China’s Tencent taps London’s digital hub for partner to help improve Parkinson’s disease treatment

One of China’s tech mammoths is tapping into the London digital hub for help with using artificial intelligence to improve Parkinson’s disease treatment.

Tencent Holdings is teaming with closely held Medopad to develop a system to remotely monitor patients with the severe movement disorder. Their goal, according to Wei Fan, executive director for medical AI research at Shenzhen-based Tencent, is to allow doctors to set drug doses and modify care without patients coming into the hospital.

Health care is increasingly “not only about what happens in the clinic, but what happens in the real world", Fan said in an interview before the announcement. “The reason we want to work with Medopad is they’re experts in monitoring patients.”

Medopad, which was founded in 2011 and has received funding from German pharmaceuticals firm Bayer, said in February that it had signed deals worth 100 million pounds (US$131 million) with a number of Chinese companies, including Tencent.

Hong Kong-listed Tencent is shopping around the world for partners in revolutionising medicine. The company behind the WeChat social media and payment app has already forged agreements with drug giants Novartis and AstraZeneca to help address product quality and spot dangerous counterfeits. It is backing WeDoctor, the US$6 billion AI-enabled start-up that helps detect disease by analysing streams of patient data, and Blue, the insurer offering health policies via apps.