Chinas is to lead the healthcare revolution - Pascal's China Lens week 44
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the next 10 years the healthcare industry is going to have a revolution like never seen before the next 10 years will be bigger in terms of change than the last 50. and a lot has to do with artificial intelligence the advancements in biotechnology but also since the pandemic the digital transformation that we all went into and so the question that i would like to answer in this week's pascal's china lens is could china be leading this healthcare revolution globally what i've experienced over the past five years in china when it comes to health care has been such a transformation that i can only imagine how the next five years will look like and so i believe in the next five to ten years china is going to lead the global health care revolution now to explain it i would like to take you to a personal story this goes back 2014. i had a pneumonia i was overworked but i had no idea that i had a pneumonia so i went to the hospital region hospital in shanghai very close to where i lived and i went to actually see a doctor so i had to wait a couple of hours and then i could see the doctor and what was amazing is that as soon as i got to see the doctor within a minute he could tell me i had pneumonia i said how did he know well he sees so many patients that he could immediately identify it now i had to do an x-ray at that point and took about 30 minutes 30 minutes later he had it confirmed and the verdict was that i would have to stay for three weeks into an iv room what that means is that every day for two three hours i had to have some needle in my in my arm with an iv and get cured by the medicine that was in there and i did that for three weeks and this was a crazy experience because for me this is like 2014. i saw all these people sick people all in one room
with all the germs and i was like how can this be healthy but even my staff at my company when they felt not very good they didn't feel well they had what they called ganmao in Chinese a flu they instantly went into the hospital got an iv into their arms and after an hour they were cured and we in the west in belgium at least i would sit at home for one or two days sit it out sweat it out and then be cured as well but no in china they want the quick fixes so this was my experience but during that time i really observed the medical staff and i thought this was amazing because what i saw there i've never seen anywhere else the speed and efficiency that these nurses could actually put needles in people's hands never make a mistake do it very quickly work synchronize together i mean this was like a factory on steroids amazing and so from that point on i got a lot of respect for the medical staff in china and i always if i had something i always went to a chinese hospitals i wasn't even thinking anymore to go to a foreign hospital back home so this was my personal experience but what's happened in the last 20 years 30 years in china has really been transformative so there's a lot of things in society that change so fast that the medical industry the healthcare industry could not follow think about environment think about substances think about alcohol cigarettes pollution lifestyle with obesitas lots of problems that have occurred in china like 10 times bigger as a problem that it used to be 30 40 years ago which of course puts a lot of strain on the hospitals on top of that there's still a lot of poor people that didn't get insurance before or couldn't afford these expensive care health care and the biggest problem of all is actually the professionals there's not enough general practitioners there's not enough doctors in china there's about one doctor for every six thousand six hundred people in china in the west in a country like belgium it's about one for every thousand or thousand five hundred people so it's like four or five times less doctors per amount of population that china has a huge problem and that's because this medical industry did not keep up with the pace of the whole industry the whole population that wanted more health care and could afford more health care now on top of that you have the aging population i made a video two weeks ago about that and there you could really see that these people are getting older and of course they need more health care and medical care they're not living with their family anymore so big change societal and so that changes really dictates a new health care need and this is what i've seen in the past five years but if you would have gone to a public hospital five years ago any public hospital in any big city in china what you see every morning is that there's like hundreds of people lining up at the door until the door opens as soon as it opens they all rush in to be the first to get an appointment with the doctor at the secretary desk and as soon as they get an appointment they can see a doctor and a doctor in a public hospital in china five years ago was seeing on average 100 to 200 patients per day 200 patients per day imagine that gives you five minutes five minutes to understand the problem give a diagnose a prescription and then it's next next next and i experienced this a couple of times it's crazy that's why they're so efficient because they see so many people that at the same time they don't have a lot of time so there's no time for this personal connection on top of that when you go and see a doctor in a public hospital very often the doors are still open because it's just too much it takes a minute to open and close the door every time so look just keep it open so every time i was telling a story to a doctor or my wife we always had like three people in the back cheering in and say don't worry this is all gonna be fine it's hilarious but privacy big question mark there so lack of privacy for sure and if you think about the trust level then this doctor sees 20 000 patients a year so if you ask any chinese anywhere in the country if a machine like ibm watson that based on millions of data points can actually tell you with a pretty high accuracy whether you have skin cancer or not would you trust this machine or would you trust a doctor that you don't know don't trust and basically are worried about except if you get recommended which is still often the case in china go to that doctor which means that every chinese is going to the same doctor so some are overworked and others don't have a lot of work but in china if you ask that every chinese will choose for the technology instead of the doctor that they don't know or don't trust and so this is a very different thing from the west where we specifically in belgium where i live my doctor takes like 30 minutes time to talk to me they know me they know my family they know my history they know everything so very different and that's the cultural difference and that's why technology in china is really something that was booming over the past five years specifically in artificial intelligence now there's some companies like biomind in china and biomind is a chinese singaporean corporation and just two years ago three years ago 2018 they did a test a competition between the machine and the people and they said okay let's have a pool of of doctors surgeons brain tumor surgeons and this biomind machine that can detect brain cancer's brain tumors and within half an hour time these doctors figured out about with a 66 accuracy the people who had a brain tumor the machine in just 15 minutes did it with an 87 percent accuracy so if you tell that story to a chinese to most of the people they will actually say of course this machine is more accurate i trust this machine more than i trust this person and so this is a very different environment and that's why technology got embedded so quickly into healthcare it actually creates more trust now if you look at the technology in itself artificial intelligence ai there's no doubt that china is leading on ai globally i mean there's this technology race between china and the us but they're really at the same level companies like e2 but also companies like baidu like alibaba like tencent i mean they're putting in all their algorithms which are top-notch and applied in the medical industry but then there's also the digital transformation if you look at that during the pandemic chinese were using these health qr codes and financial from alibaba developed it and very quickly it was deployed everywhere everybody was using us no questions asked i know it was compulsory for many but at the same time they had a little problem with using it look at the application like good doctor from pinghan the insurance company of china the biggest one then you see that ping and good doctor had already before the pandemic in 2019 about 350 million users today we're talking about more than half a billion chinese using telemedicine telehealth to consult a doctor and get diagnosed through their mobile app no problem everybody's used to it so china is like three to five years ahead of the west when it comes to these technologies now when you look at equipment there's companies like mind ray and united imaging in china maintenance and shinzon united imaging shanghai they have great equipment from ultrasound to pet scanners and everything you could imagine but they're only 30 years old some of them even 20 years old and so 20 years ago this was really the low end this was really competition on price then 10 years ago they got started to compete on the middle end and today they're competing on the high end but it will take probably another five to ten years because before these companies will replace the most expensive machines from ibm ge siemens johnson johnson or mitronic all these top machines it probably takes another five to ten years but they're getting there and today my hospital in belgium is using mind ring for ultrasounds and they think this machine is as good as ge so i think we shouldn't underestimate the power of technology and equipment coming from china these days the other thing is biotech and that's a long story but we don't have time for that here the reality is that in the pharmaceutical industry this industry has been very upset with china it's probably the industry which has been the most upset with the regulation in china they had real challenges to get their patents but they also had problems when it comes to copycats that weren't uh that the government and the regulators accepted and they were going for generic drugs instead of new biotech or new developments so the foreign companies were really not treated fairly that's what you always hear in the pharmaceutical industry and in a way it's true but the reality is that china chose for actually helping millions of people rather than actually helping the industry did they do it right did they not do it right big question reality is that is what it is today but for the biotech specifically the last five years but even 10 years ago it started there's thousands of scientists life scientists phds that came back from the west to work in china now and basically are adding to the new biotech industry and if you look at the vaccine from covet 19 i mean they're not so bad i mean they're doing real great job and there's lots of examples where the biotech industry in china is now leveling up with the bioin tech industry globally and they're pouring billions in so i have a very good feeling that give it five or ten years and china is at the same level maybe even leading now if you talk about healthcare you also have to talk about tcm traditional chinese medicine because this is still very important in china and as we know this is centuries old and and most of the chinese they actually they like this history this tradition and when you go to a hospital you go to a doctor you typically get western medicine western drugs but you also get the chinese equivalent the tcm equivalent and this is not just about old people that want to keep a traditional life no even young people kids are learning in school about tcm and keeping the body healthy if you see now millennials and and even youngsters generations that they're really going into these tea houses and getting infusions with tcm uh parts because they believe that this is all about their culture it's all about keeping fit keeping healthy and so this is a new trend of an old tradition that is coming back as well so this is really about the current china now the interesting thing about tcm about traditional chinese medicine is that they look at the body as one whole everybody is unique and of course everybody's unique but if you look at western medicine we don't think that way we look at averages and we think a drug works for 99 or 98 for everyone so we give the drug to 100 of the people but you could be different and so in the western medicine we look at curing problems based on average and based on what we've experienced or the results of an experiment but in china they look at all your factors of your past they look at your factors of your lifestyle did you sleep enough that you eat enough that you drink enough and they look at lots of stuff where you live pollution whatever and so this is looking at every individual differently now in the western medicine when we look at every person uniquely as one we get into the genomics area and this is about dna and genes and so this project it started in 1988 is the biggest project that ever happened in that area the human genome project took 15 years but after 15 years a lot of countries helped into the research they found 20 500 genomes so the whole body of a person was put into a map so they could detect and figure out the whole dna structure the whole dna structure of a whole person of every person individually and so this is looking again at the person itself at individuals now the company in china that participated in that project which was 15 years long is actually bgi and this company bgi they are now the biggest genome sequencing company in the world they started in 2003 once their funding was ended with the human genome project they had no more money after the project stopped and so they went into the commercial by sequencing the gene at that time it was still millions of dollars to do now we're talking about hundreds of dollars because everything evolved they also bought one of the biggest american companies that has this equipment which is complete genomics which is a competitor of illumina the biggest american gene sequencing equipment manufacturer in the world and so they now have this capacity as well not only do they produce the machines they're also doing the sequencing itself and they have a huge database of dna now the ceo of this company was actually called wang jin or jinwon in chinese and wang jin in 2015 he decided to leave the mothership although this was one of the most promising and still is the biggest company in gene sequencing he said i have to do more for society and so everybody was wondering why is this guy leaving this company and the reality is that he thinks and i can really recommend the tedx that he has online to explain the whole story it's about 10 minutes so i don't have time for that but the reality is that he explains that he wants to make a digital map of every human and so the gene or genome is the starting point that's really what makes everybody unique but that changes over time because we live in a certain environment we have medical history we have a lifestyle maybe we have bacteria or viruses or we have all kinds of omics as he calls it that influences our life and our future and our health and so what he's doing is he wants to take all that data and he's been doing that for the past five years to then put artificial intelligence to work on it so that you can actually manage your personal health you can know exactly how healthy you are and what you should do could do cannot do to actually improve or get make it worse for your health and this is about personal health management now what i like about wong jing is that this is typical an example of a scientist an entrepreneur someone that is like an elon musk it's it's like a steve jobs it's it's like somebody in the u.s in silicon valley that came up and has these moonshot inventions that want to change the world like the google of healthcare is what he wants to create or the amazon of healthcare and so we never see or talk about these people but they exist in china the reason we don't talk about it is because they don't look for as much exposure in the rest of the world as the ellen musks do and so it's a very different culture but there do exist and there's lots of them and these are really cool people now the other thing is the government and you can't detach health care from the government anywhere in the world but definitely not in china and in china there's now the healthy china 2030 plan and that means in the next nine years china has real targets and so this plan which was built many years ago is actually putting real targets for 2030 on life expectancy on infant mentality child molecular mortality and lots of things there's a whole list of targets that they want to reach and so far they've been reaching their ahead of target sometimes and they're reaching their target every year which is really impressive but china has to do this and can only do this by changing the whole infrastructure but it's also changing the way people think about health care and that's the other thing that is so strong in china which takes much longer in the rest of the world they have put health care into all the policies in china and that means anything you want to do whether it's about the environment or about education or about the economy whatever you think about you have to have health care somewhere in there just like sustainability these are two two topics which is always have to be in every industry and everything that china is doing and so this goes top down and that means every local government understands they have to build clinics they have to invest in biotech they have to invest in automation and new hospitals and so on the second thing is my health under my control and this is like wangjin first you need to know how to control it but this is also about telling people telling 1.4 billion people how to take more care and better care of their health and that means exercise it means eat more healthy but it's also things like use tcm awareness it's about this digital apps it's about medicine that is available so there's a lot of information flowing to the people to improve their health and the third thing is china sees health and health care as a growth of the economy it's like an engine and motor for the economy while we in the west often see healthcare still as a cost center in china they're starting to see it as an opportunity a way to make money and this is because tourism couldn't prove health tourism it could improve in tcm that gets sold maybe also globally there's a lot of things like exercising this could all make money because there's new industries popping up and so having these targets having this mindset change having a blueprint and helping people to elevate out of their health care crisis sometimes is really what the government is taking care of and this is quite unique and that's why i think this revolution is really happening but it also has something to do with the infrastructure china is really great at building infrastructure i mean the best at building infrastructure they've done it for the high-speed trains they've done it for 5g they do it for electrical vehicles we've talked about that in previous videos but now you see this in healthcare as well every hospital is getting automated they're buying the most expensive material or equipment from abroad from ge from philips from siemens from anybody but also their mind ray and united imaging everything's getting automated and what that means is that these hospitals these clinics can now elevate these nurses and these doctors to do better or more work that they otherwise could not do because they don't have the skills for it these robots can do it the second thing is research and china is putting everything on research specifically biotech they want to become the biotech leader in the world and they're really doing a good job in that direction but it's the billions of dollars they're putting in it and also helping the education to focus on that industry and that is going to change a lot but for me the thing that is really changing china when it comes to healthcare is this accessibility of digital healthcare it's telehealth it's remote healthcare it's doing everything and thanks to 5g that's now possible to do remote surgery but also just with a mobile app you can have a consultation with good doctor there's no problems anymore and so this is a complete change where in the west we only see this happening now post-pandemic and in china it's happened for the past five years and this is exploding now now the last thing is about private many many companies are offering private solutions for customers for citizens in the healthcare industry and that is because the middle class got richer and so they can pay more they can afford more and so you see almost these hotel hospitals or clinics where you get treated like a vip and this is another level this is not for the general public now the general public now 98 has basic universal health care insurance but there's still people that say i want better treatment and then they can afford it and this is a booming industries also in the retirement homes so we see a lot of things happening so the infrastructure in the next five years will be so impressive that we won't be able to recognize it anymore now i think we should stop looking down on china when it comes to healthcare and of course there's a big problem on healthcare just because there's 1.4 billion people lifestyles have changed and the hospitals could not follow the doctors were not enough so big crisis and they need reforms and there's been a lot of corruption but let's not look down on it anymore because i think china is reiterating and completely thinking differently about the health care of the future now and you see it happening in real life now if you compare to america i mean in america it's of course they're the number one in terms of health care north america i mean great doctors great equipment great hospitals the problem is it's not accessible to everyone only if you have money many people cannot afford it or cannot actually i don't have the insurance to get this good these good treatments and so in my view you can't call this a revolution healthcare revolution in north america if it's not for everyone but that's just my personal opinion now in europe where i live in belgium pretty much healthcare is available for everyone and it's very inexpensive the government is paying back most of it so it's really very accessible the problem in europe is regulation and mindset a law gets regulated meaning that new technologies like digital and ai it takes time before it gets implemented and it's a very traditional industry on top of that people are a little bit afraid to take that next step they still prefer to talk to a doctor person to person they don't trust that machine as much and so that just slows down this whole process so i think china just takes the best of both worlds it's really accessible to everyone and it's also something that gets quickly implemented for the whole population and it's top notch and getting better and better so give it five or ten years i think i predict china is going to lead the revolution in health care so i talked about a lot of aspects in the healthcare but there's still a lot more to talk about and i didn't go in depth in each of these industry biotech ai i mean there's stories on itself but i hope it gives you a general idea do subscribe if you haven't done so so you can follow my other videos on china's innovation i hope you liked it and see you next week for another episode on Pascal's China lens
2021-06-01 06:25