The two-day fierce Artificial Intelligence and Medical Robots Category Contest of the 5th China Medical Devices Design & Entrepreneurship Competition 2022 was held successfully in Lin’an, Zhejiang from August 26 to 27. The Contest gathered the most authoritative experts, the cutting-edge technologies, and the best talents of the industry, with 40 excellent medical device innovation projects from all over China competing on the same stage in Lin’an.

In order to better serve and protect people’s health, Lin’an has seized the development opportunity of the building of the Chengxi Sci-Tech Innovation Corridor Sci-tech Innovation Commencing Place through a coordinated effort of the provincial Party committee, the provincial government, and people in the province and has been focusing on AI domains to cultivate cutting-edge technological achievements, improve technology originality, and build a sci-tech innovation exemplar for the industry-university-research-application integration of life and health industry.

Before the Contest, Yang Zewei, Deputy Party Secretary and Mayor of Lin’an District, delivered a speech, where he mentioned that the certainty of medical technology level should be used to address people’s uncertainty about aging and diseases, in which, medical devices will undoubtedly become an important part of medical technology. The life industry, including medical devices, has been developing rapidly and strongly in recent years, which can be called a sunrise industry, happiness industry, and green industry. Lin’an has a good foundation for developing the life and health industry, including advantages in three aspects: ecology - Lin’an has significant ecological advantages thanks to its one lake, two mountains, and two parks; history - Lin’an’s long history is very favorable for the development of traditional medicine; technology - Qingshanhu Sci-tech City and Jinnan New City are important parts of the Chengxi Sci-Tech Innovation Corridor that is currently built through a coordinated provincial and municipal effort and will have unified and coordinated industrial, talent, and sci-tech policies, which means that Lin’an can provide complete supporting services for the Corridor, therefore, there will be great opportunities for Lin’an to attract sunrise industries. Lin’an currently focuses on areas such as medical devices, biomedicine, and medical care and is actively building a life and health industry cluster in reliance on the Tianmu Medical Harbour.

In his speech, Jiang Feng, President of China Strategic Alliance of Medical Device Innovation, first introduced the origin of the China Medical Devices Design & Entrepreneurship Competition (“Competition”). The Competition (as part of “Innovation China” activities) has been held successfully for four consecutive sessions under the guidance of the related departments under the China Association for Science and Technology and the Ministry of Science and Technology. The Competition has collected 283, 607, 665, and 831 medical device innovation projects, respectively in its four sessions; the Competition and its supporting activities have cumulatively attracted the participation of more than 2,000 enterprises and innovation service and investment institutions, the visits of more than 40,000 persons on site, and the presence of many ministerial and commission leaders and academicians and more than 100 authoritative regulation and industry experts to provide guidance on site; a total of 253 first-prize, second-prize and third-prize projects have been selected from the finals of the four sessions of the Competition, which cumulatively obtained financing of more than RMB 5.2 billion according to post-competition half-year tracking statistics, and some of which subsequently obtained project funding from ministries, commissions, provinces, cities, or the army and won the prizes of other competitions. According to him, small and medium-sized enterprises are the main force of innovation, and the cooperation between small and large enterprises is the key to the building of a context for innovation and benign development of medical devices. The Competition is mainly divided into the startup group and the growth group contests, and the supporting services of the Competition provide a quality and complete service chain so that innovative projects receive better support.

“Happiness is when flowers blossom in the field.” Then, in his speech, Chen Liqun, member of the Standing Committee of Party Committee and Deputy Mayor of Lin’an District, comprehensively described Lin’an’s biomedical industry. According to him, Lin’an District pays high attention to biomedical industry development and has taken six special actions to comprehensively attract talents, resources, and land to the industry. In the first half of 2022, Lin’an achieved a GDP of RMB 32.968 billion and added value of industrial enterprises above the designated size of RMB 14.684 billion. The biomedical industry is known as the “everlasting sunrise industry”, represents a livelihood cause that protects the health of people and contributes to the implementation of the Healthy China strategy, and is also one of the three key industries in Hangzhou during the 14th Five-Year Plan period. Lin’an’s biomedical industry has a solid foundation for development, with RMB 6.24 billion achieved in the first half of 2022. The biomedical industry is one of the “5+3” key industries for cultivation in Lin’an, where Lin’an is committed to the health service industry characterized by the preventive treatment of diseases, the health manufacturing industry based on the treatment of diseases, and the integrated medical care, health preservation, research, and industry development.

During the opening ceremony, an awarding ceremony was held for the Lin’an Biomedical Industry Innovation Alliance.

Intense Competition

“Innovative”, a word to express “imaginative”, became more concrete from the wonderful performance of these projects. A total of 40 projects in the startup and growth groups shortlisted for the Contest were presented here. After the fierce semifinals, two first prizes, five second prizes, eight third prizes, and 15 winning prizes were selected in the startup group, while one first prize, two second prizes, three third prizes, and four winning prizes were selected in the growth group.

List of Winners in the Startup Group