Royal Philips and cloud-based healthcare service provider Digital China Health co-created a teleradiology application and services platform called SHINEFLY to assist with the growing imaging procedure volume in the country.

“We have worked together with local partners to develop a solution that is fully optimized to address the local healthcare challenges and needs,” Shi Wenzhao, CEO of Digital China Health, told HCB News. “This means SHINEFLY has been purpose-built for the Chinese market and will only be made available in China.”

The imaging procedure volume is increasing at a faster rate than the amount of radiologists. In addition, many of its primary and secondary hospitals lack financial resources or access to qualified staff that’s needed to provide adequate radiology services.

Among the top priorities in China’s healthcare reform is to optimize the distribution of quality medical resources through a newly-designed healthcare system. That would involve large and small hospitals sharing resources and expertise.

“The development of the healthcare big data industry is one of the government priorities to drive healthcare reform,” said Wenzhao. “With this aim, the Chinese government has formed three state-owned groups to fulfill the state mission and drive the development and application of ‘healthcare big data.’”

The mother company of Digital Health China is DC Holdings, which belongs to one of the national teams. Philips has also been working with other local IT giants in China that are also part of national teams.

SHINEFLY is a scalable, customizable cloud-based image management solution that stores, retrieves, views and analyzes medical images. This allows experts anywhere in the country to remotely analyze the images and generate reports.

The solution features advanced clinical applications for cardiology, neurology and oncology. They will be offered as cloud-based teleradiology services and users will pay per use.

SHINEFLY can be customized to satisfy several different radiological service models. Tiered hospital alliances can leverage it to make medical images and clinical applications available at all levels, and national medical centers can use it to provide disease-specific radiology services.

In other news, Philips is also driving AI innovation in China. On Friday, the company announced that it has established an AI lab in Shanghai to integrate AI technologies with medical imaging, image-guided therapies, patient monitoring, health informatics, home care and personal health.

According to Philips, this will foster local innovation and encourage the interconnection of people, data and technology, as well as improve healthcare accessibility in China by optimizing the healthcare process and increasing efficiency.

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