Five dimensions analysis of China’s medical AI development status
The “China Medical Artificial Intelligence Development Report” (2019) Blue Book (hereinafter referred to as the Blue Book) released by the 2019CHINC Conference is China’s first systematic medical AI research report. To let the majority of colleagues further understand the blue book, we selected some of the blue book’s outstanding content.
Policy status
Since 2015, China’s primary policy documents related to medical artificial intelligence have included the “Guiding Opinions of the State Council on Actively Promoting the Internet + Action” (July 2015), and the “Thirteenth National Economic and Social Development of the People’s Republic of China Five-Year Plan Outline” (March 16, 2016), “Guiding Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Promoting and Regulating the Application and Development of Health and Medical Big Data” (June 2016). In addition, the “Thirteenth Five-Year” National Science and Technology Innovation Plan (July 2016), “Special Actions for the Innovation and Development of the Smart Hardware Industry (2016-2018)”, “The 13th Five-Year Plan for the Development of National Strategic Emerging Industries”, “Internet +” Artificial Intelligence Three-year Action Implementation Plan” and other related documents, all have content about the application of artificial intelligence in the medical and health field.
In 2017, “Artificial Intelligence” was included in China’s government work report for the first time, and it became an essential strategy for China. In July of the same year, the State Council issued the “Notice of the State Council on Printing and Distributing New Generation Artificial Intelligence Development Plans.” Provinces successively issued local artificial intelligence development plans. On December 14, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology issued the “Three-year Action Plan for Promoting the Development of the New Generation of Artificial Intelligence Industry (2018-2020)” to precisely implement the plan.
In April 2018, the publication of “Opinions of the General Office of the State Council on Promoting the Development of Internet + Medical Health” and other documents promoted medical artificial intelligence research and application to a climax. Provinces across the country actively responded to the call for national policies and issued several policy documents related to the application of medical artificial intelligence. As of October 2018, the number of medical artificial intelligence policies issued in each province reached a peak.
It can be seen from the number of policies issued in various regions that medical artificial intelligence in East China and North China has developed rapidly. East China is backed by the Yangtze River Delta and represented by Jiangsu, Shanghai and Zhejiang. The region has strong economic development and abundant technological innovation resources, which provides favorable conditions for medical artificial intelligence development. Relying on the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region, North China is home to many scientific research institutions, scientific research institutions, and innovation and entrepreneurship parks, which gather many high-tech talents. The Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region uses its unique advantages in knowledge resources to drive artificial intelligence development in the medical and health industry.
Current status of clinical application research
According to research reports by relevant institutions, China’s “artificial intelligence + medical” market has multiplied in the past two years. The number of medical artificial intelligence startups that have received investment and financing and the number of funds have increased. However, there is still a lack of data on the attitude and current situation of applying artificial intelligence technology in medical institutions China.
This book is based on the list of medical institutions above level 2 and above published on the National Health Commission website. Through a sample survey (300 questionnaires were distributed, 213 valid questionnaires were eventually recovered):
① China’s medical institutions at all levels have shown a positive attitude towards the application of artificial intelligence, and have high hopes for the use of artificial intelligence to improve the level of diagnosis and treatment, but most of them are still on the sidelines in terms of substantial investment in medical artificial intelligence;
②The application level of medical artificial intelligence technology presents noticeable regional differences. The application level of artificial intelligence technology in my country’s tertiary hospitals is much higher than that of secondary hospitals. The application and construction of artificial intelligence presents a regional ladder, namely east>central>west, grassroots Hospitals, and remote medical institutions are still lagging in the application of medical artificial intelligence;
③In the existing clinical application research, natural language processing technology has the highest application degree, and structured data supplementation has become its primary purpose. Among the imaging-assisted diagnosis technology, CT and tumor have the most comprehensive application range and the best technology maturity. The direction of auxiliary diagnosis is The most concerned application areas of the hospital;
④Due to the shortcomings in the standard formulation, product landing, and the shortage of compound talents, the artificial intelligence application and construction of hospitals mainly adopt the “take-ism” model, hoping to directly obtain mature products of medical artificial intelligence applications through product purchase.
Disciplinary development and technology status
In terms of scientific and technological output, the number of Chinese scientific and technological papers in medical artificial intelligence in China has increased rapidly year by year in the past ten years, indicating that medical artificial intelligence is a research area that Chinese scholars are focusing on. The main subjects involved in Chinese scientific papers in medical artificial intelligence in China include biomedical engineering, automation technology, clinical medicine, oncology, computer software, and computer applications.
The output of foreign scientific and technological papers in medical artificial intelligence in China showed a linear growth trend from 2008 to 2016. As of 2017, the total scientific papers in foreign languages in medical artificial intelligence in China reached 34,655. The top 5 institutions with publication volume are the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Shanghai Jiaotong University, Zhejiang University, Tsinghua University, and the Chinese University of Hong Kong. The subjects involved in foreign science and technology papers in medical artificial intelligence are mainly computer science, mathematical computational biology, engineering, mathematics, radiology, nuclear medicine, etc. Among them, the number of scientific and technological papers published in computer science is the largest, with 32,359, radiology, The number of articles published in the field of medical image processing such as nuclear medicine is 18,480. Also, medical artificial intelligence technology literature appears in biochemistry, molecular biology, cell biology, genetics, oncology, and other medical disciplines.
In the past ten years, patent applications and patent disclosure in medical artificial intelligence have shown a trend of the increasing year by year. In 2017, the number of patents and the number of applicants increased significantly, confirming that this technology field is currently in the stage of technological growth. The number of patent applications related to medical artificial intelligence in Guangdong, Jiangsu, Beijing, Shanghai, and Zhejiang are more than 200, indicating that these five provinces and cities are the core areas for technology research and development in the field of medical artificial intelligence. Among them, Guangdong Province has more patent applications. There are as many as 453 items, ranking first in the country.
Industry status
Questionnaires were sent to more than 300 medical artificial intelligence companies, and 45 valid questionnaires were collected. The survey found that more than 75% of companies are at different financing stages, and only 25% of companies do not need financing. Therefore, capital is an important driving force for the development of the industry at this stage. In the survey, in 2018, 12 companies had a cumulative financing amount of 100 million to 1 billion yuan, while the basic financing amount in 2016 only reached 10 million yuan at most. The capital continues to be optimistic about developing the medical artificial intelligence industry, and the overall investment is in the acceleration phase. Medical artificial intelligence applications can be divided into medical imaging, auxiliary diagnosis and treatment, virtual assistants, health management, and smart hospitals.
Among the factors that currently hinder the development of medical artificial intelligence, the five factors that companies choose most are: lack of medical artificial intelligence compound talents, difficulty in labeling and sharing medical data, lack of national standard databases for multiple diseases, business models, and various Medical institutions with unclear rights and responsibilities and lack of cooperation. More than 50% of companies stated that their products had been clinically researched in dozens of medical institutions across the country. Due to product certification issues, most of the applications are service research, and even if they are used in the clinic, they are only for doctors’ diagnoses.
Social cognition and ethical status
Using the questionnaire survey method, we randomly surveyed 2500 people of different ages and occupations in 224 cities to understand Chinese people’s perception of medical artificial intelligence. At present, the public’s perception of the influence of artificial intelligence in the medical field is relatively low, but 78.44% of them support medical artificial intelligence, and they have considerable expectations overall. The public believes that the most significant advantage of artificial intelligence in the medical field is to improve diagnosis efficiency. Still, there are also concerns about the adaptability of smart instruments. Medical imaging is the most acceptable field of artificial intelligence medical applications. Most people believe that the future development trend of medical artificial intelligence is the combination of medical artificial intelligence and traditional models.
China has not yet issued relevant documents on the ethics of medical artificial intelligence applications. According to a survey on the ethical perception of artificial intelligence among Chinese residents, when doctors and artificial intelligence have different opinions on diagnosis and treatment, more people choose to trust doctors. More than half of the people believe that artificial intelligence doctors cannot be granted legal subject qualifications at this stage. They think that when artificial intelligence technology causes medical damage, the responsibilities of the doctor and the designer, manufacturer, artificial intelligence and other parties should be clarified, and the relevant responsible parties Take responsibility.
