Tencent Miying Launches Open AI-Assisted Diagnosis Platform to Empower Hospital HIS and Digital Health Ecosystem
On June 21, Tencent officially launched its first open AI-powered medical auxiliary diagnosis and treatment platform, announcing the opening of the AI-assisted diagnostic engine behind its “Tencent Miying” AI+ healthcare product. This initiative aims to facilitate the intelligent upgrading of hospital information systems (HIS) and internet-based medical services, thereby building a smart healthcare ecosystem that covers pre-diagnosis, intra-diagnosis, and post-diagnosis stages.
Since the beginning of this year, medical AI has entered a period of accelerated development, with AI-powered healthcare products moving from laboratories to clinical applications in hospitals. Are hospitals adopting a wait-and-see approach or embracing artificial intelligence? Is AI poised to surpass physicians or merely assist them? Does Tencent Miying complement or encroach upon existing health IT vendors? At the launch event of the Tencent AI-Assisted Diagnosis Open Platform, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) presents perspectives from various stakeholders.
Medical AI needs to be implemented in practice, and healthcare IT enterprises need to enhance their services. In China, hospital information systems are built by different vendors. Under these closed hospital IT environments, standards are inconsistent, and there is a lack of a unified information platform. Although many tertiary hospitals currently possess massive amounts of data, medical data remains trapped in “information silos.” Not only is data interoperability lacking among different medical institutions, but pre-diagnosis, intra-diagnosis, and post-diagnosis patient data also fail to achieve seamless connectivity. The vast amount of hospital data has yet to be effectively leveraged.
Against the backdrop of tiered diagnosis and treatment and the establishment of medical consortiums, traditional hospital-focused IT service capabilities are struggling to meet hospitals’ demands. Healthcare IT enterprises need to integrate new elements and capabilities into their existing IT infrastructure, leveraging internet-enabled and AI-driven technologies to enhance hospital information systems. Yin Zhiguo, General Manager of Kingdee Medical, stated, “Tencent has provided us with a wealth of structured electronic medical records and data, as well as analytics from numerous AI-assisted diagnostic models—capabilities that were previously lacking in our portfolio.”
This demonstrates that traditional healthcare IT enterprises choose to partner with Tencent primarily for its AI-driven data capabilities and technological prowess. Yin Zhiguo further stated, “Collaborating with Tencent enables us to better provide clinical decision support capabilities to our customers. The integration of AI allows us to deliver enhanced value-added services, extending into the service offerings and expansion of internet hospital operations.”
Hou Haotian, General Manager of Zhiye Health, stated that by choosing to partner with Tencent, healthcare IT companies will assume specialized roles within the medical ecosystem. Healthcare IT firms can serve as connectors; Zhiye Health links with Tencent to facilitate the reasonable and compliant release of hospital data, thereby jointly serving hospitals. “Through Zhiye’s software, Tencent can establish connections with hospitals, gain recognition from physicians and healthcare institutions, and build product credibility.”
Hou Haotian cited an interesting analogy to describe the relationship between Tencent and healthcare IT companies: Internet giants like BAT are akin to the air force within a tri-service military structure, but the air force needs to “land.” Healthcare IT companies, on the other hand, function as the army, systematically helping these internet giants establish their presence in hospitals. Our relationship is one of collaboration, not confrontation.
For medical AI to be implemented in hospitals, the primary challenge to address is unstructured data. This year, numerous medical AI companies have been collaborating with Grade A tertiary hospitals. However, for medical AI products to achieve successful implementation, they must not only pass clinical validation but also undergo refinement using high-quality, standardized medical data and expert resources from Grade A tertiary hospitals.
“Tencent Miying” has the capability to enter hospitals. Chen Guangyu, Vice President of Tencent, stated that this is primarily because five internal departments—including Tencent AI Lab, Youtu Laboratory, and the Architecture Platform Department—have been continuously strengthening AI capabilities, giving the company unique technological advantages.
Beyond technology, Chen Guangyu believes that what impresses Tier-3 Grade-A hospitals about Tencent is its complementary strengths with healthcare IT companies, allowing both parties to deliver integrated solutions to hospitals. Chen Guangyu stated, “Tencent Miying compensates for its own limitations through complementary capabilities with its healthcare IT partners. While Tencent’s AI efforts are focused on AI products, hospitals have numerous application scenarios that require extensive functional expansion, post-implementation processing, and ongoing enhancement of capabilities.”
Tencent’s core strength lies in its algorithmic technology, whereas healthcare IT companies deeply entrenched in the medical sector—such as Donghua, Zhiye, and Kingdee—possess a deeper understanding of physicians and healthcare delivery. Only through their collaboration can truly viable products emerge, ones that empower hospitals, the healthcare system, and clinicians, thereby earning sustained market recognition.
Xu Zhongye, Executive Dean of the Internet Hospital affiliated with the First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University, expressed high expectations for the collaboration with Tencent Miying. Dean Xu stated, “Our hospital possesses vast amounts of data; however, we face challenges in leveraging this data effectively within the current information-driven society, as much of it is unstructured or even invalid. Transforming unstructured data into structured formats to enable artificial intelligence applications requires the support of large-scale enterprises, particularly companies with the capacity and expertise of Tencent. Through comprehensive cooperation with Tencent and the continuous development of an AI-assisted diagnostic platform, our hospital’s informatization capabilities will achieve a significant leap forward.””
Although medical AI was originally developed to address the mismatch between healthcare demand and resources and to enhance primary care capabilities, few medical AI products have been truly implemented at the primary care level.
In resource-rich tertiary hospitals, there are not only renowned specialists but also state-of-the-art medical equipment. Tertiary hospitals, which excel in diagnosing and treating various complex and rare diseases, do not have a strong demand for AI-assisted diagnosis. In contrast, primary healthcare institutions often bear the bulk of early screening tasks and constitute the segment with the heaviest workload in health management and services. However, due to their currently limited service capacity, primary care providers have a more pressing need for AI-assisted diagnosis and treatment to standardize clinical practices and improve diagnostic and therapeutic standards. Consequently, primary healthcare will become the largest market for medical AI.
However, among the more than 100 hospitals currently collaborating with Tencent Miying, the majority are Grade A tertiary hospitals. In this regard, Zhou Xuan, Deputy General Manager of Tencent’s Internet Plus Healthcare Product Center, stated: “Given the current diagnostic accuracy of medical AI products, we believe it is necessary to conduct further testing in Grade A tertiary hospitals for a period of time. This allows experts at these institutions to validate the technology in real-world clinical settings and assess whether its accuracy aligns with that observed in laboratory conditions. Only then can we deploy it with confidence and responsibly serve primary care hospitals. Therefore, our approach is to ensure thorough validation in Grade A tertiary hospitals before introducing the technology to primary care facilities.”
Tencent Vice President Chen Guangyu also stated, “By opening up our AI-assisted diagnosis platform, we aim to enhance hospitals’ capabilities, address the imbalance in the distribution of medical resources and the mismatch between supply and demand, and improve the diagnostic and treatment capacities of primary healthcare institutions. Leveraging Tencent’s core competencies and engaging in complementary collaborations with HIS vendors and information service providers, we can form joint capabilities that deliver greater value to the entire industrial ecosystem. This approach aligns closely with Tencent’s philosophy of serving as a connector and providing a toolkit.”
Tencent’s launch of its AI-assisted diagnosis platform to support hospital informatization also marks a significant step in its strategic expansion within the smart healthcare sector.
At the launch event of Tencent’s AI-Assisted Diagnosis Platform, Tencent signed strategic cooperation agreements with medical informatics vendors—including Zhiye Software, Shandong Shunneng, Guangzhou Haici, Kingdee Medical, and Health 160—as well as their partner healthcare institutions. Reportedly, these five medical informatics vendors serve nearly 1,000 healthcare institutions and hold leading positions in China’s hospital HIS (Hospital Information System) and mobile healthcare services markets. The extensive hospital resources behind this network are highly valued by Tencent.
The open “Tencent Miying” will become a toolkit for the intelligentization of medical services. Through open APIs, healthcare IT vendors can integrate the “Tencent Miying” AI-assisted diagnostic engine with hospital HIS systems, empowering these systems with AI-assisted diagnostic capabilities, enabling the sharing and interoperability of data and applications within hospitals, and achieving the intelligent transformation of hospital HIS.
Among these, after integrating AI-assisted diagnostic capabilities, Clinical Decision Support Systems (CDSS) will help physicians improve the accuracy and efficiency of diagnosing common diseases, and provide decision-support services such as intelligent consultation, reference diagnoses, treatment plan recommendations, intent analysis, auxiliary knowledge bases, and structured electronic medical records.
Leveraging the “Tencent Miying” AI-assisted diagnosis engine and the WeChat Smart Hospital ecosystem, hospitals and healthcare IT vendors can achieve intelligent upgrades in mobile medical services. Pre-consultation AI triage and preliminary assessment enhance the accuracy and efficiency of information collection, while post-consultation AI follow-up and other new application scenarios enable intelligent doctor-patient communication beyond the consultation room.
Among the institutions signing multi-party cooperation agreements, The First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University, Shandong Provincial Hospital, The Second People’s Hospital of Anhui Province, Shenzhen Hospital of Southern Medical University, The University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital, Bao’an Traditional Chinese Medicine Hospital Group, Shenzhen Samii Medical Center, Shenzhen Hospital of the University of Chinese Academy of Sciences, Bao’an District Maternity and Child Healthcare Hospital, and Longgang District Maternity and Child Healthcare Hospital will become partner medical institutions of Tencent’s AI-Assisted Diagnosis Open Platform.
As can be seen, Tencent’s opening of the Miying system is not an end in itself; rather, it aims to serve as a key entry point for its entire “Internet + Smart Healthcare” ecosystem, building a smart healthcare ecosystem that covers pre-diagnosis, during-diagnosis, and post-diagnosis stages.