This Tencent-backed startup wants to use AI to solve disparities in China’s healthcare

Photo credit: Phalinn Ooi.

Even before Ding Xiaowei entered the medical industry, he knew hospitals well. He spent his childhood in them, tagging along as his grandparents treated patients. As a young boy, he saw how healthcare touched the lives of normal people, especially those who couldn’t afford the best treatment.

“A lot of my pets were from villagers who were too poor to pay for the care they received as patients,” the 28-year-old recalls. “They would give us a lot of dogs and cats as a way to thank my grandmother.”

Growing up in that environment – normally a depressing place for healthy individuals, he says – planted the seed that eventually guided his computer science career to medicine. In 2016, Ding co-founded Voxelcloud, an artificial intelligence company specializing in medical imaging, with the aim of improving access to accurate diagnosis.

“The fact that medical resources are not evenly distributed is a clear problem,” he tells Tech in Asia.

Doctors in China sometimes see more than 100 patients a day.

In China, for instance, the disparity between hospitals in Shanghai and Beijing and those in smaller cities can make the difference between life and death. Ding’s own grandmother experienced that when she entered a hospital in Qingdao – a city of more than nine million inhabitants – for a blood infection. It was only because Ding was able to consult two doctors in Shanghai that she survived, he says. “The doctors at the local hospital didn’t know what to do.”

Doctors in China are also extremely overworked, sometimes seeing more than 100 patients a day – with some earning less than US$500 a month. That means boosting doctors’ efficiency is crucial to managing caseloads, especially in places where hospitals are shorthanded. Some tasks, such as preventive health screenings, can also be moved from the clinic to the household, says Ding.

It’s not easy for those without professional medical knowledge to carry out these screenings – say, for nearsightedness in teens and children – yet there’s no need to visit a doctor either.

“AI is fundamentally about solving simple and repetitive problems at scale,” he adds.

Out of the lab and into the fire

In a sense, Voxelcloud is a continuation of Ding’s work as a PhD student at the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA). There, he worked with doctors at Cedars-Sinai Medical Center to automate certain analyses of cardiac images, such as those related to coronary artery disease.

After graduating, he considered staying on and becoming a professor. “Professors and startup founders have one thing in common – no one manages you,” says Ding. But he chose the entrepreneurship route in the end because it was faster.

Professors and startup founders have one thing in common – no one manages you.

“Pulling together a research group as a professor is a long and difficult process,” he explained. “You have to find a faculty position, apply for national grants, and hire students. It’s definitely slower than a startup that’s raised capital.”

Data bottleneck