- According to Eric Topol, a US expert on medical AI, China has „shifted faster than the US“ from research to implementation in medical AI. Harvard Business Review commented that the US is experiencing „switchover disruptions“ due to patients’ concerns about privacy and practitioners’ concerns about AI substituting them.
- In China, public hospitals accounted for more than 80 percent of in-patient admissions and ambulatory visits in 2018. The public hospitals are interconnected at the provincial level. As a result, AI researchers and companies in China can train models on data sets covering entire provinces.
- In contrast, US counterparts are restricted to working with information from single hospitals operated by private businesses that keep records on internal servers. They also face stricter regulations on data and privacy.
- The Chinese medical AI market is also stimulated by imbalances in the talent pool and between regions: On a per-capita basis, China has a shortage of medical practitioners but an abundance of IT engineers. Medical resources are concentrated in cities but scarce in rural areas. Remote medical services enabled by AI applications can mitigate both problems.
- The fast pace of medical AI development has raised privacy concerns in China in recent years. Chinese media CN-Healthcare reported that third-party data brokers sold medical records from hospitals to AI companies without legal permits or regulations in 2017. In response, Chinese authorities have accelerated lawmaking on data and privacy protection. The latest developments include the Personal Information Protection Law published in late 2021.
Sinolytics is a research-based business consultancy entirely focused on China. It advises European companies on their strategic orientation and specific business activities in the People’s Republic.