Gao Shilei, Yang Jingxian: The Internal Logic and Practical Requirements of Digital and Intelligent Construction for National Health
Universal health is the foundation of a happy life for the people and an inevitable requirement for the steady and sustained progress of Chinese-path modernization. The Recommendations of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China (CPC) on Correctly Formulating the Fifteenth Five-Year Plan for National Economic and Social Development (hereinafter referred to as the Recommendations) explicitly proposed to "accelerate the building of a Healthy China" and "promote the digital-intelligent construction of universal health." This has pointed the way toward constructing a high-quality, efficient medical and health service system and fortifying the national public health security barrier in the new stage of development. The strategic deployment in the Recommendations concerning the deep integration of universal health with digital intelligence contains a profound inherent logic and practical requirements. It provides vital support for solidly advancing the building of a Healthy China and basically achieving socialist modernization by 2035.
1. Profoundly Grasping the Eras-defining Requirements of the Digital-Intelligent Construction of Universal Health
General Secretary Xi Jinping has demanded that we "place people’s health in the strategic position of priority development" and emphasized "promoting 'Internet + education,' 'Internet + medical care,' and 'Internet + culture,'" [1] providing important guidance for us to grasp the inherent logic between a Healthy China and digital-intelligent transformation. Promoting the digital-intelligent construction of universal health is a critical path for the medical and health system to move toward modernization, demonstrating the strategic foresight of meeting the people's ever-growing health needs in the New Era.
The digital-intelligent construction of universal health is a strategic choice for adhering to the principle of putting the people first and meeting their ever-growing needs for a better life. The Recommendations list "putting the people first" as one of the basic principles that must be followed for economic and social development during the "Fifteenth Five-Year Plan" period, requiring that we "take meeting the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life as the fundamental goal" and "effectively resolve the urgent, difficult, and anxious problems of the masses." [2] As the principal contradiction in Chinese society has transformed, [3] the masses have developed new expectations for higher-level, higher-quality, and more equitable and accessible health services. Meanwhile, China faces multiple challenges, including an accelerating aging population, a heavier burden of chronic diseases, and the coexistence of risks from new and recurring infectious diseases, all of which place higher demands on the health service system. With its characteristics of ubiquitous connectivity, data-driven insights, and precision efficiency, digital-intelligent technology can effectively break the spatial and temporal limits of medical services, optimize resource allocation, and enhance service efficiency and quality. This promotes a shift from a "treatment-centered" model to a "people’s health-centered" model, better achieving the goal of providing the people with comprehensive, full-lifecycle health services.
The digital-intelligent construction of universal health is a key support for promoting the high-quality development of health undertakings and constructing a powerful public health system. The Recommendations put forward important strategic arrangements such as "strengthening public health capabilities, bolstering the disease control and prevention system, and preventing and controlling major infectious diseases." This requires us to accelerate the transformation of health development methods, placing greater emphasis on prevention first and early risk intervention. We must utilize digital intelligence to integrate individual health data, environmental information, and clinical records to achieve precise assessment of health risks, intelligent prediction of disease trends, and rapid response to public health events, significantly improving the prevention and control of major chronic diseases and emergency response capabilities for sudden public health incidents. Digital intelligence in universal health can construct an integrated "prevention, treatment, management, and rehabilitation" health service chain, achieving a historic shift from "passive medical care" to "active health."
The digital-intelligent construction of universal health is the core path for conforming to the tide of the technological revolution and driving innovation in health service models through digital technology. Digital intelligence, as the core force leading the new round of technological revolution and industrial transformation, is a typical representative of new quality productive forces. By promoting the deep integration of big data, artificial intelligence (AI), the Internet of Things (IoT), and 5G with health services, it can give rise to new medical models such as smart medicine, precision medicine, telemedicine, digital therapeutics, and wearable health devices, greatly enhancing the intelligence level of health services. The digital-intelligent construction of universal health is a vivid practice of "promoting the deep integration of scientific and technological innovation with industrial innovation" in the health field, helping to form new quality productive forces in the health sector and driving the innovative upgrading of health service models.
2. Consolidating the Technical Foundation of the Digital-Intelligent Construction of Universal Health
Health is the most important indicator of a happy life. We must consolidate the technical foundation of digital-intelligent universal health to provide a solid health basis for comprehensively advancing the building of a great power and the cause of national rejuvenation through Chinese-path modernization.
Constructing an interconnected universal health information platform to open up the "veins and arteries" of data. To implement the requirement in the Recommendations concerning "building an open, shared, and secure national integrated data market," the primary task is to construct a unified, authoritative, and interconnected universal health information platform to eliminate "data islands" and "data chimneys." [4] We must adhere to the idea of the "national chess match," [5] strengthen top-level design, reinforce the leadership of standards, and accelerate the construction of a health information platform covering the entire population and the full lifecycle. Through unified standards and standardized interfaces, we can integrate diverse data such as electronic medical records and health files to form a logically unified and standard-managed national big data resource system for health. This will open up the "main arteries" of health data, allowing data to better serve the health of the people.
Strengthening quality management across the full lifecycle of health data to build a solid security barrier. "Without cybersecurity, there is no national security; without informatization, there is no modernization." This important discourse by General Secretary Xi Jinping reveals the importance of data security in the process of modernization. Medical and health data involve the core privacy of citizens; its security and quality are the lifeline of digital-intelligent construction. We must strictly implement relevant laws and regulations, establish and improve data classification and hierarchical management systems, and clarify data ownership and usage boundaries. We should actively apply advanced technologies such as privacy computing and blockchain to promote the compliant development and utilization of data under the premise of ensuring security and privacy—achieving the goal of "data being usable but not visible." We must resolutely hold the bottom line of security and the red line of privacy, building a health data security barrier that reassures the Party and the people.
Strategically deploying computing power infrastructure in advance to strengthen intelligent support. Powerful computing power is the cornerstone of digital-intelligent health applications. We must base ourselves on the overall national strategy and incorporate health computing needs into the overall layout of the national integrated computing power network. Centering on the Recommendations' goal of "strengthening the efficient supply of computing power, algorithms, and data," we should scientifically layout intelligent computing centers and public computing service platforms oriented toward the health field, giving priority to core needs such as major scientific research, infectious disease early warnings, and smart hospitals. By constructing an intensive, efficient, and independently controllable health computing system, we will provide a powerful engine for cultivating new quality productive forces in the health sector and promoting the high-quality development of universal health undertakings.
3. Expanding the Integration Scenarios of Digital-Intelligent Construction of Universal Health
Promoting the construction of "Internet + medical care"—allowing the "masses to run fewer errands while data travels more"—fully demonstrates the Central Committee’s clear orientation of putting the people at the center and empowering the building of a Healthy China through digital technology. We must seize this historical opportunity to deeply integrate digital-intelligent technology into the core business of health, injecting strong impetus into the construction of a powerful public health system and a high-quality, efficient medical service system.
Empowering the public health system to achieve a transformation from passive response to proactive protection and precision prevention. We must take digital intelligence as a key handle for the modernization of public health. Using big data and AI, we can integrate multi-source data to build a smart monitoring and early warning system, achieving the early capture and real-time warning of infectious disease outbreaks and health risk factors. Relying on digital epidemiological investigation and intelligent judgment, we can construct a precision emergency response system to improve the efficiency of outbreak analysis, source tracing, and control. Breaking through departmental and regional boundaries, we will build an integrated collaborative governance system that links institutions at all levels, achieving seamless business connection and integrated coordination.
Reconstructing medical service models to enhance accessibility, precision, and the "human touch." Digital-intelligent technology is the key driver for promoting profound changes in medical service models and solving the problem of unbalanced and inadequate development in medical and health undertakings. We must promote the shift of the center of gravity of health work toward the grassroots and the sinking of resources to lower levels, exerting collaborative efforts in service supply, process experience, and decision-making support. We should vigorously develop "Internet + medical health," widely promote applications such as remote consultation and remote imaging diagnosis, and construct new forms of diagnosis and treatment that combine online and offline services. This will break the geographical restrictions of high-quality medical resources, effectively alleviate the problem of "difficulty in seeing a doctor," and make medical services more inclusive, accessible, precise, efficient, and filled with humanistic care.
Optimizing resource allocation to improve the scientific nature, precision, and efficiency of governance. Digital intelligence is an important engine for promoting the modernization of governance capabilities in the health field. We must improve the synergistic development and governance mechanism of medical services, medical insurance, and the pharmaceutical industry (the "three-医" [6] linkage), adhering to the use of data to reshape the industry governance paradigm. We will use big data analysis of residents' health and medical service needs to provide a scientific basis for planning and resource layout, enhancing the scientific level of macro-decision making. We will strengthen intelligent supervision and risk prediction for the operation of medical institutions and the use of medical insurance funds, improving the precision of industry supervision. We will strive to build a mechanism for data sharing and business coordination among the "three-医," breaking down information barriers and enhancing the effectiveness of collaborative governance.
4. Improving the Institutional Guarantees for the Digital-Intelligent Construction of Universal Health
Digital-intelligent technology is a powerful driving force and important engine for promoting the digital-intelligent construction of universal health. We must continuously improve the institutional system adapted to this process to ensure that it develops in an orderly manner along a track that benefits the people and serves the nation.
Accelerating the construction of a legal and regulatory system adapted to digital-intelligent development. As an important national basic strategic resource and sensitive personal information, health and medical data urgently require high-level, specialized laws and regulations to regulate core links such as ownership definition, compliant collection, orderly opening, secure circulation, standardized use, and liability determination. We must adhere to the principle of "legislation first," basing our work on national laws such as those for cybersecurity and data security, and accelerate the research and formulation of specialized regulations for health and medical data management. This will clarify data ownership and usage boundaries, refine full-lifecycle management standards, and improve rules for network security, privacy protection, and liability determination. By building a solid rule-of-law barrier, we can provide impetus for the market-oriented allocation of data elements and build a strong line of defense for the rights and interests of citizens' personal information, achieving the organic unity of promoting development and standardized management.
Simultaneously improving technical standards and application specifications to promote interconnection, mutual recognition, and mutual trust. Standardization is the important handle for realizing the "national chess match" in the field of health digital intelligence. We must strengthen top-level design at the national level and accelerate the construction of a unified and authoritative standard system for universal health information. This system should cover key areas such as data elements, interconnection, information security, privacy protection, and the quality evaluation of AI products and services. We must vigorously encourage institutions at all levels to strictly follow unified standards when constructing and upgrading systems. The goal is to achieve seamless docking and mutual recognition of data across institutions and regions, fundamentally breaking information barriers and laying a solid foundation for the construction of a smart health service system.
Fortifying the defense line of medical ethics and technological ethics to ensure "technology for good." Health concerns life, dignity, and the well-being of the people; it is one of the most ethically sensitive fields. We must place ethical governance in a prominent position to ensure that technological progress always serves the fundamental purpose of increasing human health and well-being. We will deeply implement national deployment requirements for strengthening technological ethical governance, weaving the concept of "technology for good" throughout the entire process. We will accelerate the improvement of ethical review and governance systems covering all levels of institutions, focusing on preventing social discrimination and injustice that may result from data bias or algorithm design, ensuring the fairness and accessibility of services. At the same time, we will strengthen requirements for informed consent and privacy protection, clearly define human-machine responsibility, and guide practitioners to abide by ethical norms, taking the protection of the people's health rights and social public interests as the highest standard.
The digital-intelligent construction of universal health is a major opportunity bestowed by the times and the only path for building a Healthy China. It aligns with the grand blueprint of the Recommendations, which unifies high-quality development, people's well-being, and national security. We must profoundly grasp its inherent logic, solidly build the foundation of technology and data, continuously expand integrated application scenarios, and simultaneously improve institutional and ethical guarantees. We must effectively translate the grand blueprint of "promoting the digital-intelligent construction of universal health" into a vivid practice that benefits hundreds of millions of people, continuously creating a new situation for the high-quality development of health undertakings. This will lay a more solid health foundation for comprehensively advancing the building of a great power and the cause of national rejuvenation through Chinese-path modernization, striving to write a brand-new chapter in the people's healthy and happy life.