Series Report 4 on Medical Imaging: Huiying Medical Breaks Down Information Barriers in Radiology
At the Taili Station on the first floor of Building B in the Zhongguancun Dongsheng Technology Park, multiple startup teams are seated separately within fully transparent glass-walled spaces. The team from Huiyi Huiying, led by Chai Xiangfei and Zhang Hua, is located in the innermost corner of the station, right next to its angel-round investor, Shuimu Yide Investment.
Chai Xiangfei told VCBeat that the startup-friendly atmosphere was the primary reason for initially choosing to work at Taili Station. “Even at 11 or 12 o’clock at night, half of the people here are still working.” Proximity proved advantageous, as Huiyi Huiying secured its angel-round investment within its own office park.
Shuimu Yide leverages Tsinghua University’s technology innovation platform and the industrial resources of multinational corporations to focus on early-stage investments in technological innovation. The firm operates a parallel fund structure in both RMB and USD, with investment strategies encompassing minority equity stakes as well as restructuring and mergers and acquisitions. Its portfolio spans industries including healthcare, new materials, energy, and the internet.
Investment in Huiyi Huiying is a key project for Shuimu Yide in the internet healthcare sector. Yang Danning, an investor, told VCBeat: “From the perspective of the medical workflow, apart from the treatment phase, nearly all other steps can be conducted online. However, we have found that a platform is essential to connect physicians with data generated by medical devices during this online process. After completing offline tests, patients can use this platform to consult with appropriate physicians for diagnosis and treatment.” Traditional providers of telemedicine imaging platforms typically operate on a project-engineering basis, often building systems without assuming responsibility for operations. This model has resulted in many hospitals’ telemedicine imaging service platforms remaining underutilized.
Yang Danning stated that there are three main reasons for investing in Huiyi Huiying. First, as a startup, Huiyi Huiying has a very clear strategy. Second, its team possesses strong capabilities and has unique insights in the field of intelligent image recognition. Third, the team fosters a vibrant entrepreneurial culture, with employees who are highly passionate—a crucial and indispensable condition for any startup.
Currently, in the management of serious illnesses, there is a substantial demand from patients for multidisciplinary consultations involving physicians beyond their primary attending doctors, driven by psychological anxiety and widespread distrust of physicians. Among physicians, there is a prevalent need to share and discuss imaging information with peers. For hospitals, government initiatives have long advocated for improving medical standards and retaining local patients through joint consultations with tertiary care institutions.
In response to the clinical needs of patients, physicians, and hospitals, the team at Huiyi Huiying has developed a third-party medical imaging consultation platform that integrates community tools with consultation services. The aim is to enhance physician engagement through initial collaborations with hospitals, thereby establishing a robust third-party consultation platform. Furthermore, the platform leverages big data to enable preliminary computer-aided interpretation of medical images, reducing the volume of routine manual image readings.
This product is a cloud-based Picture Archiving and Communication System (PACS) for medical imaging. By leveraging the Internet and diverse terminals, along with technologies for transmission, compression, and display of medical images, it enables imaging information to extend beyond hospital boundaries, facilitating remote imaging consultations between patients and physicians, among physicians, and across hospitals.
Chai Xiangfei introduced that Huiyi Huiying’s PACS systems are all designed in accordance with hospital system standards. Physicians upload high-definition original images through this platform, and a tiered compression method is employed for downloading, enabling doctors to quickly view an intuitive image while progressively increasing its resolution and clarity. “If clients require it, lossless compression can also be implemented; we are fully capable of delivering diagnostic-grade imaging quality.”
However, Chai Xiangfei also recognizes that although the product is positioned as an independent third-party medical imaging diagnosis platform, the current macroeconomic environment and the company’s own capabilities are insufficient to fully realize this positioning. Currently, the functionalities of Huiyi Huiying’s products focus primarily on consultation services, targeting two main user groups: one consists of complex case image interpretation for general hospitals, and the other involves routine image interpretation consultations primarily for private hospitals at the primary care level.
The platform categorizes medical imaging into six subspecialties: head and neck, neurology, thorax, abdomen, extremities, and cardiology. Each subspecialty is supported by top-tier experts in China. Currently, the majority of radiologists providing interpretation services on the platform are based in Beijing, supplemented by provincial-level experts from several provinces in North China, including Shanxi, Shandong, and Henan. “For these experts, we exclusively assign cases involving complex and refractory conditions, which motivates their active participation in image interpretation.”
In early May this year, United Imaging Systems’ PACS system product was officially launched.
Team Background
Before returning to China to start his business, Chai Xiangfei, CEO of Huiyi Huiying, studied and worked at three world-leading medical imaging institutions: the Stanford Cancer Center at Stanford University in the United States, the Netherlands Cancer Institute, and the Department of Radiology at KU Leuven in Belgium. He has accumulated extensive clinical knowledge and mastered core technologies in medical image segmentation, storage, compression, and management. He is currently primarily responsible for product definition and development at Huiyi Huiying.
During his postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University, Chai Xiangfei led the team in developing WIPPEP, a web-based cloud platform for medical image management and processing.
CTO Zhang Hua is a senior software designer and image processing scientist, proficient in multilingual, cross-platform software development. Additionally, two associate chief physicians from the radiology and oncology departments of Grade 3A hospitals serve as consultants, participating in product design and physician outreach.
Chai Xiangfei and Zhang Hua were doctoral classmates at the Netherlands Cancer Institute, where they participated in the development and maintenance of the XVI image-guided radiotherapy system under the supervision of their advisor, Marcel van Herk. The system was ultimately sold to Elekta, the world’s second-largest radiotherapy company.
In November 2014, Dr. Chai Xiangfei returned to China to launch Huiyi Huiying. The company completed its angel financing round after Christmas and plans to conduct its Series A financing in the second half of this year.
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