Huawei Contribute to Thailand through Technology-Empowered Healthcare

In Bang Khun Thien Hospital, the largest field hospital in Thailand on the frontline of the fight against COVID-19, the doctors are using 5G telemedicine and a set of digital technologies to enhance the handling of the pandemic and support the hi-speed and convenient communication network for the staff working onsite, aiming to boost safety for the medical staff and patients and reducing the risk of infection transmission

This is made possible by the recent cooperation between Huawei Technologies (Thailand) Co., Ltd and the Ministry of Digital Economy and Society (MDES) in strengthening Thailand’s public health sector, especially for the field hospitals, to accommodate the increasing number of COVID-19 patients in Thailand and to support hospitals improve their medical capacity and hi-speed communication network. The cooperation covers provision of technologies for medical use worth more than six million baht to ensure safety for the medical staff and patients, including 5G telemedicine, InPatient area Intelligent Management, and eLTE broadband trunking delivered to Bang Khun Thien field hospital in Bangkok.

Over the past year, the economic and social disruption caused by the pandemic is devastating, with significant impact on individual, industry and national economy across the world. In Thailand, different actors in both public and private sectors are closely working together to manage the spread of COVID-19 and boost post-pandemic recovery, among which Huawei has been proactively integrating its leading technology into Thailand’s fight against COVID-19 and long-term digital transformation.

As Mr. Abel Deng, CEO of Huawei Thailand, emphasized, this new cooperation with MDES is in alignment with Huawei’s commitment to continuously grow in Thailand and contribute to Thailand as a technology-leading ICT partner and proactive digital transformation enabler, especially amidst such challenging times as the ongoing spread of pandemic. According to Mr. Abel in several speeches, Huawei will stand firmly with Thailand and transform the ongoing crisis into new opportunity by applying digital technology including to 5G, Cloud and AI to tackle challenges in the public health and other sectors.

If we look back at Huawei’s footprints in 2020, it is clear that starting from the early outbreak of COVID-19 in Thailand, Huawei has been closely working with Thai government, industry partners and hospitals to protect people and get society back up and running. On March 10th 2020, Huawei donated its telemedicine video conference solution to Thailand hospitals and Disease Control Department. In less than one week, Huawei’s project team managed to finish installing the systems at all 5 locations. The donations, totaling around 10 million baht, included seven sets of Telepresence Systems and 200 mobile user accounts, which enabled medical experts across Thailand to work with frontline medical staff to conduct remote online consultations and monitor the patients’ condition on smart devices with fewer infection risks. On the same day, HE General Prime Minister Prayuth Chan-Ocha, Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Public Health Anutin Charnvirakul visited the IT Center of DDC. Through the Video Conference System, Prime Minister expressed his regards to the medical staffs at Bamrasnaradura Hospital, Banplee Hospital, the Suvarnabhumi Airport, and encouraged Huawei to keep contributing to Thailand’s digital transformation and improve people’s lives with its technological expertise.

After donating the video conference to enable remote consultations, Huawei further worked to improve Thailand hospitals’ medical diagnosis and evaluation using CT images. At the peak of the pandemic, the number of patients usually exceeds the treatment capacity of the hospital. To solve this problem, on March 31st last year, Huawei worked with Thailand’s Ministry of Digital Economy and Society and Digital Economy Promotion Agency to donate AI-Assisted Service to Ramathibodi Hospital, aimed to help medical staffs with medical image analysis and can provide COVID-19 Diagnosis Results in as quick as 25 seconds per case. This illustrated how HUAWEI CLOUD, the first world-leading cloud service provider in Thailand, brought the technological innovation to Thai medical services.

As Professor Piyamitr Sritara, Dean, Faculty of Medicine Ramathibodi Hospital, Mahidol University said, “The Artificial Intelligent technology helps clinical doctors to achieve faster and more accurate diagnosis. The solution can greatly help reduce the workload of Thai medical personnel in this situation.” As another effort to apply this success experience, in the following April, Huawei teamed up with Siriraj Public Hospital to provide AI solutions and 5G technology for the latter. “The AI technology can help doctors analyze CT quantification results of infection cases with high accuracy and low infection risks.” said Dr Prasit Watanapa, Dean at the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital from Mahidol University. Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha visited Siriraj hospital to inspect its epidemic prevention progress, working conditions, and patient treatment. He also tried the AI-assisted diagnosis service provided by Huawei.

In addition to the two public hospitals above, we also see Huawei actively strive to bring technology innovation to the private organizations as well. On April 22th, Bangkok Hospital Pattaya, in cooperation with Huawei, HY Medical from China, and Chanwanich Co., Ltd. (Chanwanich), jointly developed AI technology to assist in the screening and diagnosis for traces in patients undergoing treatment for COVID-19, thereby establishing Bangkok Hospital Pattaya to be regarded as the first private hospital in the region that have adopted such technology which will be used to help support medical personnel in more accurate screening and diagnosis of the virus.

These aforementioned efforts have proved to be highly valuable and effective in supporting Thai Government in its post-COVID-19 economic recovery efforts and accelerating Thailand’s digital technology with 5G adaptation. As the pandemic situation develops in Thailand, on June 12th, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha welcomed Mr. Abel Deng, CEO of Huawei Thailand at the Government House of Thailand. On this occasion, the Prime Minister and Huawei CEO exchanged views on leveraging digital innovations and expertise as well as 5G ecosystem to support Thailand become the region’s digital technology leader. Huawei also reiterated its commitment to support Thailand during this challenging time with the donation of 500,000 face masks for further prevention of COVID-19.

Based on this meeting with prime minister, Huawei speeds up the integration of 5G and other leading technologies in Thailand’s smart healthcare. On June 25th, in partner with the National Broadcasting and Telecommunications Commission (NBTC) and Siriraj Hospital, Huawei utilized its 5G technology advantages to launch the piloting unmanned vehicle project for the first time in Thailand, transforming Thai healthcare with 5G innovation into smart hospital. The autonomous car offered safe, convenient and cost-effective solutions while reducing workload for healthcare worker and improving patient safety. According to NBTC, the 5G technology integration would then be progressively applied in the national health system for Smart Hospital transformation in the near future.

Growing upon Huawei’s previous cooperation and success experiences with Siriraj hospital, with the goal to further support Siriraj Hospital’s mission to serve better by becoming a smart center that will apply integrated digital technologies using 5G infrastructure, artificial intelligence, big data and cloud edge computing, Huawei signed a MOU of "5G Powered Smart Hospital Enabled with Cloud and AI" with the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, Mahidol University on December 3rd. According to Prof Dr Prasit Watanapa, dean of the Faculty of Medicine Siriraj Hospital, this five-year MOU will raise the level and standards of our services and improve operational efficiency. This also marks the initial step in establishing Thailand’s first 5G smart state hospital.

As we can see, Huawei’s aforementioned efforts have strongly helped the Thai government and society fight COVID-19 and accelerate post-pandemic digital economy. Starting from its establishment in Thailand 21 years ago, this tech giant has actively empowered Thailand’s journey to become the most advanced 5G country and digital hub in the ASEAN region. In the meantime, Huawei is also continuously contributing social values to Thai community as a responsible local citizen with over 3,300 employees, including digital talent cultivation, narrowing local digital gap, and promoting sustainable development.

Because of Huawei’s valuable support to Thai society in the past 21 years and its efforts to support post-pandemic digital transformation, on March 9th 2021, Huawei has been chosen for the Special Prime Minister Award as the “Digital International Corporation of the Year”. It is the only company to receive this award. On this occasion, Prime Minister Prayut Chan-o-cha expressed the government’s goal of employing 5G and AI systems to drive Thailand forward and asked Huawei to continue its digital mission. In response, Mr. Abel Deng stressed that with the mission of 'Grow in Thailand, Contribute to Thailand’, Huawei will keep accompanying the country move forward to Thailand 4.0 as a technology-leading and trusted ICT partner, proactive digital transformation enabler, and continuous social value contributor especially during this challenging time.