The digital economy powered by innovative technologies such as artificial intelligence (“AI”) and big data has become one of the most powerful drivers of economic growth since the COVID-19 outbreak, in keeping with China’s core strategy of “digitalization, intelligence, and innovation”. The value of the public health management model empowered by digital technologies and AI has been further validated in dealing with the pandemic. On July 28, 2022, Yidu Tech Inc. (“Yidu Tech” or the “Company”; stock code: 2158.HK) released its FY2022 ESG (Environmental, Social and Governance) Report (the “Report”). The Report outlines how Yidu Tech, as a leader in the healthcare intelligence industry, is actively responding to the 14th Five-Year Plan for Digital Economy Development and continues to improve its ESG governance structure. Yidu Tech is empowering supply-side intelligent transformation with technologies such as AI, big data, and cloud computing in order to promote accessible precision “green healthcare”.

Emerging technologies help make healthcare accessible to everyone

Guided by its overall ESG strategy and governance system, Yidu Tech has incorporated the “concept of sustainable development” into its daily business operations. According to the Report, Yidu Tech leverages its technological advantages to create social value in scenarios such as epidemic response and population health management.

In terms of facilitating public health management, Yidu Tech offers solutions to enable infectious disease risk prediction and regional population health management in a more accurate and efficient manner. Especially in the less economically developed regions, the Company’s solutions can assist authorities to achieve efficient resource allocation and reduce mortality. The Company’s prediction and simulation models have been validated in 18 cities, including Beijing, Nanjing, and Guangzhou. Based on a deep understanding of epidemiology and transmission rules of infectious diseases, the advanced AI technologies and algorithms can cope with all of the 40 infectious diseases defined by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention (the “China CDC”). In cooperation with the China CDC, the Company has also developed an “Overseas COVID-19 Data Analysis and Risk Assessment Platform” to assist in precise decision-making.

Yidu Tech provided on-site technical support in Nanjing and Lanzhou

To improve people’s health and quality of life, Yidu Tech offers AI-driven automated management tools for diabetes patients to achieve personalized strategies and treatment plans for different users. A case study showed that the average glycosylated Hemoglobin (HbA1c) of users had decreased by approximately 1% after a twelve-week intervention. In addition, Yidu Tech enables the early prevention and treatment of chronic hepatitis B through healthcare intelligence. The Company participated deeply in a project on the early prevention and treatment of chronic hepatitis B in Huazhou, China, cooperating with Nanfang Hospital of Southern Medical University and medical institutions at all levels in Huazhou to jointly establish a four-level hierarchical diagnosis and treatment model. This project covered over 100,000 residents and has accurately diagnosed over 20,000 high-risk tumor patients in the early screening stage, so as to prevent the further transformation from hepatitis B to cirrhosis and liver cancer. The implementation of the project helps further explore models for the prevention and treatment of chronic hepatitis B at hospitals and communities in rural areas, promotes accurate and proactive life-cycle health management of residents in rural areas.

To expand medical coverage and accessibility, Yidu Tech has provided customized Hui Min Bao services, a city-level supplementary insurance to the existing national social medical insurance, for 22 cities, including Beijing and 13 prefecture-level cities in Jiangsu province, effectively improving the protection of elderly people and patients with critical illnesses, and reducing the risk of illness-induced financial difficulties. Leveraging its AI technology and extensive disease insights, the Company provided technical services to relevant authorities in a northern city in China, the accuracy of pre-existing conditions identified by the algorithms exceeding 90%. Moreover, Yidu Tech provides operational services for Hui Ta Bao, a special inclusive medical insurance product for critical illnesses tailored for women. Hui Ta Bao correlates claims with screening results for breast and cervical cancers, enhancing the screening participation rate and providing women with protection against cancers.

In the field of empowering new drug research and development, Yidu Tech helps pharmaceutical companies in clinical trials design with greater accuracy and reduces the cost of new drug research and development by leveraging its independently developed healthcare AI platform. The Company assisted one partner in optimizing the R&D design of a new drug treating a rare disease. As a result, the Phase II clinical trial was shortened by about 20 months. During the fiscal year ended 31 March 2022, the Company also helped a leading MNC client with its Phase III clinical trial of cardiovascular disease, successfully doubling recruitment efficiency and reducing screening failure rates by 60%.

Compliant operations to build a solid foundation for security

In the field of compliance, Yidu Tech has invested heavily in the area of privacy and data security, and is one of only three healthcare technology companies in China to be certified by the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology (CAICT) for secure multi-party computing and federated learning capabilities. During the fiscal year ended 31 March 2022, the Company accumulated 1,111 registered patents and 558 granted patents, with 251 newly registered patents and 130 newly granted patents. In addition, the Medical Data Intelligent Platform Core Module and Special Disease Intelligent Scientific Research Platform Core Module developed by Yidu Tech have passed China Information Technology Security Evaluation Center (CNITSEC) evaluation and obtained the independent original product evaluation certificate, making Yidu Tech the first healthcare technology company to successfully obtain this certification.

Certifications obtained by Yidu Tech

Technological innovation and full commitment to green operations

In addition to implementing sustainable business operations, Yidu Tech has integrated the concept of green development into YiduCore’s daily operation, actively promoting energy saving and emissions reduction to reduce the negative impact on the environment. With the rapid development of cloud computing and big data, the energy consumption requirements of data centers are getting higher and higher, and the construction of green data centers has become an important reflection of Yidu Tech’s commitment to corporate social responsibility. Leveraging large-scale pretrained language models enables some tasks to achieve a further 5%–10% improvement in model effectiveness while reducing the amount of annotation by 80%–90%, significantly improving data processing efficiency. The majority of Yidu Tech's current data center servers use platinum power supplies with an energy consumption rate of 0.94, allowing the Company to save energy and reduce emissions.

Promoting employee well-being and creating an equitable and diverse common future

Yidu Tech has continued to build an equitable, diverse, and inclusive work environment to ensure that female employees are given equal opportunities for career development and influence at all levels. Female employees account for more than half of the total workforce, and the Board of Directors has an equal number of females and males, which is far greater female representation than the global average[1]. At the senior level, the CEO and CFO are both women. Yidu Tech has also implemented the “Dandelion Project”, to spread the Group’s “naturality and kindness” culture to cities across the country, listening to the voices of employees. This project has successively been carried out in Chengdu, Chongqing, Tianjin, Wuhan, Nanjing, Shanghai and other cities, enhancing urban employees’ sense of belonging.

In the future, Yidu Tech will steadfastly continue to carry out the mission of “making value-based precision healthcare accessible to everyone”, using its technological advantages to provide more accurate and efficient medical services, reducing the waste of medical resources, and lowering the cost of new drug development to build a greener future through the power of technology.