【英语中国】IBM为中国医院打造电子病历系统

The Chinese government's plan to spend billions on a health-care overhaul has multinational technology companies such as International Business Machines Corp. and Dell Inc. racing to secure a slice of a huge potential market that has long been too fragmented and disorganized to crack.

IBM is deploying technology in a group of hospitals in China's southern Guangdong province that will help the hospital standardize its patient records, then use the records to make statistical analyses of traditional Chinese medicine treatments.

The technology 'is a kind of hospital solution that focuses on how to process [and] manage patient data. . .and enable all kinds of analytics to leverage the very valuable information within electronic medical records,' said Hou Xueqiao , health-care solution manager for IBM Healthcare Solutions Lab, a finalist in this year's Asian Innovation Awards. The product will be able to help doctors identify treatment plans combining Western and traditional Chinese medicine from statistics drawn from patient records, he said.

With thousands of patients going through each of the hospitals daily, IBM is hoping its solution will be one of the first to provide evidence for the effectiveness of non-Western remedies and, if successful, will replicate it in hospitals in India and other countries with traditional remedies.

IBM's solution comes as competition in China's health-care technology industry is heating up. China's Ministry of Health is in the middle of a three-year, $124 billion health-care overhaul plan through which a significant portion of spending will go to technology upgrades. In addition to IBM, top providers of health-care technology to hospitals in the U.S., including Dell and Microsoft Corp., say they are working on solutions for Chinese hospitals.

Dell, which closed its purchase of information-technology-services provider Perot Systems last November, has been expanding its services in China by offering consulting services to hospitals. The company is also partnering with China Telecom Corp. to standardize electronic health records.

Microsoft is also working with Chinese hospitals. In April, the company announced a partnership with the Affiliated Hospital of the Medical College of Qingdao University to deploy a hospital information system that integrates electronic medical records, patient and bed management and laboratory and other data management.

Though medical-data management is a challenge in many markets, the sector is particularly challenging in China where many hospitals still handle patient data on paper, creating redundancies and making it difficult to keep track of patient history or to use the data for determining which treatments, or combination of treatments, have the highest rates of success.

China's 'health-care IT market will see remarkable growth in the next five years, triggered partially by China's three-year' health-care overhaul program, said Janet Chiew, analyst for research firm IDC. IDC estimates the market will reach $2.4 billion in 2013, and grow at an average of 19.9% per year. Ms. Chiew said an IDC survey of hospitals found that the No. 1 strategic business focus in the next one to two years is 'upgrading technology.'

At the moment, the top vendors for health-care IT are Chinese companies such as Kingstar Winnings, Tianjian Technology Group and Neusoft. But the market is still very fragmented, and the leaders all have similar market share, Ms. Chiew said.

For services companies, there is 'much bigger potential in China because the U.S. market is pretty mature. When they talk about data storage or solutions, most hospitals already know what they're going to do. Relationships with companies are pretty set for the next 10 to 20 years,' said Ben Zhou, managing director of Dell Services Public Sector. In China, 'a lot is unknown. It's a brand new market, so everybody's trying to jump in.'

IBM expects to complete the deployment of its health-care analytics technology, called Clinical and Health Records Analytics and Sharing, or CHAS, in Guangdong Hospital of Traditional Chinese Medicine by the end of the year. The company estimates that implementing the system in each hospital will cost between $2 million and $3 million, according to Lisa Li, health-care strategy and business development executive for IBM China.

Mr. Hou said China is the ideal place to try a system like CHAS because of the commitment the government has made to overhaul health-care systems and because of the sheer volume of patients within each hospital. 'In Guangdong Hospital, they have over 10,000 patient visits per day,' he said. 'That means if you can build up a solution and pilot it in this hospital' and deal with this patient flow, 'we have evidence to replicate [the solution] in other areas.'

国政府投入几十亿元资金的医疗改革计划让国际商业机器公司IBM（International Business Machines Corp.）和戴尔（Dell Inc.）等跨国科技公司都趋之若鹜地想在这个长久以来混乱不堪、毫无秩序但有巨大潜力的市场分一杯羹。

IBM正在中国南部广东省的部分医院部署一种技术，该技术将帮助医院使其病人纪录标准化，然后利用这些纪录对传统中医治疗做数据分析。

IBM医疗行业解决方案实验室经理侯雪桥说，该技术是一种针对医院的解决方案，致力于如何处理和管理病人数据、通过各类分析从电子医疗纪录中获取有价值的信息。该产品将能够帮助医生根据从病人纪录中得出的数据，结合中西医制定治疗方案。他入围了今年《华尔街日报》的亚洲创新奖（Asian Innovation Awards）的决赛。

针对每家医院每天接待的病人达数千人的情况，IBM希望它的解决方案能够在为非西医治疗的疗效提供证据方面担任先驱的角色，如果成功的话，会将其扩展至印度及其他拥有传统治疗方法的国家。

IBM解决方案的提出正值中国医疗技术行业的竞争愈演愈烈之际。中国卫生部正在进行的投入1240亿美元的三年医疗改革计划中，很大一部分资金将会投入到技术更新。除了IBM，包括戴尔及微软（Microsoft Corp）在内的为美国医院提供医疗技术的一线公司说，他们正在致力于针对中国医院的解决方案。

戴尔在去年11月完成了对信息技术服务提供商Perot Systems的收购，现在正通过为医院提供咨询服务扩展其在中国的服务。戴尔同时也与中国电信合作致力于电子健康纪录标准化。

微软也在与中国医院合作。4月，微软宣布与青岛大学医学院附属医院合作，为其提供一套能够整合电子医疗纪录、病人和病床管理、实验室及其他数据管理的医院信息系统。

医疗数据管理在很多市场都颇具挑战性，但在中国将面临更大的挑战，因为在这里，很多医院仍在使用纸张处理病人数据，导致很多繁琐的重复信息，很难对病人的就医史进行追踪纪录，也很难利用数据对哪种或哪几种综合治疗方案的成功机率最高作出评估。

研究公司国际数据中心（IDC）的分析师Janet Chiew说，在三年医疗改革制度的带动下，中国的医疗信息技术市场在未来五年内将会有显著的增长。IDC预计，这个市场在2013年将达到24亿美元的价值，每年将会平均增长19.9%。她说，IDC一项对医院的调查显示，今后一年或两年的首要战略业务中心是“更新技术”。

目前，医疗信息技术最具实力的供应商是上海金仕达卫宁、天健科技集团及东软集团等中国公司。她说，但这个市场仍很分散，领军的几家公司拥有的市场份额不相上下。

戴尔服务部公共事业部中国区负责人周宾说，对服务公司来说，中国市场有更大的潜力，因为美国市场已经很成熟。谈起数据储存或解决方案，大多数医院都已经清楚应该如何操作。今后10年至20年内，医院与公司的关系也将保持稳定状态。他说，未知数还有很多。这是一个新兴的市场，所以每个人都想加入。

IBM预计年底完成在广东省中医院的医疗分析技术的部署工作，该技术名为“门诊与健康纪录分析与共享（Clinical and Health Records Analytics and Sharing）”，简称CHAS。IBM中国区医疗战略及业务开发主管李南平说，据IBM估计，每家医院部署该系统的费用为200万至300万美元之间，

侯雪桥说，中国是试行CHAS这种系统的理想市场，因为政府已经承诺要改革医疗系统，并且每家医院都拥有大量的病人。他说，在广东省中医院，每天接待的病人超过1万人次，如果我们能在这家医院建立和试行解决方案的系统，并且能够处理这么大的病人流量，那么就能证明我们在其他地方也可以照搬这套解决方案。