(Yicai) Aug. 5 -- The third China Smart Medical Insurance Competition has begun, with organizers opening desensitized medical insurance data from some cities across four provincial-level regions in the Yangtze River Delta to teams in the final stage of the contest for the first time to support innovative drug research and development.

This year's competition, co-hosted by the National Healthcare Security Administration and the government of Shanghai, will grant finalists access to the city's desensitized medical insurance data, some non-medical insurance public data, and desensitized medical insurance data from one city in each of Jiangsu, Zhejiang, and Anhui provinces, the agency announced yesterday.

Participants in the annual China Smart Medical Insurance Competition submit various solutions for applying medical insurance big data, focusing on specific problems their projects can solve or the value they create. Beyond innovative drug R&D, the solutions cover innovation in medical insurance services, commercial health insurance, improving government service efficiency, and others.

The contest marks the first time the NHSA has attempted a cross-regional integrated application of medical insurance data, Deputy Director Huang Huabo said at a recent press conference. After desensitization, cities' medical insurance data will be available for on-site deployment and use by finalists within a fully enclosed and trusted data space, Huang added.

The competition will actively explore the empowerment of cross-industry data in multiple high-value fields, including innovative drug R&D and the development of commercial health insurance products and services, noted Fu Chaoqi, director of the NHSA's Big Data center. The initiative aims to enable medical insurance data to empower various industries, creating new application scenarios for the integrated development of medical insurance and other sectors' data, Fu said.

"This attempt will also explore tools for secure and trusted data flow within the Yangtze River Delta, as well as the joint development and utilization of public data, promoting regional integration in the area through medical insurance data cooperation," Fu pointed out.

The trusted data space provided by Shanghai's Pudong New Area for this year's competition has been significantly expanded compared to previous editions, Vice District Mayor Li Hui told Yicai. It has also been connected to some of the city's desensitized public data resources via local data infrastructure, striving to convert massive data resources into new drivers for developing new productive forces, Li added.

Editors: Tang Shihua, Martin Kadiev