Good Doctor
We have already entered the world of 2054 that Philip K. Dick describes in Minority Report: upheavals ranging from autonomous cars and predictive algorithms to human/machine interfaces are emerging in quick succession. For the first time in history, technological reality is outpacing our collective imagination. Welcome to the era of artificial intelligence (AI), a mind-blowing technological revolution that crystallises as many hopes as it does fears, but leaves no one indifferent!
From medicine to agriculture, from cars to art, algorithms now play an essential role in our lives. AI has even entered the creative world (a Japanese communication agency has made
an AI its artistic director), composed music and written scripts… The list of what Awill at some point be able to do is endless, and its unstoppable rise is only just beginning. Our aim is to continue taking part in this extraordinary adventure, certainly with caution, but also with a healthy dose of optimism.
While some fear that AI will take control of humanity, for the moment it is helping keep it in good shape. That’s the case in China at least, where there is no such thing as a Western- style general practitioner. Chinese people go directly to Emergency Room, preferably in the best, so-called “Class III” hospitals. They account for nearly 8% of the total number of hospitals, but treat 50% of patients. People have to wait an average of 3 hours for a consultation that lasts 8 minutes.
Without the help of technology, access to medical care would be all but out of reach in this country that only has 4,800 doctors for 1 million inhabitants (12,000 in the United States).
Chinese company PING AN HEALTHCARE & TECHNOLOGY has launched an online consultation application: Good Doctor is a medical services platform where the first stop for patients is AI that records all their information, from their personal data to their symptoms, and identifies their condition before letting a human doctor step in. Good Doctor currently records some 500,000 consultations every day, and AI is now up to the task of making a diagnosis, which is then validated by a human practitioner. The digital prescription issued can be filled on the same platform, with one-click purchases of medication for same-day delivery.
Each month, more than 265 million users take advantage of this solution, which is part of an emerging ecosystem. PING AN GOOD DOCTOR’s aim is to build an offer spanning health
insurance and healthcare, covering all medical situations. E-health is no longer the stuff of fiction. It has become a reality in this country that counts among those that have invested the most massively in AI, and which abounds with similar entrepreneurial stories that are poised to give rise to the great successes of tomorrow.
Picking the best ones is an exciting challenge in this fast-paced world where one constantly needs to keep several steps ahead. The idea is to identify companies able to build strategies that already have what it takes to benefit from the tremendous growth of these new markets. That is the roadmap we have given Echiquier Artificial Intelligence, whose management team travels the world in search of innovative projects. With cumulative gains of 11.3% since its inception on 20 June 2018 (vs +6.7% for its benchmark, the MSCI WORLD NR EUR) and 29.5% since the beginning of the year (vs +17.4% for its benchmark), 1 it has confirmed its vocation as a powerful pioneer!
Olivier de Berranger
with Rolando Grandi