Yitu's market-driven AI solutions polish the company, and there is a strong probability that the company will maintain and enhance its dominant position in the Medical AI and big-data of security industries in China.
Yitu Tech's Headquarters. Credit to Yitu Press Kit.
SAIL Award of AI World Innovation Challenge (AIWIN) is known as the Oscar of AI in China. In 2018, Yitu Tech (依图科技) acquired the SAIL award thanks to its Advanced Medical AI Tech, and in 2019, the company became the key partner of SAIL.
SAIL stands for Superior, Applicative, Innovative and Leading and the awarded companies are selected once a year to stimulate technological breakthroughs and applied innovations in the world. There are solid reasons why a Medical AI company like Yitu Tech won the prize.
Artificial intelligence (AI) is an umbrella term for several computer science technologies; Medical AI generally refers to medical imaging, cancer detection, diagnostic scans, robot-assisted surgery, health monitoring, drug discovery and virtual nursing assistants. According to IP Pragmatics estimation, the global medical AI market is set for healthy growth and projected to reach more than USD 6 billion in value by 2021.
Apart from the financial benefits that are being created by the applications of medical AI, it has potential to significantly contribute the world's very problematic regions through Medical Cloud and other applications, transforming these regions and help a limited number of doctors to cure a greater number of people. However, to implement the solutions that are provided by Medical AI, there must be a necessary healthcare infrastructure already been available to build the Medical AI upon it. Therefore, Medical AI will first be implemented in the developed economies, further diverging the fundamental healthcare gap between underdeveloped and developed regions.
“Digital health is not a silver bullet,” says Bernardo Mariano, WHO’s Chief Information Officer.
World Health Organization (WHO) sees Air Pollution, Weak primary healthcare and Vaccine Hesitancy as the biggest threats to global health in 2019. Unfortunately, digital healthcare and Medical AI have no available solutions for the fundamental problems that are mainly seen in the rural areas of Africa and South East Asia.
China, on the other hand, is gradually getting rid of its structural healthcare problems and bolstering its healthcare capacity with AI and Medical Cloud both in its rural and urban areas. What's more, the country is slowly eluding its disastrous Air Pollution issue by stringent policies and by conveying its Dirty Industry to the less developed regions around South East Asia, such as India and Bangladesh. However, still, its ageing demographics and Rural&Urban development gaps present a potential crisis for the country.
Within its complex healthcare infrastructure; Chinese medical AI companies are performing impressively in developing high-tech smart solutions in Healthcare; moreover, the country is currently applying these solutions in its countless hospitals. Medical image reading startups have already become capital chasing.
According to a report issued by EO Intelligence (亿欧智库), medical image reading’s tech maturity are varied in different areas. Major startups in the area include VoxelCloud (体素科技), InferVision (推想科技), 12Sigma (图玛深维), Huiyihuiying (汇医慧影), Yitu, DeepWise (深睿医疗), Airdoc so and so forth. These companies mostly focus on providing solutions in the early diagnoses and clinical assistance of Lung Cancer, Stroke and Coronary Diseases.
China's hazardous air created a massive lung and coronary diseases crisis for Contemporary China. Chinese Medical AI companies have already started to cure the country's bleeding wound. The overall infrastructure is ready for Chinese companies to provide their solutions today.
With its CNY 670 million total funding, Yitu is the biggest one amongst China's medical AI startups. The company provides solutions in CT/X-Ray/MRI image diagnosis assistance and clinical decision support platforms.
Lung cancer is the most common form of cancer in China, and it is difficult to detect, so the prognosis is typically not adequate. Increasing early detection is critical to reducing the mortality rate of lung cancer. Zhejiang Provincial People’s Hospital uses Yitu’s smart medical imaging platform for lung cancer for early detection. Another major problem for China is the lack of paediatricians amongst the nation. Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center have cooperated with Yitu developing a preliminary diagnosis platform for patients and paediatricians. It should be noted that Guizhou is one of the least developed and most deprived provinces of China.
Founded by Zhu Long (朱珑) and Lin Chenxi (林晨曦) in 2012; Sequoia China and Zhen Fund back the company. Yitu provides AI solutions in Face Recognition Systems and big data real-time cloud systems for Chinese public security institutions and municipalities, as well.
Yitu's market-driven AI solutions polish the company, and there is a strong probability that the company will maintain and enhance its dominant position in the Medical AI and big-data of security industries in China.