(Yicai Global) May 6 -- The important role AI applications played in combating Covid-19 in various nations may spur greater global collaboration in medical innovations, according to a recent fireside chat webinar of industry insiders.

"Companies that would have not shared information or collaborated before are thinking about global collaboration for the first time," said Timothy Johns, head of digital health China at the UK Department of International Trade, who is based in Shanghai.

Johns was speaking at the fireside chat webinar organized by AI Space, the city's first incubator aimed specifically at the artificial intelligence sector, in conjunction with Yicai Global. The speakers focused on the contributions of the burgeoning sector in battling the coronavirus and the potential for global cooperation in the field.

The panel also included Gao Feng, partner at AI Space and founder of OpenData China, and Tom Mayblum, cofounder of Israeli automated diagnostic imaging startup Sonaris. The three discussed the current status of the pandemic in their respective countries as part of the event.

Shanghai set out lofty ambitions for its AI sector as early as November 2017 when authorities issued a city plan to expand its scale to more than CNY100 billion (USD14.2 billion) by this year. As part of these efforts, the eastern economic hub is setting up a dedicated industrial fund, along with six demonstration zones to showcase 60 AI applications. The central government upped the ante last May when it designated the city the country's second pilot zone for AI development.

AI Crisis

Gao discussed the crisis as a watershed moment for AI applications in the health sector. While a lot of the solutions have only just been deployed for the first time to fight the virus, most had already existed long before the situation took root.

"Even though it has been a crisis, it has also created a golden opportunity for the AI industry to have multiple scenarios in which they can test and deploy their products," said Gao as he introduced some of China's AI innovations used during the country's outbreak. "Citizens and healthcare staff were quick to adopt these solutions because they needed them on a daily basis to ease the pressure.”

One such example of an AI player that mobilized its products during the pestilence was Shanghai-based Yitu Technology. The firm, which has closed over USD400 million in funding rounds to date, worked with the Shanghai Public Health Clinical Center to roll out an AI diagnostic device able to detect signs of coronavirus via chest scanning in two to three seconds.

"They (Yitu) actually launched their own product on Jan. 28," Gao said. "It was possibly the first imaging AI solution for Covid-19 treatment in the country, first in Shanghai and later in Wuhan. We've also seen other Chinese companies like United Imaging doing similar things.”

Gao also noted the success of tech firm Envive, which provided a mobile service for citizens to quickly check their own symptoms before deciding on whether to seek medical help.

The company's auxiliary diagnosis system, available as a web application, app, or WeChat mini-program, is based on a semantic knowledge map generated after training an AI system on anonymous data from over 10 million journal articles, as well as from doctors themselves. Demand for online health inquiries skyrocketed in China in the last eight weeks after the onset of the virus with over half a billion virtual visits made in the industry as a whole, the company's founder Dr. Charlie Koo told Yicai Global. 

Going Nowhere

The discussion pivoted to the situation for AI startups post-Covid-19 and whether their deployment would continue, possibly heralding a golden age in the field.

"We are facing the start of an economic crisis," Mayblum said.“We have over a million unemployed and many startups do not have the funding to keep going.”

However, the Sonaris cofounder emphasized that for healthcare startups, the opportunities going forward are plentiful. "If we talk about the balance of safety, privacy and regulation, we see that many regulatory obstacles are now being lowered to get solutions faster into the market and deployment," he said.

He cited Israel as an example where such applications are being greased through approvals. Israel now hosts a central system where hospitals can post their challenges and startups are urged to provide potential solutions. "We see hospitals going from concept to deployment in a couple of weeks," Mayblum stated. "Prior to Covid-19, this could have taken months of legal hurdles, bureaucracy and security; these are the kinds of thing that are now being abandoned because of the crisis."

While he conceded the fast-tracking for startup solutions might not be here to stay once the pandemic is under control, he expressed optimism that if these startups can prove their value during this emergency situation, then perhaps they can remain a key cog in the healthcare ecosystem and generate their own clients.

Johns shares Mayblum's positive outlook when comparing Israel's situation with that of the UK. "Covid-19 has been a big wakeup call and a lot of us have realized our healthcare systems cannot handle epidemics like this without serious change," he said. "Medical AI and digital healthcare do hold a lot of the answers."

Many medical institutions will be less likely to go back from using AI to a "more manual paper-and-pen system," he noted. Johns expects more investment in the sector and relaxed regulation to egg such startups on but at the same time noted that funding and rubberstamping of projects will remain key global issues.

Editor: Ben Armour