Ping An introduces doctor's AI assistant to Singapore

HONG KONG, July 23, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. (hereafter "Ping An" or the "Group", HKEX: 2318; SSE: 601318) announced that Ping An Smart Healthcare (PASH) has introduced AskBob, an artificial intelligence (AI)-based medical decision support tool, to Singapore through collaborations with SingHealth and the National University Health System (NUHS).

AskBob, developed by Ping An, provides critical and up-to-date medical information to clinicians when dealing with patients at the point of care and for medical research and self-learning such as case discussions.

At the point of care scenario, AskBob provides precise diagnosis and treatment recommendations for more than 1,500 diseases. Unlike other clinical decision support systems (CDSS), AskBob is a "knowledge + data" two-wheeled drive intelligent CDSS based on millions of anonymous patient medical records, clinical guidelines and a core medical knowledge graph covering tens of millions of medical data. The treatment recommendations AskBob provides are authoritative, personalized and patient-centric.

For medical research and self-learning, AskBob makes use of Ping An's leading medical knowledge graph and advanced natural language processing technologies (NLP) to perform more user-friendly, intuitive and precise online searches and literature analyses. AskBob can provide up-to-date literature analysis summaries and predict scientific research trends. It can also track the scholar team network in a certain research field to connect researchers around the world.

The collaboration with SingHealth, one of Singapore's largest public healthcare groups, started in April 2019. It aims to provide doctors with personalized treatment recommendations for type 2 diabetes patients at the point of care. Diabetes is a serious health issue in Singapore, with one in nine Singapore residents aged 18 to 69 having diabetes. AskBob's recommendations can potentially help achieve better diabetes control and health outcomes, including reducing diabetic complications such as stroke and kidney failure.

NUHS, the academic health sciences center in Singapore, is piloting AskBob with clinicians for smart literature search and medical research trend analysis.

"We are delighted to cooperate with SingHealth and the National University Health System. They are both authoritative healthcare institutions in Singapore," said Dr. Xie Guotong, Chief Healthcare Scientist of Ping An Group. "With Ping An's advanced healthcare technologies and through validating and customizing AskBob with SingHealth and NUHS, we believe our smart decision support tool could effectively empower clinicians in Singapore, bringing better health outcomes for Singaporeans."

Dr. Bee Yong Mong, Head of the SingHealth Duke-NUS Diabetes Centre said: "An AI-based clinical decision support system could potentially help doctors increase the accuracy and efficiency of diabetes treatment. With the tool, we hope to better predict risks of complications and offer more personalized treatment recommendations to patients."

Prof. Ngiam Kee Yuan, Group Chief Technology Officer from NUHS, said: "More than a search engine, AskBob uses a medical knowledge graph and a natural language processing engine to empower precise literature analysis without giving you information that you don't need. This is the power of using AskBob. I believe it will be extremely helpful for clinicians in medical research and case discussions."

NOTES TO EDITOR

Point-of-care: the time and place of patient care

About Ping An Smart Healthcare

Ping An Smart Healthcare (PASH) is affiliated to Ping An Smart City, a subsidiary of Ping An Group. Using the Group's three core technologies of artificial intelligence (AI), blockchain and cloud computing, PASH provides integrated diagnosis and treatment solutions, including smart triage and guidance, smart disease prediction, smart medical imaging screening/diagnosis, smart clinical decision support and smart patient follow-up and education. These cutting-edge technologies aim to empower healthcare government agencies and healthcare providers to enhance services to the public.

PASH has clinical decision support models for thousands of diseases and has developed an excellent comprehensive medical knowledge graph that includes drugs, diseases, prescriptions and risk factors.

PASH is available to nearly 800 million patients in more than 70 cities in China and countries in Southeast Asia.

About Ping An Group

Ping An Insurance (Group) Company of China, Ltd. ("Ping An") is a world-leading technology-powered personal financial services group. With 191 million retail customers and 538 million Internet users, Ping An is one of the largest financial services companies in the world.

Ping An has two over-arching strategies, 'pan financial assets' and 'pan healthcare', which focus on the provision of financial and healthcare services through our integrated financial services platform and our five ecosystems in financial services, healthcare, auto services, real estate services and Smart City services. Our 'finance + technology' and 'finance + ecosystems' strategies aim to provide customers and internet users with innovative and simple products and services. As China's first joint stock insurance company, Ping An Group is committed to upholding the highest standards of corporate reporting and corporate governance. The company is listed on the stock exchanges in Hong Kong and Shanghai.

Ping An ranked 7th in Forbes' 2019 Global 2000, and it ranked 29th in Fortune Magazine's 2019 Global 500 Leading Companies. Ping An also ranked 40th in 2019 WPP Millward Brown's BrandZTM Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands. For more information, please visit www.pingan.cn

For enquiries, please contact:
Gareth Hewett @ +852 6882 2027 or [email protected] 
Cecile Zhang @ +852 6681 3178 or [email protected]

SOURCE Ping An Group

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