Telemedicine provides remote help for patients

In November, a patient in Hefei, capital of the eastern province of Anhui, visited a community health center and was diagnosed with arrhythmia by He Qi, a local physician.

However, He strongly urged the patient to undergo a coronary angiography at a higher-level hospital because his artificial intelligence assistant had produced a different diagnosis.

The results showed that the AI was correct - the patient actually had coronary heart disease.

The AI medical assistant, launched in March last year by iFlytek, an information technology company, is becoming an important partner in assisting grassroots doctors make diagnoses in rural China.

With a strong learning capability, the AI system easily absorbed the information in 53 medical textbooks and 400,000 authoritative papers. It passed the written test of the national qualification exam for clinical practitioners with excellent results, beating 95 percent of the 530,000 candidates in August 2017. It also ceaselessly learns the most up-to-date medical knowledge.

"The application of AI medical assistants has significantly shortened the time it takes grassroots doctors to make diagnoses, and improved the success rate," He said.

According to Tao Xiaodong, CEO of iFlyHealth, the AI medical assistant has made more than 1.5 million auxiliary diagnoses since being applied in four counties and a district in Anhui.

"It can help confirm over 900 diseases at health centers at the grassroots level with an accuracy rate of 97 percent," Tao said.

As of March, the product had been applied in almost 1,200 clinics and health centers nationwide.

Technology is reshaping the lives of rural Chinese in many ways. The diagnosis and treatment levels at countryside clinics and health centers, especially those at or below the county level, have long been relatively low because of a lack of experienced doctors and advanced equipment. That has often resulted in patients, especially critically ill ones, having to be transferred to higher-level hospitals.

Reform

A large part of the ongoing reform of China's medical and healthcare system revolves around the development of a hierarchical system to allow patients to have their first diagnoses done at the grassroots level. Technology is helping to make this a reality.

After undergoing an X-ray, Long Shixiang was relieved to hear that her broken bone had healed. The 62-year-old native of Hongtang Town, Yichun city in the eastern province of Jiangxi, was extremely fortunate to receive all her medical treatment on her own doorstep.

"It saved me a lot of money and trouble," said Long, who had to stay at home to take care of two granddaughters because both her son and daughter-in-law work out of town.

Just two years ago, a lack of equipment and qualified practitioners meant it was impossible to get an X-ray at the local health center.

"The equipment was too outdated to take clear X-rays and there were no doctors capable of giving professional diagnostic reports," said Fu Chunping, head of the health center. "The patients had to go to higher-ranked hospitals for treatment."

Chen Junkun, chief medical officer of JF Healthcare, a company that specializes in online medical services with AI and remote interconnection technology, said: "X-rays play a major role in the clinical diagnosis of many diseases, including fractures and various lung and heart diseases. They are also cost-effective."

In 2017, the local government purchased X-ray machines for 27 health clinics in the district, but there still weren't enough doctors.

That's where technology comes in. By cooperating with JF Healthcare, patients can receive their X-ray reports in about 10 minutes. By uploading the X-ray film to a cloud computing platform, an AI system can conduct an auxiliary diagnosis, and the film will later be reviewed by qualified practitioners who will make a judgment within 10 minutes.

To date, JF Healthcare has partnered with 1,019 grassroots hospitals in 12 provinces and regions including Jiangxi, Yunnan, Hubei and Hebei, and the Xinjiang Uygur and Guangxi Zhuang autonomous regions. More than 20 million residents in rural areas have access to the service.

By reading the diagnostic reports that are sent back, doctors at the grassroots level can also raise treatment standards.

"Telemedicine is a new trend to solve the problem of poor access to medical services in rural China, and it is being encouraged," said Liu Xiaohui from Jiangxi's provincial health commission.

"Medical treatment at the grassroots level will be quickly improved and residents of rural areas will enjoy better medical services with the help of AI and other advanced technologies."

Xinhua