Yao Yong of Neusoft Group: Big Data and AI as Transformative Tools in Healthcare IT – Series on Electronic Medical Records and Health Big Data

With the implementation of national policies on big data in healthcare, electronic medical records (EMRs), as one of the foundational databases, have seen their status continuously rise within hospital information systems. Both startups and publicly listed companies are actively engaging in technological trials and explorations in this area.

As a global provider of IT solutions and services, Neusoft Corporation delivers comprehensive end-to-end solutions—spanning hardware to software and technology to services—for the informatization of China’s healthcare industry and for personal health services.

In the field of healthcare informatization, Neusoft entered the market early in 1997. It provides leading online-to-offline interactive “one-stop” healthcare solutions and services to patients and wellness clients, governments, health administrative departments, specialized public health institutions, medical service providers, and primary healthcare facilities. According to IDC reports, Neusoft has ranked first in market share for healthcare industry informatization solutions for seven consecutive years.

Leveraging its extensive industry experience and technical expertise, Neusoft has actively participated in the formulation of industry information standards and technical specifications, as well as compliance assessments for relevant information standards, in fields such as electronic medical records (EMR), personal health records (PHR), hospital information platforms, regional health information platforms, telemedicine, and medical imaging. Furthermore, the company has undertaken numerous key national-level research projects and initiatives, including those under the National High-Tech Research and Development Program (863 Program) and the National Key Technology R&D Program.

In the field of healthcare informatization, Neusoft has provided healthcare information services to more than 300 Grade A tertiary hospitals, over 2,500 medical service institutions, nearly 25,000 primary healthcare institutions, and 390 million residents in China.

Neusoft’s profound industry expertise and extensive medical resources have laid a solid foundation for its leading position in the fields of big data and innovative “Internet+ Healthcare.” Innovative applications such as the Neusoft Health Big Data Service Platform and the Medical Big Data Research and Analysis Platform are effectively supporting national strategic foundational resources and driving reforms in healthcare delivery models.

Based on the transformation and development of traditional IT enterprises, as well as the application issues of electronic medical records in health and medical big data, VCBeat (WeChat Official Account: vcbeat) conducted an exclusive interview withYao Yong, Vice President of Neusoft Group and General Manager of the Medical IT Business Unit。

Yao Yong, Vice President of Neusoft Group and General Manager of the Medical IT Business Unit 

Most current hospital information systems were implemented 5–10 years ago. Their original designs could not anticipate today’s operational demands, such as complex business traffic volumes and multi-terminal support. Over the next two to three years, China will enter a surge period of centralized upgrades for large tertiary (Grade IIIA) hospital information systems.

Yao Yong stated:“From the perspective of the development of the entire medical service model and system, the new round of product iteration will be an upgrade of the overall architecture to support the transformation of existing business operations and business models.”。

From the government’s perspective, investment and development priorities in the coming years will focus on platform construction, aiming to achieve data interoperability and lay the foundation for big data in health and healthcare.In the future, data sharing will become the core of government construction, and informatization development will shift from the previous model of “building data for the sake of building data” to “services aimed at data sharing.”

At this stage, most of the key links in the healthcare sector have been interconnected. Whether within hospitals, between systems, or across a specific region, efforts are in the final critical phase. For cities, however, integrating all medical information still poses significant challenges. Yet once all these links are fully established, the value of data-driven insights will become evident.

Yao Yong stated, “Once medical big data is established, it will enable many tasks that were previously unattainable. For instance, by leveraging remote technologies to systematically integrate case records and related information across different regions, timeframes, and categories, we can restructure and optimize healthcare processes, thereby achieving the optimization and restructuring of outpatient workflows. There are numerous other similar application scenarios.”

From a macro perspective, hospital information systems can be divided into two parts: the front-end system and the back-end system.

The front-end system is the service framework that supports hospital operations, also known as the core business system, ensuring the normal operation of the medical service system. It includes systems such as HIS, LIS, EMR, and PACS, which support physicians in diagnosis and provide clinical decision support capabilities.

Another system is the back-end system, such as HRP and other management systems for human, financial, and material resources. Compared with front-end systems, back-end systems are more universal. Regardless of the size of a medical institution, back-end systems are always involved.

Among them, the front-end systems comprise two categories: one is the core business system, such as the Hospital Information System (HIS); the other is the capability support system, such as laboratory information systems and medical imaging systems. Their role is to assist physicians in making more effective clinical judgments. The core business system is analogous to a production line in a manufacturing enterprise, where each component must adhere to specific procedural steps to ensure seamless internal workflow.

In response, Neusoft has defined this as its new-generation core hospital business platform—RealOne Suite. Within this framework, the Hospital Information System (HIS) primarily manages resource supply, the Electronic Medical Record (EMR) system serves as the physician’s workspace, and the Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) facilitates effective connectivity between the work platforms and various resources.

“To use an analogy, the EMR is like the human heart, the HIS is akin to the blood supply system, and the ESB serves as the nervous system. Together, these three components form the core system of the entire organism.“Yao Yong told VCBeat.”

At this stage, electronic medical records (EMRs) have transcended their narrow definition. In the past, discussions focused more on the template structure of EMRs, whereas modern EMRs encompass the vast majority of data generated across clinical operations within hospitals.

Imaging data generated by PACS, patient laboratory test results, intraoperative monitoring data, and physician order data are all components of the electronic medical record (EMR). The EMR integrates clinical data, ultimately forming a Clinical Data Repository (CDR).

From a functional perspective, electronic medical records (EMR) include modules such as the medical record front sheet, progress notes, surgical records, nursing records, quality control, and the physician workstation. At the underlying level, however, EMR systems consolidate diverse data sources, thereby enabling physicians to effectively leverage this information during diagnosis and treatment.

Yao Yong believes that when electronic medical records (EMR) are connected to an excessive number of hospital internal systems, an underlying Enterprise Service Bus (ESB) is required to facilitate inter-system connectivity. Furthermore, inherent architectural differences among systems from various vendors result in suboptimal data integration.

Moreover, as many hospitals have incomplete and non-integrated operational systems, EMRs struggle to deliver their intended benefits.However, with a comprehensive system in place, interoperability of clinical data across hospitals can be maximized. Building on this foundation, Neusoft’s next-generation hospital core business platform, RealOne Suite, was launched.

In May 2016, Neusoft officially launched RealOne Suite, its new-generation core hospital business platform, for large Grade A tertiary hospitals.

As a suite of core hospital business products launched for large Grade A tertiary hospitals, this product breaks the traditional mindset of hospital informatization construction. It redefines and interprets the connotation and extension of core hospital operations, positioning itself as a leading solution for the “Internet+” era.

Driven by electronic medical orders and centered on the electronic medical record (EMR), this product leverages an integration platform as a bridge for information exchange, utilization, and sharing to build the hospital’s core information asset—the Clinical Data Repository (CDR)—while providing a convenient “one-stop” operational interface and scenario-based information organization.

The product enables closed-loop management of over 200 core business processes. In internet-based environments, it supports multi-screen interaction and information sharing across PC, tablet, and smartphone terminals tailored to diverse work scenarios. Furthermore, it provides a rich, standardized, and open set of system components for operations and maintenance, meeting customers’ needs for personalized customization and secondary development.

Regarding this comprehensive product, Yao Yong stated: “RealOne Suite is not only the culmination of Dongtuan Group’s accumulated experience and practical insights over the past two decades, but also an indispensable component in the era of big data for health and medical care. It not only helps hospitals better support the efficient operation and refined management of core businesses, enhance service levels, improve work efficiency, and elevate medical quality, but also assists hospitals in optimizing their information system architecture, serving as a cornerstone for hospital informatization construction.Core Platform', which is also the hospital's 'Big Data Center’。”

“Medical diagnosis is an experience-based judgment formed after extensive learning, whereas machines learn at a far greater speed than humans; within a short period, they may achieve 70%–80% of the proficiency level of physicians.”

In the past, physician assistants primarily helped doctors enter patient information into computers and assisted with medication-related queries. In the future, physician assistants may take the form of virtual agents that can complete these tasks through conversation without manual data entry, featuring more user-friendly interfaces and enabling natural communication with physicians. The conclusions provided by virtual assistants to doctors are derived from machine learning through cognitive technologies.

Based on its optimistic outlook for the future of big data and cognitive technologies, Neusoft has established a specialized research institute focused on the healthcare sector, dedicated to the research and analysis of big data. Yao Yong stated, “Neusoft Medical’s big data solutions primarily target two scenarios,Including research on health and medical big data centered on resident health services, as well as oncology-oriented big data research to support physicians’ scientific investigations.。”

Neusoft Medical Big Data Research and Analysis Platform leverages advanced IT technologies to integrate diverse clinical data from various medical business systems across the entire hospital. By harnessing the massive concurrent data processing capabilities of big data platforms, it provides researchers with a self-service analytical platform that integrates data acquisition, exploration, processing, analysis, and mining. The platform supports storage management and query analysis of petabyte-scale medical data, making it particularly suitable for research users in large tertiary Grade-A hospitals.

According to statistics from the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention, malignant tumors are the leading cause of death among residents in China. Conducting scientific research and analysis on malignant tumors to improve early detection rates and enhance treatment efficacy holds significant social importance. Meanwhile, clinical trials have revealed that existing studies struggle to comprehensively evaluate the efficacy and adverse reactions of drug regimens. The advancement of gene technology has generated abundant genomics data, which can also provide novel technical approaches for cancer treatment.

Jointly developed by Neusoft and a certain cancer hospital, the Big Data Analytics Platform for Malignant Tumors was established, with its data sourced from all clinical diagnosis and treatment records over an eight-year period from five cancer hospitals.Centered on electronic medical records, it covers patients' basic information, examination and test results, medical imaging data, surgical information, treatment information (radiotherapy, chemotherapy, endocrine therapy, targeted therapy), discharge summaries, and follow-up records.Total Number of Data RecordsOver 1 billion entries, with storage capacity reaching the petabyte level,The number of patients exceeds 1 million.。

“At the current stage, the integration of electronic medical records (EMR) with big data in healthcare must first address the issue of demand.”

The value of big data products has yet to be realized, and the demand is not essential; therefore, users are reluctant to pay for them. Exploring needs and application scenarios is a key driver for integrating these two elements.

Issues such as data security, the refinement of policies and regulations, the protection of personal privacy, and the boundaries of commercial development are all factors that must be considered during their integration.

Moreover, benefit sharing is another key element. The value created by big data requires reasonable collaboration and distribution among all participants in the industry chain.

The final point is innovation: whether enterprises have created truly valuable applications. The emergence of a groundbreaking product would present a significant opportunity to drive the widespread adoption and development of big data. Currently, the fields of electronic medical records (EMR) and healthcare big data still lack killer applications.

“Just like Alipay, it has driven the development of the internet consumption industry, becoming an unstoppable force. The state’s policies and regulations need only provide appropriate and timely supporting oversight."Yao Yong said."

According to Yao Yong, “The new normal for China’s economy is a slowdown in growth, while the new normal for healthcare informatization can be summarized in one word—interconnectivity. The era of interconnectivity represents the new normal for health IT companies.”

The completeness of telecommunications infrastructure has enabled sufficiently high-speed networks, integrating the workflows of various systems within hospitals.

The interconnection of networks has made it possible to connect various information systems and terminal devices, thereby giving rise to the Internet of Things (IoT).When human and object information are interconnected, healthcare informatization has also undergone new transformations:

1. Users can gain a renewed understanding of the hospital’s existing business processes and supporting operational environment, and even reengineer new workflows.Either optimize and upgrade, or reengineer, to make new business processes more effective in the new normal.

2. Provide more effective personalized experience services for individual end-users.Medical big data, formed through connectivity, can accurately identify each individual’s emotional state and physiological functions, enabling companies to offer the most suitable products tailored to them. This is akin to the personalized recommendations on Toutiao and Taobao, which continuously model individual preferences in the background through machine learning.

Yao Yong believes: “Personalized healthcare services have yet to truly take off, representing a vast blue-ocean market. By making clinical decision support systems indispensable to physicians and delivering more humanized experiences to patients, technology transforms the frequency and modes of communication, while ultimately achieving unchanged core outcomes.”

In his view, the formation of big data in healthcare is not the ultimate goal; rather, the true objective is to leverage big data to create value and capabilities that were previously unattainable. This also represents Neusoft’s industry vision as a key participant in the healthcare informatization sector.

If real needs are ignored and the focus is placed solely on technology itself, companies will inevitably lose their future. In the process of genuinely creating value in healthcare services for patients and medical professionals, enterprises must continuously introduce new technologies to better harness them, thereby delivering more effective services in the future. This is a critical consideration for any outstanding health IT company.