Baymax Intelligence: Revolutionizing Healthcare Through Medical Big Data and AI-Driven Diagnostics

What Will the Future “Big White” Look Like?

Disney’s “Big Hero 6” features Baymax, an inflatable healthcare robot who has become one of the most beloved characters among film fans worldwide. This oversized inflatable robot is essentially a medical companion, equipped with voice recognition and human vital signs scanning capabilities. Using devices such as cameras, Baymax can perform a simple scan to detect users’ vital signs, health data, and emotional states, enabling him to treat nearly all ailments based on the patient’s level of pain. In the animated film, when the protagonist Hiro falls into the water, Baymax detects his drop in body temperature and embraces him. Meanwhile, Baymax adjusts his own temperature to help raise Hiro’s body heat.

The eyes of the future Baymax are, of course, not merely scanning cameras but also ubiquitous sensors. Today, sensors have become so refined and compact that they are as wearable as band-aids or wristwatches. However, in the near future, these devices will be embedded into our circulatory systems in the form of nanosensors. These sand-grain-sized nanosensors will enable continuous monitoring of blood, detecting early signs of cancer, impending heart failure, or potential autoimmune disease outbreaks. They constitute Baymax’s omnipresent vision, proactively safeguarding our health. This will mark the first time in medical history that true, genuine prevention is achieved.

The future “Big White” brain, powered by today’s highly popular medical big data, is key to diagnosing any disease. Remember “Watson”? That famous supercomputer defeated formidable human contestants and won the championship on the TV quiz show Jeopardy! in 2011. In his Wall Street Journal commentary, “Coming Next: A Supercomputer Saves Your Life,” David Gelernter introduced the concept of Wiki-Watson. Wiki-Watson integrates the world’s medical literature and clinical experience into a unified system, leveraging large-scale databases to enhance healthcare services, marking the convergence of the digital world and the field of medicine.

In layman's terms, Baymax scans our vital data through its ubiquitous “eyes” and leverages medical big data to provide the most appropriate and accurate diagnosis and treatment plans. It also assists physicians by generating multiple personalized treatment options tailored to each patient’s information and the latest research within seconds, presenting them in a list for clinical reference.

How is “Da Bai”’s brain currently being applied? Without precise big data, it is impossible to enter the era of true precision medicine. China is still grappling with the lack of standardization and limited openness of medical data. Let us first examine some of the progress made in international applications.

In May 2014, Google led the investment in Flatiron Health, a cancer big data company. This was Google Ventures’ fourth-largest investment and remains the largest investment in pharmaceutical software to date.

Flatiron Health, founded in 2012, targets a data analytics niche that remains largely unexplored. Currently, only 4% of cancer patients participate in clinical trials, meaning that treatment information for the remaining 96% is not readily accessible. Flatiron Health is addressing this gap by collecting clinical and genomic data, patient outcomes, physicians’ treatment notes, and cost information, among other data points. It then presents these insights to oncologists to analyze the effectiveness of past treatments and facilitate the development of new therapeutic approaches. Approximately 1,000 oncologists across the United States are currently using Flatiron Health’s data.

On February 12 this year, medical big data company Inovalon raised $600 million through an initial public offering (IPO). Inovalon is a service provider specializing in big data analytics and solutions for the healthcare industry. Headquartered in Bowie, Maryland, USA, it has established partnerships with numerous commercial health insurance companies, and U.S. pharmacy chain Walgreens is among its clients.

Inovalon boasts both a robust database and a large-scale analytics platform, applying analytical insights to medical treatment. Inovalon provides data analytics services to hundreds of healthcare organizations across the United States and Puerto Rico, covering 98% of the market. Its reach extends to 763,000 physicians, 257,000 clinical institutions, and over 121 million Americans. With 9.6 billion medical records, its comprehensive database lays the foundation for model development and delivers powerful, integrated solutions for healthcare professionals.

In March, Apple held a launch event. In addition to the standout Apple Watch and MacBook, the company unveiled a new software framework called ResearchKit, aiming to empower the users of over 7 million iPhones by transforming their devices into medical diagnostic tools. Jeff Williams, Apple’s Senior Vice President of Operations, stated that medical research faces challenges such as insufficient sample sizes and participant recruitment, as well as inadequate data support, which prompted Apple to release ResearchKit.

As of 2015, five apps based on ResearchKit had been launched: Asthma Health for asthma, GlucoSuccess for diabetes, Share the Journey for breast cancer, Parkinson mPower for Parkinson’s disease (in which Beijing Xuanwu Hospital in China will participate as a collaborator), and MyHeart Counts for cardiovascular diseases. Williams stated that he hopes ResearchKit can help address certain medical issues by engaging more patients, leveraging larger data samples, facilitating the transmission of patient information to the healthcare industry, and encouraging greater physician involvement in research and treatment. ResearchKit applications are designed to be more interactive, allowing patients to control when and with which physicians they share their data.

Subsequently, IBM announced a partnership with Apple to launch Watson Health, a cloud-based healthcare initiative that collects user health information and collaborates with companies such as Johnson & Johnson and Medtronic to provide data analytics services. IBM aims to transform anonymized data into meaningful insights for medical care and rehabilitation. For instance, Johnson & Johnson will partner with IBM to introduce mobile-guided services and develop mobile applications focused on the quality of chronic disease management. Medtronic, a medical device manufacturer, stated that it will collaborate with IBM to create targeted care plans for diabetic patients using Watson Health’s methodologies.

The current development challenges in China are, first, data acquisition, and second, professional data analysis and medical applications.

1) Data Acquisition Dilemma:

Policy Level: The application of medical big data abroad is significantly more mature than in China. In addition to market operations by numerous medical big data startups, large corporations such as Apple, Microsoft, and Intel, and multinational pharmaceutical companies like Novartis, the key factor lies in the higher degree of openness of medical data overseas. In China, medical data is also being gradually opened up. On August 31, 2015, the State Council issued the Outline for Promoting the Development of Big Data, in which the primary highlight related to medical big data was the opening and sharing of government data.

At the data acquisition level, in addition to healthcare institutions, another important source of big data is medical wearable devices. Currently, nearly all wearable devices in China are consumer-grade entertainment products rather than being deeply integrated into medical services. The market is characterized by disorder and severe product homogenization, creating an urgent need for unified industry standards to regulate it. In January 2015, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) released two draft guidance documents concerning mobile medical applications. The FDA detailed the criteria for determining low-risk platform-based mobile health products and provided foundational recommendations for risk assessment of third-party medical device accessories. In contrast, China has yet to introduce such standards. The prompt establishment of standards for medical wearable devices, similar to those in the United States, would significantly regulate this market, thereby promoting faster and healthier development of mobile health while avoiding unregulated, barrier-free competition.

2) Application Dilemmas
Today, sensors are the primary source of biological data worldwide. In 2010, 125 billion gigabytes of data were generated, surpassing the number of stars in the universe. However, domestically produced wearable devices in China have not yet reached medical-grade standards. This is partly because the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) has not yet clearly defined standards for medical wearable devices, and also because China’s sensor technology lags slightly behind that of foreign countries. Conversely, China has made greater progress in software development.

The current challenge abroad lies in integrating sensors independently developed and manufactured by different vendors. These sensors, produced by various manufacturers, have diverse functions and respective limitations, with disparate signal transmission protocols and a lack of unified standards. This fragmentation constitutes a major bottleneck restricting the development of wireless sensing. Addressing the issue of sensor data integration will require concerted collaboration among all manufacturers.

The development of medical big data requires interdisciplinary and cross-sector collaboration. After successfully acquiring sufficient data, professionals from relevant fields must work alongside information technology experts to conduct targeted summarization and analysis, thereby proposing novel technical architecture solutions. This process requires at least two key enablers:

First, corporate R&D and platform support. Accelerate the technological development of sensors to make wearable and portable devices more medical-grade, while enhancing data collection, analysis, and processing capabilities. This will prevent medical big data from remaining dormant in hospital case files and enable patients to easily monitor their vital signs at any time.

Second, venture capital is driving the trend. Over the past two years, various domestic investors have increasingly focused on medical big data and internet healthcare within the healthcare sector. Investments in integrated hardware-software solutions account for 38% of total internet healthcare investments, while mobile healthcare investments represent 19%. The ultimate goal remains to capture the market for health big data terminals.

Medical big data holds broad application prospects, but it has not yet reached an explosive growth stage in China. Its tipping point for rapid expansion still requires support from corporate R&D platforms, joint efforts from venture capital, and facilitation through government regulation.

Eric Topol, author of The Patient Will See You Now: The Future of Medicine is in Your Hands, once said, “We are nothing more than walking event recorders. By using biosensors to capture data and algorithms to process it, we can achieve the ability to track any vital sign.” This book portrays a promising era of medical big data, in which countless Baymax-like companions continuously monitor our health status. This aligns with our ideal of making healthcare simpler.

▶ This article is published on VCBeat with authorization from the author, Liu Yun. Reproduction without permission is prohibited.
Author: Liu Yun, Founding Partner of Guanghe Capital, WeChat: 2975881974