solution integrates imaging storage, sharing, and intelligence, leveraging a partner ecosystem to enable image resource sharing across hospitals at all levels, eliminate redundant imaging examinations, support mobile image review for physicians, and allow patients to access digital images via QR codes, thereby building a future-oriented smart healthcare digital imaging service.

Alibaba Cloud Launches Imaging Cloud Solution

Alibaba Cloud’s Imaging Cloud Solution, together with its ecosystem partners, delivers an integrated on-cloud and off-cloud imaging solution that spans storage, sharing, and intelligence. It addresses key pain points including insufficient medical imaging storage capacity, delayed access to historical data, and limited real-time availability; lack of information interoperability leading to duplicate imaging for returning patients and inability to exchange data for telemedicine and referrals between higher- and lower-tier hospitals; as well as physicians’ need for mobile image review, patients’ demand for digital image access, and the requirement for comprehensive data security assurance.

Currently, Jiande First People's Hospital has leveraged Alibaba Cloud to provide digital imaging services for patients. Xiang Peng, Vice President of Jiande First People's Hospital, stated, "Based on Alibaba Cloud's Imaging Cloud solution, Jiande First People's Hospital has achieved resource sharing across all levels of medical services. Patients can scan a QR code to access their imaging data anytime and anywhere. Alibaba Cloud's tiered storage and rapid network access capabilities have laid the foundation for future smart healthcare digital imaging services."

China’s large population base creates a substantial demand for physicians; however, the lengthy training cycle for doctors has resulted in a severe shortage of specialists dedicated to breast cancer diagnosis. To achieve early diagnosis and treatment while minimizing misdiagnoses and missed diagnoses, AI represents the most suitable auxiliary tool.

Demetics Medical Technology, established in 2013, is dedicated to the research, development, and clinical application of cutting-edge medical technologies, including AI-assisted diagnosis for medical imaging, machine vision, 3D visualization-based precision surgical planning, surgical navigation, postoperative assessment, medical cloud platforms, and solutions for medical consortia and integrated healthcare delivery systems. Notably, Demetics is a domestic pioneer in AI-assisted ultrasound image diagnosis, having commenced R&D earlier than most competitors and maintaining a leading position in the industry.

Hu Hairong, Chairman of Deshang Yunxing, and Breast Product Expert Zhang Juan Answer Reporters’ Questions On Site

At the 2018 Top 100 Future Healthcare Forum, Deshang Yunxing launched an AI-assisted diagnostic product for breast cancer. Reportedly, the entire R&D process involved cleaning and organizing massive datasets, with senior breast specialists personally annotating and extracting breast imaging features in strict accordance with international ACR standards, followed by repeated verification to ensure high accuracy.

In terms of product functionality, Deshang Yunxing performs qualitative and quantitative analysis of lesions in accordance with the Chinese National Guidelines for Breast Cancer, and classifies lesions according to the ACR BI-RADS standards. Tailored to China’s specific healthcare context, this product will offer different versions designed for tertiary Grade-A hospitals and primary care institutions alike. It aims to alleviate the patient burden on large hospitals, provide auxiliary training for grassroots medical facilities, and truly facilitate the implementation of tiered diagnosis and treatment.

On December 18, Ding Xiaowei, CEO of VoxelCloud, announced that the company had completed a $50 million Series B financing round in September this year. The round was led by Hongtai Capital, with participation from Sequoia Capital, Qingsong Capital, and Hanfu Capital. Miracle Capital served as the exclusive financial advisor. The funds will be primarily used to support regulatory approvals for market access in various countries and clinical implementation of its AI solutions for medical imaging.

Ding Xiaowei, CEO of Voxel Tech

Furthermore, after recruiting Academician Demetri Terzopoulos, a luminary in computer vision and graphics, as its Chief Scientist, Voxel Tech has welcomed another world-class medical expert, Professor Eric Topol. Professor Topol founded the Cleveland Clinic Lerner College of Medicine, served as Chair of Cardiovascular Medicine at the Cleveland Clinic, and is the founder of the Scripps Research Translational Institute. In 2016, Topol secured $207 million in R&D funding from the NIH to lead precision medicine research, making it the largest NIH project in U.S. history.

It is reported that Eric Topol will lead Voxel Technology in launching AI products best suited for physicians’ use and most needed by the healthcare market.

In its auxiliary diagnosis product line, Voxel Technology has prioritized comprehensive, all-disease solutions for four key areas: chest CT, color fundus photography, coronary CTA, and dermatology. Meanwhile, it maintains a leading position in technologies that assist diagnosis by analyzing patient behavior in videos, such as for pediatric visual impairments. Voxel Technology is also the pioneer of an all-disease product system in the AI healthcare industry. At the launch event, Voxel Technology unveiled its latest dermatology product, “Voxel Skin Insight.”

From left to right: Yu Chang, Chief Architect for Healthcare and Life Sciences, NVIDIA ChinaLiu Nianning, Senior Marketing Director for NVIDIA China、

Xiao Hongliang, Senior Research Manager at International Data Corporation (IDC)

At the conference, Xiao Hongliang, Senior Research Manager at International Data Corporation (IDC), a globally renowned professional provider of consulting, advisory, and event services for the information technology, telecommunications, and consumer technology sectors, released the white paper titled “Specialized Medical AI Platforms Drive the Transition of Medical AI from Experimentation to Practice.” The application of artificial intelligence in healthcare faces triple challenges related to data, algorithms, and computational power. In the field of medical AI, GPU computing platforms provide unparalleled core computational support for medical AI applications.

Amid the universal demand for powerful GPU computing capabilities across all AI companies, NVIDIA, the leading provider of AI computing platforms, has launched the CLARA open platform. This initiative aims to assist the healthcare industry in building and deploying breakthrough algorithms, thereby enabling the intelligentization of medical devices and the automation of clinical workflows.

According to Yu Chang, Chief Architect of Medical Life Sciences at NVIDIA China, the CLARA platform provides an open, scalable, and remotely accessible general-purpose platform that transforms data stored in medical devices into dynamic medical imaging data. The volume and dimensionality of this data exceed those of the medical imaging data originally acquired by the devices themselves. CLARA can help medical devices improve imaging quality and reduce misdiagnosis rates associated with medical equipment.

The NVIDIA Clara AGX system is the core of the Clara platform, providing developers with a rich set of development tools. By leveraging the software development kit (SDK) provided by the Clara AGX system, developers can redesign and redevelop medical workflows. Furthermore, developers can deploy their applications across diverse computing environments, including embedded systems, on-premises appliances, and the cloud.

NVIDIA’s future roadmap for its CLARA platform aims to provide unified support services for all medical imaging. The goal is to enable integrated diagnostic capabilities for individual medical diagnoses, facilitating interoperability among future medical imaging systems and across broader healthcare ecosystems.

On December 18, at the VB100 brand launch event, Li Yuxin, Founder and CEO of Health Youyi, shared insights into the trial operation of Health AI, an open platform for health and medical AI technologies that has garnered significant attention from the industry and media, and announced its official launch.

During its three-month trial run, Health AI has already implemented 118 AI-powered features. Through collaborations with more than 300 companies—including brands such as Baidu, iFlytek, Huawei, OPPO, and Xiaomi—it now serves a population of over 200 million, empowering health management services across all aspects of daily home life.

Li Yuxin, Founder and CEO of Health Benefits

The platform aims to comprehensively build an open AI technology ecosystem, targeting seven major scenarios: smart homes, smart communities, smart elderly care, smart mobility, smart healthcare, new retail, and government/enterprise sectors, thereby helping the B2B market unlock pathways for the intelligent upgrade of healthcare.

To address the vast B2B market and the diverse needs for intelligent upgrades in health services, the Health AI Platform will provide enabling products and services, including AI product solutions tailored to healthcare demands, the artificial intelligence operating system (Health OS), the robotics system (Health RT), the management system (Health System), professional content (Health Content), and smart hardware.

Among these, Health AI’s AI product services offer over 100 capabilities, including intelligent Q&A, food recognition, facial expression recognition, 3D human body reconstruction, posture correction, dietary logging, medical consultation, and intelligent triage. Partners across the industry can directly access these services via SDKs, APIs, H5, and other methods. Health OS enables the intelligent upgrading of health management for hardware products such as home medical devices and wearable devices. The Health RT system empowers service robots with healthcare service capabilities through multimodal human-computer interaction. Health System is designed for all scenarios, facilitating the integration of health information and the generation of health solutions, while effectively connecting user endpoints, management platforms, and cloud platforms to deliver comprehensive, scenario-wide solutions.

“Joint Construction and Sharing, Health for All” is the strategic theme of “Healthy China 2030.” In August 2016, President Xi Jinping emphasized at the National Conference on Health and Wellness that the prevention and control of chronic diseases are the top priority in building a Healthy China.

“Precision Medication for Chronic Diseases: A Public Benefit Initiative” Urban Pilot Project Signing Ceremony

The guiding principle of Yixu Medical’s precision medication project is to adhere to government leadership while prioritizing public health and strengthening primary care infrastructure. By enhancing rational drug use, chronic disease management, and the prevention of major cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, the project aims to build a multi-level, diversified innovative service system for precision medication and chronic disease prevention and control. This initiative seeks to drive the transformation of clinical diagnosis and treatment toward a precision medicine model, thereby supporting local medical insurance cost containment efforts and achieving new milestones in healthcare reform.

To enable more patients with chronic “three-highs” conditions to benefit from technological advancements, particularly those with refractory hypertension and stubborn hyperlipidemia who have long suffered from chronic disease symptoms, Beijing Yixu Medical Technology Co., Ltd. partnered respectively with the Anhui Taihe Economic Development Zone and the Hehai Subdistrict of Changzhou City to sign urban pilot agreements and launch the regional demonstration project for the “Chronic Disease Precision Medication Benefit Initiative” at this project launch event.

Yixu Medical Chairman Wang Wenjing unveiled a new model and strategy encompassing four major systems: the Chronic Disease Precision Medication Service System, the Chronic Disease Information Management Platform System, the Precision Medication Insurance Payment System, and the Precision Medicine Research Collaboration System. She also announced two city-level pilot projects signed with local governments to jointly initiate and implement the “Chronic Disease Precision Medication Public Benefit Project.” These initiatives include developing regional medical consortia for precision medication, establishing regional gene cohorts of 10,000 individuals and pharmacogenomics databases, and launching an “Electronic Pharmacist” powered by an AI-based prescription decision support system to empower primary care in chronic disease management and prevention and control of major diseases.

On December 18, Song Jingwei, Co-founder of Xiao Dou Miao, and Liang Liang, Founder and CEO of Mommy Knows, attended the VB100 Launch Day and delivered speeches on brand strategy.

Song Jingwei, Co-founder of Xiao Dou Miao, and Liang Liang, Founder and CEO of Mommy Knows

At the press conference, both parties jointly announced a multi-dimensional in-depth collaboration in the field of maternal and child health services, covering online pediatric consultations, pediatric health courses, popular science education on children's health, and other businesses. They will work together to upgrade internet-based maternal and child health services and create a new ecosystem for maternal and child health care.

Xiao Dou Miao is China’s largest pediatric vaccination management platform. Centered on the entire vaccination process, it creates a closed-loop service ecosystem by linking children with parents, physicians, and clinics, thereby providing users with a one-stop, scientific, intelligent, and personalized pediatric vaccination management service. Currently, Xiao Dou Miao serves over 16 million precisely targeted parent users, with a daily net increase of 20,000 to 40,000 users.

As an “Internet + Healthcare” service platform dedicated to pediatric health, Mami Zhidao has exclusively contracted with 3,000 obstetricians and pediatricians from Grade A tertiary hospitals in key cities, providing over 6 million urban middle-class families with integrated online-and-offline new healthcare services. The two parties have reached a strategic cooperation agreement to jointly serve children’s health by leveraging shared resources and complementary strengths, integrating expertise, technology, and content.

Driven by the maturation of technologies such as cloud computing, big data, smart terminals, and bandwidth upgrades, the development of the Industrial Internet has made the connectivity between “people and products” and “people and services” infinitely possible. The broader health industry is undergoing transformation and reshaping, with digital innovation serving as the primary driver of industry change and connectivity acting as the catalyst for its exponential growth.

From left to right: Li Datao, Founder of VCBeat; Li Sirui, Deputy Director of DHIC; Liu Wei, Director of DHIC; and Wang Xiaocen, Partner at CEC Health Industry Fund.

At the VB100 launch event, the Digital Health Innovation Center (DHIC), already backed by strategic support from Tencent and Tasly, signed cooperation agreements with VCBeat, a leading media outlet in the healthcare industry, and CEC Digital Finance, the capital link within the CEC Data ecosystem. Moving forward, DHIC will collaborate with its strategic partners to co-build an open platform that fosters industrial connectivity and empowers the sector, thereby driving digital innovation in the broader health industry.

Liu Wei, Director of DHIC, provided an overview of the center’s operations. He stated that DHIC serves as a connector and organizer for digital innovation in the big health industry, guided by the principles of equality, sharing, and innovation. With user needs at its core and user service as its starting point, DHIC leverages two major products, four key capabilities, five high-traffic entry points, and six connection methods to strengthen industry exchange and collaboration, generate and share topical discussions, and advance the alignment of high-end resources in the big health sector along with the development of an integrated closed-loop service system. Together, we aim to build an open platform for digital innovation that fosters industrial connectivity and empowers the industry.