HONG KONG and SHANGHAI, Oct. 3, 2018 /PRNewswire/ -- China's leading one-stop healthcare ecosystem platform, Ping An Good Doctor (the "Company", stock code: 1833.HK), and the top speech recognition technology company in China, Unisound, have jointly drafted the discussion paper on The Specification of Chinese Speech Recognition Difficulty Classification Certification (the "Specification") and recently submitted a standard framework report to China Artificial Intelligence Industry Alliance ("CAIIA"). The report was presented at a special discussion session of a standardization and promotion working group at the CAIIA 2018 Alliance Member Conference. The Specification is the first industry-standard specification for smart speech recognition technology in China.
The experts at the session agreed that the Specification addresses the long-standing difficulties found in the sector. It proposes a measurement constituting key indicators to evaluate the difficulty and capability of Chinese speech recognition technology at the application level, which will play a significant role in promoting the application within the industry.
The Specification divides the difficulty of Chinese speech recognition into four levels from L1 to L4, providing a rating basis for the accuracy of interactive voice products in actual application scenarios. The Specification rates accuracy in terms of two dimensions, acoustics and linguistics, which identify more than 10 factors such as signal-to-noise ratio, the level of Mandarin Chinese, speech habits, wording and sentence pattern.
CAIIA was initiated by China Information and Communication Research Institute, China Electronics Technology Standardization Research Institute and the National Industrial Information Security Development Research Center, as well as more than 300 AI-related enterprises and organizations in China. CAIIA is highly authoritative and impartial in the industry.
In recent years, major manufacturers in the field of AI speech recognition have been deeply cultivating their technology R&D, and the Chinese speech recognition rate has increased to over 90%. The recognition rate of Unisound in vertical industries such as healthcare has reached over 97%. With the rapid development of smart speech recognition technology, smart interactive voice solutions are widely used in smart home, smart car, smart medical, smart education and other fields, which realizes human-computer interaction and thus attracts a large number of users due to its convenience. According to the data of the China Smart Home Industry Research Report issued by iResearch, the value of China's smart home market reached RMB334.23 billion in 2017, a year-on-year increase of 24.8%, which means the application of smart speech recognition technology has broad prospects.
However, due to the lack of a universal standard at the application level, enterprises lack market credibility while developing and promoting relative products and customers cannot reference authoritative technology indicators while purchasing such products. The lack of a universal standard has become one of the main obstacles for the development of the industry. Some international corporations, such as IBM, Microsoft and AT&A, have been studying speech recognition technology for many years and also proactively participated in setting up the industry standard, to maintain their advantageous positions in the competitive market. Although China has started to promote technical standards such as structure and interface, the lack of standards at the application level, however, goes against the development of speech recognition technology and the sector in China.
In December 2017, Ping An Good Doctor partnered with Unisound to establish a joint venture, Shanghai Hao Yi Zhi Neng Technology Company Limited. They will explore the development of the smart family doctor services based on the technologies of the joint venture, including speech recognition. To address the needs of development for enterprises and the industry, Ping An Good Doctor and Unisound studied the characteristics of Chinese speech for more than half a year, before jointly drafting the framework of Specification. With broad industry application prospects, the Specification will provide practical and feasible technical standards for the development of speech recognition technology and the speech recognition sector in China.
About Ping An Good Doctor (01833.HK)
Ping An Good Doctor is the leading one-stop healthcare ecosystem platform in China. By combining "mobile health + AI technology", the Company strives to provide every family with a family doctor, every person with an e-health profile and everyone with a healthcare management plan. Ping An Good Doctor has established a comprehensive, one-stop healthcare ecosystem covering family doctor services, consumer healthcare services, a health mall as well as health management and wellness interaction.
As of the end of June 2018, there were 228 million registered users and the Company's MAU reached 48.6 million. Ping An Good Doctor is today the largest mobile medical application in China in terms of user scale. Ping An Good Doctor employs more than a thousand medical personnel (Assistant Supervisor Level or above from Class III Grade A Hospitals) in its in-house medical team and contracts with 4,650 renowned external doctors. This in-house medical team, empowered by our proprietary AI technology, provides users with 24 x 7 online consultation services. In our offline partnership network, Ping An Good Doctor collaborates with approximately 3,100 hospitals (including more than 1,200 Class III Grade A hospitals) to provide services such as hospital referral, appointment and inpatient arrangements. Ping An Good Doctor also partners with more than 2,000 healthcare institutions, including physical examination centers, dental clinics, cosmetic surgery institutions and more than 10,000 pharmacy outlets, to provide relevant health and wellness services to our users. By integrating our AI-empowered medical team, external doctors and offline network, Ping An Good Doctor has established a closed-loop healthcare ecosystem which enables our users to enjoy online consultations and online drug purchases, as well as online consultations and offline follow-up treatment, thereby providing convenient, high-quality and efficient family doctor services.
In April 2015, the App "Ping An Good Doctor" was officially launched. In May 2016, the Company completed an A round financing and raised US$500 million. In December 2017, the Company completed the pre-IPO financing from Softbank Vision Fund, during which it raised US$400 million. On 4 May 2018, Ping An Good Doctor became the No.1 listed internet health-tech company in the world when it joined the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, stock code 01833.HK. Our IPO cornerstone investors include Blackrock, Capital Group, GIC, Canada Pension Plan Investment Board, Khazanah Nasional Berhad, Swiss Re and CP Group.
