The National People's Congress (NPC) of the People's Republic of China and the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) held in 2018 attracted earnest attention from the general public. "Step up next-generation artificial intelligence R&D and application, and do more to promote the Internet Plus model in many fields like medical care, eldercare, education, culture, and sports. We should develop intelligent industries and expand intelligent living" mentioned in the Report on the Work of the Government put AI in the spotlight again. This is the second time that AI was included in NPC and CPPCC after written into the Report on the Work of the Government in 2017, from which we can see the state's attention to AI.

Traditional medical treatment needs urgent transformation AI Plus becomes the future trend

"Medical Care" as the first keyword put forward by the NPC and CPPCC has aroused great attention from the society. Representatives from the two sessions proposed that constructing a Digital China and ensuring the medical treatment were the top priority for the further development of China, and again the traditional healthcare was pushed to a crossroad. How should we better develop intelligent healthcare is an important frontier topic and bears on our nation to realize the strategic objective of attaining global scientific power.

According to the data of the National Health Commission of the People's Republic of China, every year, there are over 600 thousand new lung cancer patients and over 500 thousand people die from lung cancer. Moreover, the mortality of lung cancer is increasing year by year, and the situation is extremely grim. It has surpassed the traffic accident and natural disasters and become one of the most important death-causing factors for the Chinese population. Early discovery, early diagnosis, and early treatment are the crust to improve the survival rate of patients. But misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis frequently occur due to the limit of doctors' subjective experience and energy, along with the inferior image quality, benign representation of malignant pathological changes and vision fatigue, and the efficiency of diagnosis and treatment is low.

The first Beijing-based AI pulmonary nodule clinic will be established in April

As a nearly-century-old authoritative tertiary grade-A hospital, Beijing Shijitan Hospital of Capital Medical University has been devoted to the research of AI application in medical imaging. Moreover, Shijitan Hospital joined hands with PereDoc, the flagship company in the medical imaging sector and more than 180 key hospitals to establish the "Intelligent Joint Institute of Medical Imaging," which by far is the largest joint institute devoted to the innovation and development of intelligent medical imaging in the world and designed to assist doctors with machines to improve the efficiency and accuracy of early detection of lung diseases in terms of computer-aided diagnosis technology-based intelligent equipment, advanced image recognition and in-depth learning technology. Its widespread cooperation scope and high scientific research ability have received great concern in the industry. It is known that in April, Beijing Shijitan Hospital will establish an AI pulmonary nodule clinic. This breakthrough will solve many problems, such as misdiagnosis, missed diagnosis, intricate image and time-consuming in reading films, improve doctors' quality of diagnosis and treatment and relieve their state of overload, which not only saves the lives of countless patients but also is of great significance to relieve medical resources and tensions between doctors and patients, with obvious medical needs and broad social significance.

It is worth mentioning that, technically, Beijing Shijitan Hospital has introduced world's leading intelligent image diagnosis platform PereBox, which has been deployed in dozens of tertiary grade-A hospitals. It can detect more than 120 lung diseases and provide complete technical support for the consulting room with its high accuracy and fast detection. The establishment of this AI pulmonary nodule clinic is the most powerful practice for the national AI strategy and its cutting-edge thinking will also help AI technology to be widely used in the detection, diagnosis and treatment of pulmonary nodule disease.

China is in a special historical period in which time the old and new development forces continue to shift and AI becomes a new focus of the national competitiveness. Currently, the AI-Plus medical idea is extremely popular, and the low accuracy, shortage of human resources and lower utilization of information in the traditional medical industry can be properly solved. In the future, the booming medical treatment will meet the increasingly urgent medical needs and optimize the diagnostic procedures, fueling the upgrading and transformation of the traditional medical industry and benefiting the people's livelihood.