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Huawei
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Huawei hopes smart hospitals with 5G and AI can offset shrinking smartphone business

  • A hospital in Guangzhou showed off this week how it is using Huawei’s 5G, AI and IoT technologies to upgrade its health care services
  • Huawei is betting on a global trend towards smarter enterprise services to help ease the impact of US sanctions on its smartphone business

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Chen Xiaofang, a nurse at Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital, operates a robot to deliver supplies to patients in Guangzhou, the capital of Guangdong province, on September 26. Photo: SCMP/Simon Song
Iris Deng
A day after Meng Wanzhou, the chief financial officer of Huawei Technologies Co, returned to China with a hero’s welcome, the telecoms equipment maker organised a media tour to showcase how its technologies can serve the country‘s health care industry as the company searches for new revenue sources in the face of crippling US sanctions.

The tour was arranged long before the return of Meng, who landed in Shenzhen on Saturday night after nearly three years fighting an extradition legal battle in Canada. But the trip to Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital, in the provincial capital of Guangzhou, highlighted continuing challenges for Shenzhen-based Huawei as it shifts away from smartphones to services and industrial applications after being cut off from buying or producing advanced chips.

On Sunday, the hospital showed off how Huawei technology enabled it to turn ambulances into makeshift hospitals, with smart computed tomography (CT) scanning and electrocardiogram machines that offer instant examinations and diagnoses on the road. All the data collected is also transmitted to the hospital in real time.

Liu Xingtao, an emergency doctor at Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital, introduces how ambulances use 5G technologies for real-time communication with the hospital in Guangzhou on September 26. Photo: SCMP/Simon Song
Liu Xingtao, an emergency doctor at Guangdong Second Provincial General Hospital, introduces how ambulances use 5G technologies for real-time communication with the hospital in Guangzhou on September 26. Photo: SCMP/Simon Song

These sorts of hi-tech, time-saving techniques are also increasingly being used elsewhere in the world, allowing consultations to happen on the way to a hospital and operations to be conducted upon arrival. For time-sensitive emergencies, such as a stroke, this could save a patient’s life.

As the world’s largest provider of 5G equipment, Huawei now wants to use artificial intelligence (AI) and the internet of things (IoT) in its home country to make “smarter” hospitals, which the company sees as a new business opportunity.
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