Baidu shuts mobile health care unit to focus on artificial intelligence
China’s dominant search engine operator Baidu has shut down its mobile health care business unit to refocus on more artificial intelligence-enabled healthcare research and innovation, as part of the Nasdaq-listed company’s latest efforts to restructure itself as an AI-first company.
Baidu said on Thursday that part of the two-year-old unit’s operation team will be merged into the group’s AI business and search business, while the rest of the operation will be shut down, effective immediately. Affected employees will be offered opportunities to transfer to Baidu’s other business units.
With the restructuring, the Beijing-based company aims to consolidate its core resources to focus on AI and upgrade its health care business from “providing low-end services to high-end AI-powered health care research and innovation”, Baidu said in an internal memo.
The company has good technology credentials but it is hard to monetise [artificial intelligence] research
Kirk Boodry, an analyst with New Street Research, which has a “neutral” rating on Baidu’s stock, believes cost efficiency was behind the decision to cut the mobile health care unit.
“It was apparently underperforming relative to the company overall,” he said.
Since the health care business unit was set up in January 2015, it had been working on internet-enabled services, such as helping people make hospital appointments or consult doctors for medical advice online – services deemed as “low-tech“ by Baidu’s founder Robin Li Yanhong.
Li said in a forum on Wednesday that AI is able to “redefine” the health care industry. He envisioned that AI and big data technology could be used in genetic testing and even in developing and testing of new medicines. “The most important force to drive the revolution of health care is artificial intelligence,” he said.