SHANGHAI, Feb. 18, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- China's leading one-stop healthcare ecosystem platform Ping An Health Medical Technology Company Limited ("Ping An Good Doctor", or the "Company", stock code: 01833.HK) has significantly expanded the capacity of its supercomputing platform. The platform now has the world's best parallel processor which can process massive data in a short period of time, improve the research and development ("R&D") efficiency of artificial intelligence ("AI"), accelerate iterated speed of AI applications and strengthen the AI healthcare technology of the Company through disruptive technological innovations.
Computing power, algorithmic models and big data are the three foundations of AI development. By utilizing high-performance computing clusters like a supercomputing platform, Ping An Good Doctor can improve the efficiency of processing medical images and other information, and verify and optimize increasingly complex models in order to provide an accelerated engine for deep learning. The Company has also accumulated a large amount of healthcare big data.
With the rapid growth of users on the Ping An Good Doctor App, the AI applications need to carry out in-depth learning in many fields such as image, voice and natural language processing to provide diversified medical and healthcare services. As a result, the original computing power struggled to meet data processing requirements. The expansion of the super-calculation platform provides basic technical support for the AI R&D team to achieve rapid development and efficient operation.
"After the expansion, the R&D efficiency of our AI team will double. In the previous system, the AI model required several weeks to study the relevant information, but this can now be completed in a few days," a Ping An Good Doctor spokesperson said.
For example, the smart traditional Chinese medicine ("TCM") diagnosis by tongue observation in the Modern Physician Hua Tuo Project requires images of a user's tongue to analyze information such as its color. After the comprehensive AI analysis, the integrated data is directly transmitted to the TCM doctor's workplace and the AI doctor will recommend the TCM prescription. The R&D team needs a computing platform to assist in processing the massive number of tongue images, and relies on high performance computing to continuously optimize the model to obtain accurate analysis results throughout the process.
"Secondly, from the perspective of data security, a powerful supercomputing platform can prevent data theft by third parties," the Ping An Good Doctor spokesperson added, with more and more key business and important data being stored by the supercomputing platform, Ping An Good Doctor can now better manage and operate this unified platform to avoid any problems.
As one of the first companies to build a supercomputing platform for internet healthcare, Ping An Good Doctor has already seized more opportunities in AI R&D and accumulated relevant experience. At present, the Company provides comprehensive medical and health services to users through its own medical team assisted by AI technology. The efficiency and accuracy of its online consultation have greatly improved with AI technology and big data analysis, reducing the unit cost of online consultation. In the future, Ping An Good Doctor will utilize the supercomputing platform to develop more AI medical technology applications and maintain its industry-leading innovation capabilities.
About Ping An Healthcare and Technology Company Limited (01833.HK)
Ping An Healthcare and Technology Company Limited ("Ping An Good Doctor", stock code: 01833.HK) 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.
