Blue Pujiang meeting focuses on public health

Experts discussed new trends in protecting public health at the annual Blue Pujiang academic meeting held at the Science Hall.

Wu Hao, president of the Shanghai Ninth People’s Hospital, said today’s doctors are not just treating patients; they are also scientists who are working to make medical breakthroughs.

“More and more of our doctors are turning their ideas into medicines and devices, such as 3D printed bone implements and diagnostic reagents. We just signed agreement with Zhangjiang Group on seven of our projects,” he said.

The hospital now has several innovative labs doing research on treating deafness with genetic technologies, exploring new targets for certain diseases and developing robots to do surgeries, among others.

“For large public hospitals, we are also responsible of developing new medicines and medical apparatus,” he said.

Xu Jianguang, president of the Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine, said today people are aware of the importance of preventing diseases, which has provided great development potential for TCM.

The Blue Pujiang academic meeting was first initiated in 2006. Now, it is held by the science and technology associations of Hongkou, Huangpu, Yangpu and Xuhui districts.

Over the years, it has discussed several hot topics such as the development of bio-medicine in the digital era, how to turn academic results into commercial products and innovation-driven eco-friendly development.