This article was written by Dr Rachel Leung, a medical doctor based in Hong Kong. Coronavirus pandemic has catalyzed transformative changes in healthcare technologies. Social distancing measures to reduce the risk of transmissions has altered conventional medical consultations and clinical procedures, an abundance of information on outbreak updates through various media outlets has overwhelmed the mass public, and the sheer population of Covid-19 patients and non-Covid-19 patients have paralyzed existing medical facilities. Facing unprecedented pressure and unanticipated challenges, rapid agility in applying healthcare technologies and high demand of faith in technology-assisted healthcare services have created unique adaptation and dynamic changes in the relationships between people and technology in healthcare. Maintaining primary care services in the midst of the pandemic was essential, as vast majority of the public still required regular medical services. However, due to the overloaded public health system, many were unable to seek and receive the support they need. This catalyzed the transition to telemedicine, partially substituting the conventional face-to-face consultations. For instance, WeDoctor united physicians across China to provide teleconsultation to alleviate healthcare burdens in the community health centers. WeDoctor also expanded its services internationally to channel clinical information exchange across global networks of physicians, changing relationships between patients, healthcare professionals and healthcare technologies. In secondary care, safeguarding the health and wellbeing of the elderly population group became even more critical, as they account for a large proportion of mortalities among Covid-19 cases. Technologies in form of videoconferencing, remote drug deliveries and robot-assisted care can serve as mediators to providing care for the elderlies, while reducing the risk of infection and transmission. Due to Covid-19 outbreak, many eldercare centers sent their residents home to their families. To ensure smooth transition for homecare for the families with elders, IZhaoHu, an elderly care service provider, piloted an online eldercare training program for family members to provide medical care services to elderly at home. IZhaohu's Cheetah remote elderly care system, through IZhaohu app and its sensors, connected with its clients and provided real-time support for the families and the elderlies at home. Elders, and especially their family members who are not familiar with caring for their elder family members, became empowered through using digital technology. The relationship between the public and tertiary care using digital technology was also strengthened during the pandemic. The large number of moderate to severe cases of Covid-19 patients demanded rapidly scalable solutions to provide timely tertiary care in hospital settings. However, shortage in medical personnel and specialists coupled with risks of transmission hindered timely and adequate care and service for Covid-19 patients. In the case of United Imaging, the company pioneered remote radiological services, such as its Remote Diagnostics Platform, Emergency Radiology Department. Through the use of AI and Medical Cloud Network, United Imaging's technology allowed medical personnel to perform radiological imaging investigation remotely and collect quality radiological images for diagnosis and patient monitoring. The whole process from the image capturing, data collection and analysis, to clinical diagnosis and disease monitoring by nationwide radiologists, were conducted in a contactless setting via remote sensor and image recognition technologies. From offline to online, and from primary care to tertiary care, multi-faceted changes have taken place in the relationship between people and healthcare technologies. The increase in adaptation of technology-enabled health services in China may be attributed to its decade long rise in technology adoption in its population, as well as the large technological reserve in companies dedicated to research and development for of healthcare reform. The transformative changes in the way people interact with healthcare technologies has brought and will continue to bring forth long lasting impact on health systems. This article is developed with key inputs from the Tackling Covid-19 Pandemic through Integrating Digital Technology and Public Health: Linking Experiences in China to the World report which is supported by The Rockefeller Foundation. List of company mentioned WeDoctor-https://www.tencent.com/en-us/responsibility/combat-covid-19-doctor.html Izhaohu http://www.izhaohu.com/ United Imaging http://demo.united-imaging.com/cn/home/ WHO – https://www.who.int/ The Rockefeller Foundation – https://www.rockefellerfoundation.org/
First JD Health Online Pharmaceutical Seminar Held
On August 3rd, the first JD Health Online Pharmaceutical Seminar was held. Targeting "Openness and Accessibility”, the three-day seminar was supported by ASK Health in inviting specialists from international and domestic health systems and industries and understanding the exploration of the pharmaceutical business in the new normal. The online seminar received more than 200,000 registrations, with more than 5 million viewers, sponsorship from over 500 companies, and over 200 live broadcast sessions. Together with other partners, ASK Health helped JD Health demonstrate the potential of the "Internet and Medical Health" ecology to the industry and establish its new brand of “Online Pharmaceutical Seminar” in this industry.
ASK Health Holds Health Industry Forum with Enterprise Singapore
On July 28th, Health Work, a partner of ASK Health, and Enterprise Singapore (ESG) jointly held an industry forum. ASK Health Director of Global Partnerships, Rui Gu, hosted and participated in this event. The forum covered topics such as an “Overview on Government Policies on Supervision and Registration of Medical Devices in China”, “Market Opportunities for China’s Digital Economy and Healthcare after the Pandemic”, and "Ecological Chain of Health 100.” Some of the sharing guests include Eugene Eu, head of Singapore Enterprise Development Agency, Wu Pinjie, Section Chief of Shanghai Jing'an Investment Promotion Office, Cai Congli, Executive General Manager of Wuhan TACRO Co., Ltd., Zhou Binbin, Director of Innovative Business and Overseas Business of SiQiBEST, and Changjiang Weina, Executive Vice President of Zhongguancun Meinian Health Industry Research Institute.
ASK Health Futures Fellowship Hosts Successful Online Kick-Off
On July 24th, 2020, the 2020 ASK Health Futures Fellowship virtual kick-off meeting was held successfully. In the meeting, Dr. Chang Liu, Regional Director for ASK Health, introduced the vision and goal for the ASK Health Futures Fellowship and stated the expectations from our fellows. Then the fellows gave brief introductions and shared their interests in the field of health. Afterwards, the heads of each department of ASK Health discussed their positions and the responsibilities of each department to help the fellows understand the organization at a more in-depth level. ASK Health will hold monthly knowledge sharing with the fellows and ASK Health colleagues in order to facilitate more exchanges, help build an understanding of the general healthcare industry, and encourage the fellows to participate more within this field.
Aging Care Industry: A Successful Second Online Session
On July 23rd, ASK Health and the Modern Aging Program, under Health Futures Innovation Platform and Phoefly Health Technology, jointly organized the second online session of PHBS-CJBS Global Pitch Competition, focusing on the topic of aging care. Six high-quality projects were selected from the global registration projects to participate in this session. These projects covered several topics, including home care for the elderly, PCI post-operations management, orthopedics and sports rehabilitation, cognitive assessment management, mental and psychological VR medical rehabilitation programs, and cognitive impairment solutions. The competition was adjudicated by 14 members, consisting of international specialists and investors. The judges evaluated the teams throughout the entire competition, conducting comprehensive and multi-dimensional reviews of the participating projects in terms of market conditions, solutions, business models, scalability, and team capabilities, in order to select teams for promotion. ASK Health recommended one of the candidate teams for the competition and introduced several industry leaders as members of the panel judges. We believe the Global Pitch Competition will further enable the development of the aging care industry, both domestically and internationally.
Announcing the Official Launch of the Health Futures WeChat Account
After more than a year of work, on July 21st, 2020, ASK Health proudly launched the official Health Futures WeChat account. The purpose of Health Future is to work with our industry partners to "promote value-oriented health system innovation." This new public account will closely follow and offer updates on China's health system. It will also act as a platform for ASK Health and our partners to publish research outputs and further enable collaboration across healthcare industry participants in China. The two core themes that will be highlighted on the WeChat account are research institutes and innovation platforms. In the "Research Institute" section, some features we will include are uploaded research projects and reports and columns to share knowledge and show the output of future healthy young scholars. In the "Innovation Platform" section, we will share innovation platform activities, innovative enterprise alliance information, and industry partner dynamics.
White Paper Released: Health China 2030 – Eliminate Hepatitis C Threat
The “Health China 2030 – Eliminate Hepatitis C Threat" white paper, co-authored by Zhuang Hui as Honorary Chief Editor, Professor Wei Lai and Professor Wang Guiqiang as Chief Editors, and the ASK Health team, was released on July 28th, which is also World Hepatitis Day. The white paper drew a distribution map of hepatitis C patients both domestically and internationally and described the status quo of prevention and control, detailing planning and strategies for each. The publication also provided a basis for the selection of testing programs, screening of key populations, and determination of treatment programs.
White Paper Released: The Critical Role of Commercial Health Insurance in Supporting a Multi-Layered Medical Security System
On August 3rd, ASK Health and Pfizer jointly established a research group and released the white paper “The Transformation of Commercial Health Insurance in the Context of 'Healthy China 2030': Innovating through collaboration with the pharmaceutical industry”. More than 1.4 million people across multiple platforms streamed the online publication of the white paper, reflecting the significance and the public's deep concern for the development of commercial health insurance. The white paper discusses the development of commercial health insurance from multiple aspects. From the policy aspect, it discussed looking for the position of commercial health insurance from the development of China’s multi-layered medical security system. On the self-development level, understanding the past of commercial insurance and exploring the direction of innovation and transformation from the current situation was highlighted. From an international standpoint, the white paper explores the details that can be used for reference from international experience. From the industrial integration and industry cooperation perspective, the publication discusses extracting the path of joint construction and sharing the examples of the pharmaceutical industry and other parties participating in the promotion of commercial health insurance. The white paper also proposes policy and industry recommendations to achieve professional and ecological development after detailing these various aspects. The white paper was endorsed by Yanli Zhou, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People’s Political Consultative Conference and former Vice Chairman of the China Banking and Insurance Regulatory Commission, and Gongcheng Zheng, Chairman of the Chinese Association of Social Security, the author of the paper's foreword. At the press conference, Yanli Zhou noted that "the white paper comprehensively analyzes some of the positive efforts made by the pharmaceutical industry to promote the development of commercial health insurance, and puts forward many suggestions with time value." Zhou said, "I believe that in the post-epidemic era, multi-party participation in promoting the development of China’s commercial health insurance is of great significance to assisting the construction of China’s medical system." Gongcheng Zheng also provided his input, saying, "As observed in the white paper, multi-party ecological linkage and cross-industry cooperation will help accelerate the development of commercial health insurance. The realization of the professionalization of commercial health insurance requires insurance companies to learn about diseases. The atlas, real-world data, medical service networks, health management systems, and other tools have become core competencies. This process requires cooperation with the pharmaceutical industry.”
Second Opinion Episode 1: COVID-19’s resurgence with William Haseltine
Second Opinion is a new discussion series presented by the Los Angeles Times that takes viewers to the forefront of medical research and conversations about health, science and technology. In the first episode, Los Angeles Times Executive Chairman Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, a surgeon and scientist, is joined by renowned biologist and ACCESS Health Chair and President William Haseltine for a discussion about COVID-19 and the public health implications of its recent resurgence. The discussion is moderated by Eli Stokols of The Times' Washington bureau. You can view the first episode by clicking below. Future "Second Opinion" series programming will feature similar topics, columns by William Haseltine and other notable experts, as well as virtual events focused on medicine. Dr. Patrick Soon-Shiong, executive chairman of the Los Angeles Times, is a surgeon and scientist who has spent his career studying the human immune system to fight cancer and infectious diseases. He is the chairman and chief executive of NantWorks, and the owner of or investor in a number of companies, including ImmunityBio and NantKwest, which are currently researching immunotherapies for COVID-19. William Haseltine is a former professor at Harvard's medical and public health schools, where he performed groundbreaking research on cancer and HIV/AIDS. Haseltine is also the founder and CEO of biotechnology companies responsible for drugs treating HIV/AIDS, cancer, diabetes and autoimmune disease. He is chair and president of the nonprofit think tank and advisory group Access Health International and is the author of seven books on health systems around the world. His most recent book is "A Family Guide to Covid: Questions and Answers for Parents, Grandparents, and Children."
Startup Alliance Member Spotlight: THOTH
The Startup Alliance includes companies that are in the early growth phase of development, typically those who received seed and series A funding. The companies focus on health services, information technology, medical devices, and other breakthrough technologies. Membership in the Startup Alliance is based on our evaluation of the novelty and importance of the work of the companies. We provide them access to mentors, to our network, and to investors. We work closely with the members to accelerate growth and improve their branding. Each newsletter will include the introduction of one of the members. Read more about the Startup Alliance here. About THOTH THOTH was founded in January 2016 and is headquartered in Suzhou Industrial Park. The company focuses on the research and development of flexible wearable medical devices and the application of medical big data artificial intelligence technology. It is a high-tech enterprise in Jiangsu Province, which integrates research, production and marketing. THOTH has innovatively designed disposable sensors that are similar to a “Band-Aid”, integrating product and service value into the sensor so that users pay only for the Band-Aid and do not need to purchase medical equipment or medical systems. THOTH is focused on providing accurate, efficient, comfortable and safe clinical-level healthcare services to every user, and is committed to creating a new healthcare ecosystem. The 7 products developed by THOTH have obtained NMPA medical device product registration certificate and 30 patents. Our products cover dynamic ECG monitoring, continuous body temperature monitoring and fetal ECG monitoring, amongst which our core product “Wearable ECG Sensor” is the first wearable ECG sensor to obtain NMPA medical device product registration certificate, which has been used by 500,000 patients in more than 700 hospitals in 20 provinces and cities, and is unanimously recognized by hospitals and users.