Diversification of medical artificial intelligence products, strong downstream demand
The upstream of the medical AI industry in China is mainly the industry that provides basic technical support for the industry, such as medical data mining, algorithms, etc. Typical companies include iCarbonX, Linking Medical, and RXThinking.
Downstream is mainly the application layer of medical AI technology, the main application scenarios are medical imaging, virtual assistants, drug development, health management, disease risk prediction, medical records/literature analysis, the representative companies include iFLYTEK, BGI, 12Sigma, CapitalBio, etc.
In the medical AI technology industry of China, a large number of enterprises have emerged, which have developed various medical AI products for medical industry applications, such as intelligent image-assisted diagnosis and treatment systems, consultation guide robots, voice electronic medical records, etc.
In terms of downstream demand, China’s medical industry has long had problems such as the uneven distribution of high-quality doctor resources, diagnostic misdiagnosis and omission rates taught, high medical costs, and a large gap between supply and demand for doctor resources. This problem has become more prominent in the process of China’s medical reform and graded diagnosis and treatment.
In addition, the distribution of medical resources in China is seriously uneven, with the tertiary hospitals mainly concentrated in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen and provincial capitals, which concentrate a large number of high-quality medical and nursing resources, making a large number of patients flock to these cities. And most of the time large hospitals because of the admission of a large number of patients with common diseases, multiple diseases, resulting in difficult to see patients, expensive, wasting valuable medical resources, making it difficult to get timely treatment of patients with serious and acute illnesses.
In this context, AI will work together in various scenarios to improve the level of medical services and improve the existing status quo. According to statistics, China’s hospitals deployed AI applications and mature use of less than 50%, there are still nearly 50% of hospitals did not try to access AI technology.
Chinese AI+ medical policies boost the rapid development of the industry
In April 2018, the General Office of the State Council of China issued the “Opinions on Promoting the Development of ‘Internet + Medical Health’” drafted by the National Health Care Commission and other ministries. The Opinions released multiple policy benefits: 1) recognizing the legitimacy of “Internet hospitals”; 2) supporting the outflow of prescriptions; and 3) promoting “Internet+” medical insurance settlement services.
In addition, the study of the “authentic right” of medical electronic information is underway; The Opinions confirms that, by 2020, hospitals above level 2 generally provide time-slotted appointments, intelligent medical guide triage, waiting reminders, test results query, interclinic settlement, mobile payment and other online services.
Driven by China’s national policy and the needs of various fields of medical care, the market size of China’s medical artificial intelligence industry has been rapidly expanding, with a compound growth rate of 31.98% from 2017 to 2019, which shows the huge potential of the industry. According to the statistics of the Chinese Institute of Electronics, the market size of the medical artificial intelligence industry will reach 7.53 billion yuan by 2021.
The core application value of medical artificial intelligence at each end is clear
Medical AI has a wide range of application scenarios in the patient side, hospital side and ecological section, and the core application value of medical AI is analyzed from different perspectives, including:
① Patient side: artificial intelligence to reshape the medical experience using artificial intelligence technology, medical services can break through the physical boundaries of the hospital, patient-centered, extending to the whole process of pre-consultation, consultation, post-consultation medical care.
② Hospital side: artificial intelligence reconstructs the management system artificial intelligence penetrates into patient management (electronic medical records), pharmacy management (intelligent closed-loop management of equipment and drugs), ward management (intelligent surgery scheduling), performance management (DRGs performance), backstage management (intelligent backstage integrated management of human resources, finance and taxation) and other aspects, bringing an overall upgrade and reconstruction of the hospital management system.
③ Ecological section: artificial intelligence improves medical service ecology. In the entire medical service system, the hospital is in the core position, it is the intermediate hub of the convergence and integration of information and data, in addition to other medical service providers, medical and health product providers, payers, regulators, etc.
The layout of enterprise products shows a scattered trend, mainly concentrated in two major areas
Since 2011 Watson laid its medical business development direction, there have been seven years, the seven years of artificial intelligence in the world’s development is booming, countless enterprises follow the trend, deep learning algorithms have gone through a number of generations, but after the wave, a large number of enterprises were closed down.
Now, the global surviving companies have gradually formed a top camp in the field of medical AI, and each company can report an accurate and high number for their AI products under the deep learning process, but the new era is no longer an algorithm-only era, and the measure of AI good or bad is no longer a number or the results of the man-machine battle can be judged, so only by allowing AI technology to be widely used in hospitals can they survive in the long run.
Currently, China’s domestic AI medical industry is focused on the landing segment. From the active medical AI companies in the market, the products are mainly laid out in 10 major fields such as medical imaging, medical record/documentation analysis, health management, hospital management and virtual assistant.
From these 108 companies product research direction can be seen, lung nodule screening, glucose network screening are two popular directions, the number of medical artificial intelligence companies assembled a total of 33, accounting for about 30.6%; but at the same time, more than 10 companies started to focus on cardiovascular diseases, which shows that China’s medical hot artificial intelligence products show a trend of dispersion.
From the specific layout of various types of medical artificial intelligence products enterprises, the two popular products medical imaging and disease risk prediction gathered a number of enterprises, according to statistics, there are 43 enterprises providing medical imaging services, mainly Aliyun, Wingspan, Arigin; 45 enterprises provide disease risk prediction services, these enterprises are 12Sigma, Berry Genomics, CapitalBio and so on.
Medical robots are widely used, and rehabilitation is the main field
Medical robots are one of the segments of robot applications, specifically robots used for medical or paramedical treatment in hospitals, clinics, rehabilitation centers and other medical scenarios. According to the International Federation of Robotics (FR) classification, medical robots are further divided into four major application areas: surgical robots, rehabilitation robots, assistive robots, and medical service robots.
According to CCID data, in China’s medical robot market in 2019, rehabilitation robots surgical robots, assistive robots and medical service robots accounted for 47%, 17%, 23% and 13% respectively.
The industry is favored by capital, but there is the phenomenon of investment aggregation
From the investment cases, from 2012 to the first half of 2020, China’s artificial intelligence medical field equity investment fever showed a trend of first increase and then decrease, of which the years with higher equity investment fever were 2016, 2017 and 2018. In 2019, affected by the capital winter, the artificial intelligence medical field investment fever has fallen back, the number of investment cases slipped to 52, and the investment amount was 1.546 billion yuan.
In the first half of 2020, due to the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic, the number of investment cases is still at a low level and has not rebounded significantly, with the number of investments in the first half of the year being 14 and the investment amount being 917 million yuan.
According to incomplete statistics from the health sector, from January to December 2020, there were 65 financing events in China’s healthcare AI field, of which medical imaging accounted for about 1/3 of the total number of financing rounds. From the financing rounds, some companies began to enter a mature stage of development, and companies whose products and technologies are recognized by the market and whose business models tend to be mature are also more likely to be favored by capital. The companies have also increased their technological research and development, innovation to thicken the competitive advantage and accelerate the pace of development.
In addition, in 2020, the passage of three types of artificial intelligence devices over the review is a milestone event for China’s medical AI industry. In 2020, a total of nine AI medical imaging products were approved by NMPA, and the AI medical imaging industry ran through the review and approval stage that has plagued it for many years, and stepped from “application landing” to “commercialization”.
The pandemic will accelerate the development of the medical artificial intelligence process
The application of AI in medical care is becoming more and more widespread, especially the medical image-assisted diagnosis system, which already covers the screening of many common types of cancer, and the product itself can be embedded into the workflow of doctors. With the catalytic effect of the pandemic, AI+public health, AI+hospital management, AI+medical robotics, AI+drug development, AI+health management and AI+medical payment will be further deepened.
Source: 51cto