November in 2018 must be a critical month for Deepwise (深睿医疗), a Chinese artificial intelligence company developing medical imaging system, and dedicating to using its deep learning technologies in the field of early screening of several kinds of malignant diseases and accurate diagnostic solutions.

New products launched

According to information from Leiphone.com, Nov 7, 2018, CMA (Chinese Medical Association) held its 25th National Radiology Academic Conference and 26th National Medical Imaging Technology Academic Conference in Beijing. Meanwhile, Deepwise’s new product launch conference was also held successfully. During the conference, Deepwise officially launched its Dr.WiseTM, with 6 products belonging to 4 categories.

Dr.WiseTM AI System for Early Cancer Screening, including two products, the latest generation of AI-Assisted Pulmonary Nodule Screening/Diagnosis System and the AI-Assisted Mammography Screening System;

Dr.WiseTM AI-assisted Stroke Detection and Analysis System, including Hemorrhagic Stroke Detection as well as Ischemic Stroke Detection;

Intelligent Imaging Cloud, Dr.WiseTMCloud;

Research platform, Dr.WiseTM Multimodal Research Platform.

Endorsement of Deloitte China

According to “2018 High-tech and High-growth China Top 50 Report” released by Deloitte China on Nov 20, 2018, Deepwise was listed as one of the “China Rising Star” companies.

Candidates of the “China Rising Star” companies should be equipped with leading technology and sustainable business model, and the companies’ industrial segments should have boundless space for growth, in which the companies could enter a leading position in future.

The most important indicators of the assessment were the founding team, technological innovation, industry prospects, and corporate valuation. To be listed somehow reflected Deepwise’s certain advantages.

Chief Scientist with International Recognition

Also in November, Professor YU Yizhou (俞益洲) was elected as a 2018 ACM Distinguished Scientist and 2019 IEEE Fellow.

As the co-founder and chief scientist of Deepwise, YU Yizhou and his core algorithm team were said to be the foundation of all the achievements mentioned above, no matter the products or the honors.

ACM is the oldest, largest and most authoritative computer professional society in the world. The famous Turing Award is evaluated and promulgated by the organization. ACM Distinguished Scientists must be researchers who made significant achievements and influences in the computer field. Only 49 researchers with outstanding contributions to computer engineering, education, and science have been selected, all over the world.

IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) is an international association of electronic technology and information science engineers. IEEE Fellow is the highest honor awarded by the organization. It is recognized as an authoritative honor and an important professional achievement in the academic and scientific community.

No much time was left for Deepwise

Deepwise was actually only a one year and a half startup, founded in Mar 2017 and successfully raised around CNY 300 million (USD 43 million) in 3 rounds of financing in its first year. However, Deepwise’s business prospects are still unclear, even with its launched products and industrial recognition.

Until now, AI-assisted medical services, including medical imaging, are still a nice-to-have choice for most of the hospitals, need more tests and demonstrations, as well as the promulgation of relevant laws and regulations, the acceptance of the new technologies wouldn’t be as smooth as other industries.

"So far, hospitals shared the data in some way to exchange the use of AI technologies for free, if it is charged, the hospital might reconsider it." A experienced saleperson in the industry told the author.

AI algorithms need a large amount of data to improve its accuracy, the latecomer had no any advantages unless it can achieve a breakthrough in medical data acquisition, which was a really big challenge in China.

Before Deepwise, AI-assisted medical technology companies had joined the industry since 2012, and 2017 the number of investment events achieved its peak at 45, and there were already dozens of companies in the market, focusing on the similar fields with Deepwise, such as Huiyihuiying.com (汇医慧影), 12Sigma (图玛深维), Baheal Intelligent Technology (百洋智能科技), LinkDoc (零氪科技), etc. Facing the highly competitive environment, Deepwise does need to accelerate its business development.

What positive for Deepwise and the industry, would be the huge growth space of the industry, and the great meaning of AI's application in healthcare to serve people better in the future. And besides the traditional hospital, medical imaging diagnosis center could be a better application scenario for the AI-assisted medical imaging technologies.

- Author: ZHANG Fan; Write to ZHANG Fan at ZhangFan@EqualOcean.com