In the context of digitalization, what changes can AI bring to medical care?

The medical field is ushering in new opportunities.

When it comes to medical health today, AI and digitalization must be mentioned. It can be said that AI and digitalization will become a new solution to my country's problems such as insufficient medical resources and low digitalization of the medical industry.

AI+ medical care is different from Internet medical care. Internet medical care has been developing for more than ten years and has been exploring how to reallocate medical resources. However, a realistic and fundamental problem has not been solved, that is, the shortage of medical resources still exists.

AI medical care is not only about improving efficiency, but also about how to increase medical supply and the social value of universalizing technology.

Correspondingly, AI and digitalization have also become the focus of capital in the medical field in recent years.

1. Three hot keywords

Today, the three hot keywords in the capital market are medical care, AI and digitalization. If we connect them in series, this is the direction of technological innovation in the large market track of medical care, with AI and digitalization.

The medical field is hot. In addition to the three-year epidemic that has increased people’s demand for medical care, there is another important factor, that is, the blessing of technology has brought new ideas to solve current medical problems. .

This value is also reflected in policy encouragement.

Article 7 of the recently released "Opinions on Further Deepening Reform and Promoting the Healthy Development of the Rural Medical and Health System" mentions,

“Build a rural telemedicine service system and promote remote Consultation, appointment referral, Internet follow-up consultation, and remote examination will accelerate the deployment and application of artificial intelligence-assisted diagnosis in rural medical and health institutions. ”

The policy encourages the deployment of artificial intelligence-assisted diagnostic equipment to the level of rural medical and health institutions, which was unthinkable before.

The deployment of artificial intelligence-assisted diagnosis in rural medical and health institutions is crucial, mainly because it plays an important role in the allocation of medical resources.

In particular, our country has a large population and uneven distribution of medical resources. How to allow more places to enjoy high-quality diagnosis and treatment is of great value to the industry and society.

According to iResearch's "Artificial Intelligence + Medical and Life Sciences Industry" research report, my country's hospital resource supply is tight and the coverage rate of top-level hospitals is low. Among them, the total number of medical and health institutions in my country in 2020 is approximately 1.02 million, but hospitals account for only 3.5% of them, and the number of tertiary hospitals serving as diagnosis and treatment institutions is only 2,996, accounting for only 9% of all hospitals.

If medical institutions introduce AI, it will not only improve the informatization and automation capabilities of current hospitals, but also improve the cumbersome and inefficient medical treatment process, allowing the minority top tertiary hospitals to effectively serve more patients and reduce the number of primary care hospitals. It can reduce the medical resource gap between institutions, non-tertiary hospitals and tertiary hospitals, and can reduce the workload of doctors and improve their work efficiency.

On another level, looking at my country's medical industry, there is a lack of core medicines, equipment and other products, and it is impossible to transform the advantages of the large market into an advantageous market with technological content.

Medical AI may reverse this disadvantage. In recent years, the medical field has become a hot spot for primary market financing, mainly in fields such as medical robots, AI medical imaging, medical data intelligence platforms, and CDSS.

Data show that investment and financing in my country's medical and health field will be unprecedentedly popular in 2021, with more than 1,500 investment and financing events, with a total amount of more than 260 billion. Except for 2021, the number of investment and financing events in the medical and health industry has stabilized at around 1,000 in the past five years, and the total transaction amount has shown a steady upward trend, increasing from 70.15 billion yuan in 2017 to 125.81 billion yuan in 2022, an increase of 179.34%.

The secondary market in the medical field is also lively. In addition to the popularity of pharmaceutical companies in the capital market, many AI medical companies have launched listing plans or have already achieved listing.

For example, on November 5, 2021, Eagle Eye Technology was successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange. In addition, Shukun Technology, an AI digital doctor platform company, has officially submitted a prospectus to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange and plans to list on the Hong Kong main board.

2. Favorable policies and market expansion

Based on the fact that medical AI has greatly promoted the current situation of domestic medical care, in recent years, policies have also tilted more towards medical AI technology. .

In the three years from 2018 to 2021, the National Health Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, etc. have issued policies on multiple dimensions such as electronic medical records, assisted decision-making, smart management, and artificial intelligence software related to medical AI. Promote the inclusion and use specifications of related products.

Not only that, in October last year, the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology also released the shortlist of artificial intelligence medical device innovation tasks to encourage companies to carry out artificial intelligence innovation in the medical field.

Similarly, the shortlisted products include intelligent diagnostic auxiliary, intelligent auxiliary treatment, intelligent monitoring and life support, intelligent rehabilitation physiotherapy, intelligent traditional Chinese medicine diagnosis and treatment, medical artificial intelligence database, artificial intelligence medical device clinical experiment platform, In 8 directions, including artificial intelligence medical device real-world data application platform, companies such as Baidu, Eagle Eye, and United Imaging were shortlisted.

Currently, my country's population is aging, and the incidence of many chronic diseases is on the rise, putting further pressure on medical resources.

But in fact, one of the main problems with chronic diseases in my country is the inability to screen and treat them as early as possible. Insufficient medical resources and inconvenient screening technology have resulted in many patients with chronic diseases not being able to detect the disease in its early stages. If the screening of chronic diseases can be more popularized, it will have extremely high humanitarian value for the prevention, treatment and care of chronic diseases.

The practical application of medical AI can play a very good role in this aspect.

In recent years, many patients have already had a certain understanding of AI diagnosis of heart, lung, eye and other related diseases. The popularity of ChatGPT this year has further increased the market’s attention and confidence in AI, which provides a good foundation for AI diagnosis. Medical AI provides support from exploration to implementation.

Previously, due to market threshold factors, medical AI products were not able to fully enter hospitals. However, with the liberalization and encouragement of policies, the market demand for auxiliary diagnosis and treatment products is urgent, and AI medical imaging is growing rapidly.

In China's AI medical core software market size in 2020, CDSS market share is 29.8%, and AI medical imaging is 7.1%. By 2023, the AI medical imaging market size will surpass CDSS for the first time. It has become the product category with the highest market share among AI medical core software.

According to iResearch modeling estimates, China’s AI medical imaging market size will be 400 million yuan in 2020, and by 2025, the market size will reach 10 billion yuan, with a CAGR of 87.5% from 2020 to 2025. Overall market growth remains at a high level.

3. Implementation is still the highlight

Although the value of medical AI has been fully verified, how to combine it with scenarios and achieve large-scale implementation is still the key to measuring AI medical care.

iResearch data shows that in the statistics of AI medical imaging recruitment quota from 2019 to August 2021, tertiary hospitals are the main demand, and the recruitment quota in 2019 and 2020 remains at more than 10 million yuan. Affected by the impact of the demand for COVID-19 testing, the wide audience of lung imaging products, and the high maturity of development technology, the AI development software recruitment quota for the pulmonary department reached 12.96 million yuan during the statistical period. The cardiovascular, comprehensive and pathology departments Ranked second.

Besides tertiary hospitals, primary care is where medical AI can exert its greatest value. Primary care lacks medical resources and obviously needs medical AI more. This is why the policy proposes to sink artificial intelligence-assisted diagnosis technology. to the root cause at the grassroots level. For medical AI companies, nearly one million primary medical institutions will also be a huge stock market.

In addition, big health scenarios such as pharmacies, insurances, nursing homes, and optical shops outside of medical institutions will be the incremental market for the implementation of medical AI, which also means that early screening and risk assessment products may be used in the future. Become a market hot spot.

For example, in the 2022 Beijing Inclusive Health Insurance, the Beijing Municipal Medical Security Bureau teamed up with a number of medical AI product providers to provide disease screening and other services to insured persons.

Take the fundus AI screening service provided by Eagle Eye Technology as an example. It has deployed 110 smart fundus cameras in 88 outlets in 13 districts and counties in Beijing to help policyholders screen for related diseases early. At the same time, the compensation pressure of inclusive insurance is reduced.

Early screening of many chronic diseases can be detected through the retina, such as diabetes and hypertension, and of course those directly related to the eyes, such as glaucoma, cataract, and diabetic retina, which have a large patient population in China. Diseases, etc.

During the two sessions this year, Wang Ningli, an ophthalmologist, member of the 14th National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, director of the Ophthalmology Center of Beijing Tongren Hospital, and dean of the School of Ophthalmology of Capital Medical University, submitted a report focusing on the early prevention and early treatment of blinding eye diseases. In his proposal, he suggested that fundus photography be included in the chronic disease management and prevention and control system, with the medical insurance fund paying for it, which would achieve great social and economic benefits.

At present, medical scenarios are one of the few scenarios where artificial intelligence is deeply integrated. Among the first ten artificial intelligence demonstration application scenarios supported by the Ministry of Science and Technology, intelligent diagnosis and treatment is one of them.

Medical AI is exerting value in a variety of scenarios, and policies and markets have also paid great attention. To what extent it will reconstruct the medical system and improve medical services, perhaps we should return to " The highlight is "landing".