AI, biotech seen transforming healthcare

New quality productive forces, represented by artificial intelligence and other digital technologies, are shaping China's healthcare sector, likely cultivating the next paradigm shift, industry experts said.

Jensen Huang, co-founder, president and CEO of Nvidia, said that with the empowerment of digital technologies in the healthcare market, AI-accelerated pharmaceutical science may become the next big thing, and that the expected "amazing revolution" is going to take place in digital biology.

Huang said at an earlier news conference that over the past decade, biology has increasingly become an information science, with biological data expanding exponentially.

"Our ability to read, write and edit DNA is accelerating. Technologies like machine learning and cloud computing are unlocking new insights from mountains of biological data. As a result, the bio revolution is underway."

The latest report from research consultancy Global Market Insights showed that by 2032, the global AI-empowered healthcare sector will reach $70 billion, with a compound annual growth rate of over 29 percent between 2024 and 2032, while that in China is expected to be 30 percent.

China Merchants Securities said that this year, the global AI-empowered healthcare market is expected to top $5 billion, and remain at a high growth rate in the coming years. In terms of subcategories, drug discovery and medical imaging are the two areas taking up the most market share, adding up to over 50 percent.

Specifically, with the development of the pharmaceutical industry and the iteration of AI technology, the market size of AI-enabled drug research and development is expected to exceed $20.5 billion by 2032, said CMS.

Enterprises both at home and abroad are already taking action.

For example, in October, pharmaceutical giant Takeda collaborated with Fudan University in Shanghai to establish its Digital Innovation Academy in China. The academy aims to utilize the advantages of both Takeda and the university to facilitate development of patient-centric digital therapies and commercial transformation, gain research insights into the development of digital healthcare products and solutions, cultivate talent for China's digital healthcare industry and benefit the overall industry.

The academy also aims to combine efforts to develop innovative topic studies and conceptual models ranging from screening and diagnosis to treatment. AI solutions are also involved in the studies, said the company.

"New technologies, including AI, as well as other technologies, are completely transforming our industry as the way we do research and development, manufacturing, and the way we interact with a doctor and a patient," said Christophe Weber, CEO of Takeda.

"New technology will help build more efficient healthcare systems ... the way we do things will completely be transforming the next three years, offering a huge opportunity with significant transformation," he added.

Wang Hongwei, a professor at the School of Life Sciences and vice-president of Tsinghua University, said: "New quality productive forces, represented by AI and other digital technologies, are empowering China's healthcare sector. For example, AI helps accelerate the R&D process of new drugs, bringing big advancements, or even paradigm shifts, to the overall healthcare system."

Zhongtai Securities said that AI has wide applications in the medical imaging category, application scenarios are diversified and future development space is huge. By 2025, the global AI-enabled medical imaging sector is expected to reach 44.2 billion yuan ($6.1 billion), with a CAGR of 135 percent between 2023 and 2025.

"Judging from the demand side, China's medical resources are unevenly distributed. High-quality medical resources are excessively concentrated, and there is a supply-demand gap in senior physician talent. AI technology can help quickly identify problems, improve the efficiency and accuracy of diagnosis and treatment, and make up for the gap," said Zhang Xu, an academician at the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and also a member of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences.

"At the same time, through assisted diagnosis and treatment, grassroots medical institutions can be empowered to promote the allocation of high-quality medical resources from first-tier cities to smaller cities and grassroots-level regions," Zhang said.