Smart medicine highlighted for kidney disease management

Intelligent medicine related to chronic kidney disease management, pathological diagnosis and medical imaging is showing strong potential for better kidney disease prevention and control, while releasing doctors from simple and repetitive work, experts told an international medical conference on renal disease in Shanghai.

Launched by the China Medical Education Association's clinical kidney disease commission, the conference welcomed top experts from home and abroad to Shanghai to discuss the latest improvements in kidney disease prevention and control, new theories and new research.

The conference's online livestreaming platform received over 100,000 views, greatly benefiting medics in rural and grassroots regions, experts said on Tuesday.

The incidence of chronic kidney disease among Chinese adults is 10.8 percent, which means there is one patient with kidney disease among every 10 Chinese. The rise of metabolic diseases including diabetes and hypertension has increased the incidence of kidney disease, while chronic kidney disease also raises the death risk for patients also suffering from diabetes and hypertension.

Due to the large number of patients and the requirement for high-quality and precise patient management, smart medicine based on AI and big data should be established and improved to cover the entire process of screening, outpatient, hospitalization, dialysis and chronic disease management, experts said.

Digitalization is the key to achieve the goal. Standardized data collection, analysis and processing from pre-hospital, in-hospital and after-hospital networks can remind patients of regular visits, and provide precise management and education and individualized guidance based on routine data monitoring.

The AI-assisted kidney disease diagnosis and treatment system can also support doctors and streamline the process to improve efficiency, and help young and grassroots doctors to develop quickly, experts said.

Experts said the integration of data based on whole-process kidney disease detection, diagnosis, treatment and management could provide more useful information on the research into kidney disease mechanism and development, as well as boost the research on regional epidemiological investigation in order to develop more targeted therapies for patients in certain regions.