Xinhua News Agency, Beijing, April 20th　Title: Empowering medical development with artificial intelligence - Focusing on the 2025 China Medical Development Conference

Xinhua News Agency reporter Li Heng

When ChatGPT set off a global wave of AI, AlphaFold cracked the mystery of protein structure, and artificial intelligence technology is reshaping the medical and health field with a disruptive attitude. In the context of the era of accelerating evolution of scientific and technological revolution and industrial transformation, the cross-border dialogue focusing on "artificial intelligence (AI) + medical care" can not only inject new impetus into the construction of a healthy China, but also outline an intelligent blueprint for the future medical ecosystem.

From April 19 to 20, the 2025 China Medical Development Conference with the theme of "Artificial Intelligence Empowers Medical Development" was held in Beijing. The conference gathered top experts from multiple disciplines such as mathematics, artificial intelligence, medicine, public health, and pharmacy to jointly discuss the innovation path and development direction of the deep integration of artificial intelligence and medicine.

Professor Wang Chen, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and President of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences, pointed out that artificial intelligence is a typical new quality productivity and is profoundly changing the paradigm and industry ecology of medical research. In the field of life and health, which is related to the ultimate welfare of mankind, whoever embraces artificial intelligence technology will be the first to take the initiative in the future medical competition.

"We must promote the integration of artificial intelligence and medicine in stages." Wang Chen said that the short term is the stage of learning and exploration, and the focus is to build a learning and education system, clarify the positioning and application logic of artificial intelligence in medicine, and carry out scenario-based pilot projects; the medium term is the stage of deepening application, and promote the integration of artificial intelligence and medical through research, strengthen international exchanges, expand the scope of application, and obtain systematic practical experience; the long term is to form a new ecosystem for artificial intelligence to empower medicine, covering the entire chain of scientific research, clinical, and management, build a new industry ecology, and participate in the formulation of international rules.

Wang Jiangping, a member of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and former vice minister of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology, bluntly stated in his thematic report that data in the medical field is characterized by sensitivity, irreversibility of diagnosis and treatment results, and complexity of responsible subjects, resulting in the AI ​​application of the medical industry being in a "high-pressure zone". He proposed the comprehensive penetration strategy of the "human-computer alignment rule", emphasizing that AI must pass the triple test of interpretability, trust and humanization, so that the alignment rule can penetrate into technical architecture, data set construction, hospital management, patient knowledge, industry supervision and other links, so that AI can upgrade from an efficient tool to a doctor's "trusted partner".

This view resonated with the participants. Zheng Hairong, vice president of Nanjing University, further pointed out that breakthroughs in biomedical AI need to be based on data standardization and ethical governance, especially in the fields of medical imaging, brain-computer interfaces, etc. Interdisciplinary collaboration is the key to breaking technical barriers.

Use differential equations to analyze the tumor microenvironment and use sensing technology to capture neuroelectric signals... In the practical exploration of "AI+medicine", many experts have proposed solutions from different angles.

Tsinghua University professor and mathematician Shing-Tong Yau pointed out that mathematics provides an underlying architecture for artificial intelligence and has important applications in many fields such as disease research, but it also faces challenges such as medical data problems. It is expected that mathematics will strengthen cooperation with medicine, artificial intelligence, etc. to promote the development of related research.

Zheng Qinghua, President of Tongji University, proposed a solution idea inspired by brain science. By simulating the memory and reasoning mechanism of the human brain, he developed an artificial intelligence model with "small samples, low computing power, and strong reasoning" to promote the leap of artificial intelligence to cognitive intelligence, so as to make up for the defects of the current big model's "high energy consumption and weak logic".

Experts at the meeting believe that the application of medical artificial intelligence must always be based on safety and credibility, adhere to people-oriented, patient-centered, and doctor-oriented medical decision-making, consolidate the data foundation, establish a dynamic and sustainable assessment mechanism, and promote coordinated governance of law, technology and ethics.

Artificial intelligence is the core driving force for promoting high-quality development of the medical and health industry, and it is very important to build a safe and controllable development environment. In recent years, the country has strongly supported the "Artificial Intelligence +" action, and continuously improved the efficiency and accuracy of diagnosis and treatment through standardized construction, cross-institutional data sharing and vertical model application development.

Shen Jianfeng, a first-level researcher at the Planning, Development and Information Technology Department of the National Health Commission, pointed out that it is necessary to build high-quality data sets and artificial intelligence corpus in the medical field to break through the bottlenecks of large-scale models such as insufficient professional corpus and multi-modal processing. At the same time, multi-disciplinary, multi-professional, and multi-department linkages to promote policy standards innovation, strengthen compound talent training and medical ethics security, and jointly promote industry application innovation of artificial intelligence.

Faced with the impact of AI on medical education, the Ministry of Education has improved the artificial intelligence literacy of teachers and students by forming an alliance of advantageous universities, building a top-level interdisciplinary teaching team, building a quality monitoring system, exploring credit systems, launching "AI+" courses, and upgrading the national smart education platform.

From the Da Vinci surgical robot to the GPT-4 consultation system, artificial intelligence is moving from "tools" to "partners". But as the experts at the meeting repeatedly emphasized: "AI is not a replacement for doctors, but expanding the field of medicine."

It is understood that the China Medical Development Conference has been held on the third weekend of April every year since 2021. The conference is an academic exchange platform integrating innovation system construction, scientific and technological achievements evaluation, strategic consulting and discipline development, and has become a weather vane leading the development of national medical science and technology.

[Editor in charge: Yue Xiangzhi]