Exclusive: Baidu Relaunches Healthcare Initiative — Community580 Becomes First Partner of Baidu Medical Brain

Recently, VCBeat received significant news that Baidu is set to relaunch its medical initiatives. Community 580, a well-known domestic enterprise specializing in primary healthcare, has officially entered into a partnership with Baidu Medical Brain. The two parties will conduct deep integration in the area of intelligent consultation on mobile platforms. As the sole media outlet invited for an interview regarding this collaboration, VCBeat conducted an exclusive interview with Mr. Liu Bo, Founder and CEO of Community 580. The following is the content of this interview:

Mr. Liu Bo, Founder and CEO of Shequ 580

Liu Bo:The Baidu Medical Brain service integrated into Community 580 is called Meile Yi. It essentially embeds an intelligent Q&A feature within the Community 580 app. What Baidu Medical Brain lacks are channels and entry points, a gap that can be addressed through its partnership with Community 580.

Meile Medical Interface Overview

Community 580’s current product portfolio includes the Mobile Family Doctor App, Mobile Follow-up App, Two-Way Referral Platform, Integrated Communication System for Community Hospitals, Chronic Disease Management and Assessment System, and Family Doctor Performance Management Platform. By integrating with existing Hospital Information Systems (HIS), Laboratory Information Systems (LIS), Picture Archiving and Communication Systems (PACS), as well as electronic health records, chronic disease management, and maternal and child healthcare services within regional public health platforms, it forms a comprehensive internet-based tiered diagnosis and treatment solution.

This collaboration enables Community 580 users to access the artificial intelligence services provided by Baidu Medical Brain. Furthermore, as a product that enhances diagnostic accuracy through continuous learning, Baidu Medical Brain relies heavily on feedback from platforms like Community 580 to improve its diagnostic precision.

To date, Community 580 has partnered with 2,000 urban community health centers across China, covering 23 provinces and 84 cities, serving over 80 million users. More than 25,000 family doctors provide services through the Community 580 platform. The user base of Community 580 constitutes a highly valuable data sample repository for Baidu Medical Brain.

Liu Bo:For patients, value encompasses at least two aspects: first, it enables them to assess their own health conditions more conveniently and accurately. In the past, when experiencing symptoms they could not self-diagnose, patients often had no choice but to visit a hospital; however, this tool allows patients to, anytime and anywhere, throughThrough human-machine dialogue with Baidu Medical Brain’s Meileyi system, basic identification of physical health issues can be achieved within two to three minutes. Moreover, Meileyi utilizes a multiple-choice question format., is a question-and-answer system that does not require users to input extensive text to describe their symptoms. The process of typing out descriptions often deters many patients who are not proficient at typing from using the system.

Furthermore, the entire process for residents to seek medical care is lengthy, whether it involves registration, queuing, or waiting for consultation. In the daily health management of residents, without an effective tool, they either lose control over their conditions or must queue up at hospitals. Intelligent consultation platforms can enhance residents' health awareness and provide early warnings about their physical condition, particularly regarding serious diseases. This approach is broadly applicable to virtually all patient populations. Based on the results provided by Meile Medical, patients can determine the likely category of their disease and its probability, receive detailed medication and health guidance, and learn how to register at appropriate hospitals and departments.

Liu Bo:Community 580 is building an internet-based platform for community healthcare. The internet serves as a tool, with the core objective of enhancing the capabilities of community healthcare services. Within community healthcare, the most critical factor is the competence of general practitioners (GPs). GPs have two primary functions: initial diagnosis and triage. Currently, the development bottleneck of community healthcare within the tiered diagnosis and treatment system largely stems from the insufficient number of GPs and their limited clinical experience. In China, the development of general practice experienced a period of stagnation, and it has only been in the past five to eight years that comprehensive efforts have been made to advance this field.

The emergence of Meile Yi enables general practitioners to rapidly screen for minor ailments, provide early warnings for major and infectious diseases, and facilitate effective patient referrals, thereby delivering significant value to primary care providers.

Liu Bo:Artificial intelligence is not a low-barrier industry, as it imposes high demands on the sustainability and learnability of big data samples and services. Sustainability and learnability are two critical factors. Merely developing a knowledge base for user access cannot improve diagnostic accuracy.

Baidu’s advantages lie in two key areas: First, it has many years of experience in online medical Q&A products, having accumulated a vast amount of historical data on online consultations and physicians’ diagnostic outcomes. Second, Baidu has drawn upon extensive hospital medical records and a massive body of clinical guidelines, with all systems utilizing this service capable of synchronously updating data rules in the cloud.

Liu Bo:Intelligent Diagnosis: To date, it cannot serve as the definitive conclusion for diagnosis and treatment, but only as an aid. General practitioners are in greatest need of such diagnostic and therapeutic assistance to enhance their medical practice, as they are typically not specialists in any specific subspecialty. Baidu aims to integrate its “Medical Brain” into the broader field of health management, rather than betting its product on the highly specialized research domains of tertiary hospitals.

Smart healthcare has two major directions. The more mature one currently is tumor identification. A well-known example is IBM’s Watson, which enhances the speed and efficiency of physicians’ tumor diagnosis through rapid image analysis. In contrast, Baidu’s approach focuses on health management and medical consultation guidance. Its entry points are primarily applications related to family doctors, community healthcare, and resident health services.

Liu Bo:The development of healthcare informatization has undergone four stages. The first stage is the informatization phase, which focused on addressing internal operational processes, including billing, prescriptions, patient records, and nursing rounds. The second stage, known as the Internet Healthcare era, connected patients with the entire informatization system, with appointment scheduling and remote consultations emerging as the most successful applications. The third stage is the Internet of Things (IoT) phase, where data from medical devices are integrated with the overall diagnosis and treatment platform, enabling continuous recording of long-term, personalized health data.

With the further advancement of healthcare, the fourth stage is the medical care realized by Baidu Meileyi.Intelligent systems, encompassing disease screening, health management for minor conditions, and precise analysis of serious illnesses, not only enhance residents’ health awareness but also improve physicians’ efficiency.

Regarding this collaboration,Director of Baidu Big Data LaboratoryHead of Baidu Medical Brain TechnologyFan WeiPh.D.stated,The shortage of medical resources in China has been a long-standing issue, and Baidu Medical Brain hopes to rely onTechnological Innovation Drives the Development of Intelligent Healthcare and Enables PrecisionDiagnosis and TreatmentService,Alleviating the social challenges of difficult and costly access to medical care.

ApprovedWith the CommunityThe collaboration opportunity with 580 will further expand the possibilities of “AI + Healthcare,” providing intelligent solutions for traditional healthcare, whileBaidu Medical Brain will also be continuously optimized and enhanced through practical application,Creating More Value for Patients, Physicians, and the PlatformofNew Value, and in the futureVCBeatBetter PromoteTiered Medical CareNational policies are being implemented at the grassroots level,BetterServing the vast number of grassroots patients, to promote the resolution of national"Difficulty in Accessing Medical Care".