The four "13th Five-Year Plan" national key R&D programs undertaken by DHC passed the evaluation of the Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China with excellent results, and all of them were accepted.

National Key R&D Program of Ministry of Science and Technology, a touchstone for enterprises' technological innovation level

The National Key R&D Program is integrated from the original National Key Basic Research and Development Program (973 Program), National High Technology Research and Development Program (863 Program), National Science and Technology Support Program, and Special Research Program for Industrial Technology Research. The project is focused on the core competitiveness of industry, the overall independent innovation capacity and national security of strategic, basic, forward-looking major scientific issues, as well as major common key technologies and products. It mainly supports projects that fill industrial gaps and provide sustainable support and leadership for national economic and social development.

As a medical big data and artificial intelligence innovation enterprise, DHC has been recognized by many ministries and commissions, including the Ministry of Science and Technology, for its profound technical strength and ability to combine industry, academia and research.

The acceptance of the four national key research and development programs, all of them are the product technology formed by the cooperation with domestic famous hospitals and key universities. This achievement represents the forward-looking technology level of medical technology and life science in China, and shortens the gap with the same industry in developed countries.

Focus on improving the ability of precision medical treatment of difficult and serious diseases, artificial intelligence and big data to assist doctors in decision-making

"During the 13th Five-Year Plan period, China's economic strength, scientific and technological strength, and comprehensive national power leaped to a new level. The four "13th Five-Year Plan" national key research and development programs undertaken by DHC have attained high achievements.

1. Clinical Cohort Study of Rare Diseases

Peking Union Medical College (PUMC), Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences (CAMS), as the project leader, has established a national rare disease registry platform to conduct a large-scale rare disease registry and cohort study. Its aim is to promote the scientific research and clinical diagnosis and treatment capability of rare diseases in China to reach international level and standard.

As a technical contractor, DHC has built the national rare disease registration platform and the China Rare Disease Diagnosis and Treatment Service Information System, providing a reliable sharing platform for rare disease researchers. It also provides a high-security research platform for the establishment of single-center and multi-center research clusters, facilitating knowledge exchange and sharing across disease areas.

Project leader Zhang Leyang, President of Peking Union Medical College Hospital, headed the reply team

2. New service model solution of artificial intelligence-based clinical assisted decision support

DHC is the project leader, and Shi Wenzhao, Chairman and CEO of the company, is the project leader. Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Cancer Hospital of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, Fudan University, Sun Yat-sen University and Zhejiang University are the participating units.

Based on clinical guidelines and medical literature, the project has established a knowledge map for clinical diagnosis and treatment aids, clinical event inference and prediction. Meanwhile, a knowledge base of clinical disease data models has been established to realize the transformation of clinical data of 10 hospitals into a unified data model, as well as a knowledge base of assisted decision-making and interventions for diagnosis, treatment and rehabilitation. The project also created a clinical assisted decision-making cloud platform covering the whole process of consultation, initial diagnosis, diagnosis and treatment, forming a new clinical assisted model with full coverage of the closed-loop process of medical treatment.

Shi Wenzhao (left), Chairman and CEO of China HealthCare, and Mengchun Bow (right), Senior Vice President and Chief Medical Information Officer, attend the project acceptance and reply session

Project results identification

The project features technical advancement. It provides decision support recommendations to physicians based on the principles and evidence system of evidence-based medicine, an approach that is consistent with current clinical acceptability and beneficial to the efficiency of physicians. Also, the high degree of structured and standardized data lays the foundation for the accuracy of the system. The effective integration of the platforms and systems established by each group is favorable to the formation of an advanced and comprehensive clinical decision support system for more widespread application.

3.Research on the construction of clinical big data platform and biological sample bank for malignant tumors

Cancer Hospital of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences is the project leader to build a national clinical big data platform and collaborative network support platform for malignant tumors. DHC is the project organizer of the research on big data network technology, storage, transmission security and sharing mechanism of medical institutions, and Shi Wenzhao is the project manager. Other project sponsors include the Cancer Hospital of Fudan University and Hunan University.

The project collected various types of electronic medical record data such as pathology, testing and imaging including 8 common tumors, and realized standardized medical big data collection and analysis processing. To study the interpretation, post-processing and diagnostic standards of tumor image big data; to form a digital and shareable biospecimen and vitalomics resource library; to establish a sharing platform for clinical research big data and biospecimen repository. Under the guidance of the Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, DHC pioneered the construction of a nationwide tumor big data platform, providing a national project-level application demonstration for the application of big data governance for specialized diseases. It also helped the Cancer Hospital of Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences to link up the multicenter biospecimen repository within the hospital and develop a unified storage standard for biospecimens.

Project results identification 

The research results formed in this project are advanced and innovative in the industry. It has a very important role in organically integrating and fully exploiting clinical big data resources. The project has standardized the collection and sharing standards of clinical and histological data in each participating hospital, and laid a good foundation for further promotion of medical big data sharing mechanism.

4. the effective mining of precision medicine big data and key information technology research and development

Shanghai Jiao Tong University as the project leader, the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, Fudan University, Zhejiang University, DHC and other units as the subject to participate in the joint development of precision medicine big data integration platform. It provides a full-chain, easy-deployment and easy-operation solution for precision medicine big data analysis.

DHC has constructed analysis models and reporting systems for early warning and risk assessment of major diseases, personalized treatment and prognosis judgment; disease-specific knowledge bases and rule bases for disease systems; parallel computing systems for biomedical big data and genomic big data; and analysis and reporting systems for high-performance clinical treatment applications such as rare diseases, genetic tumors and somatic cell tumors.

The successful acceptance of the National Key R&D Program does not bring the project to an end. DHC is vigorously promoting the industrialization and scale up of the project innovations, so that each scientific research innovation can be implemented in the industrial development and social life, and promoting the progress of medical science and technology. Meanwhile, the four other "14th Five-Year Plan" national key R&D programs newly approved by DHC in 2021 are also being implemented in full swing. With the support of the mature model of "medical-industrial integration and clinical empowerment", DHC has seen a spurt of growth in technology, research, products and market, and has achieved a quantitative to qualitative change. In the future, DHC will also start deep cooperation with medical institutions, research institutes, pharmaceutical enterprises and universities to create international level " professional and specialized new products and applications" to support the early realization of a healthy China.