Revolutionizing Interventional Procedures Through AI Empowerment

Special Feature by Rongzhong · "Towards a New 2025: The AI Future" - Article 12

Bringing together top innovators and business leaders from China and abroad - including AI industry leaders and pioneering enterprises - this initiative aims to explore the future of industrial transformation, technological breakthroughs, and the development of strategic emerging sectors by 2025.

As a key innovator in the "AI + Healthcare" field, WeMed Medical is making significant strides in the application layer of the industry chain-especially within interventional surgery scenarios. By integrating Endovascular Robotic System, DSA, and intelligent imaging analysis platforms, the company has built a comprehensive "Hand-Eye-Brain" ecosystem for interventional procedures, laying a strong foundation for the future of AI-powered medicine.

One of WeMed Medical's most notable breakthroughs lies in the use of AI to dramatically enhance interventional imaging quality, now reaching industry-leading standards. In parallel, the company has developed a robust computing platform that supports the full interventional surgery workflow, backed by a rich database of surgical operation data and in-depth modeling experience.

Excerpt from Chinese Venture's exclusive conversation with Yang He, Founder and CEO of WeMed Medical.

CV: From image recognition to surgical navigation, from primary care support to personalized health management, artificial intelligence is driving a profound revolution in efficiency and innovation across the healthcare industry. Within this AI + healthcare ecosystem, which key segments does your company focus on? How do you view the current market landscape, and what are your core technological or product advantages?

YANG: At present, WeMed Medical is primarily positioned in the application layer of the AI + healthcare industry chain-widely regarded as the most commercially viable segment. Focusing on interventional surgery, the company has successfully achieved product implementation across multiple scenarios, including foundational image processing, 3D reconstruction, target recognition, and robotic surgical guidance.

WeMed Medical has established a comprehensive "Hand-Eye-Brain" integration in interventional care, encompassing Endovascular Robotic System, DSA, and intelligent imaging analysis platform-providing fertile ground for the advancement of AI + healthcare. Leveraging AI, the company has made breakthrough progress in interventional image processing, achieving image quality that ranks among the best in the industry. Alongside this, WeMed has built a robust computing infrastructure, accumulated a substantial volume of specialized data in the interventional therapy domain, and gained deep expertise in model development, training, optimization, and deployment.

CV: AI technology is deeply integrating with healthcare across many specialized fields such as internal medicine, neurosurgery, and oncology. Which application scenarios do you believe hold the greatest commercial potential?

YANG: AI's deep integration into healthcare is showing remarkable commercial potential across various specialized domains.

In the rapidly evolving field of interventional medicine, AI is revolutionizing both foundational imaging and navigation technologies. By seamlessly integrating multimodal imaging data-such as CT, OCT, and IVUS-AI enables the real-time generation of detailed 3D models, offering clinicians precise guidance and critical decision-making support during procedures. Moreover, AI-driven systems dynamically adapt navigation paths based on live intraoperative data, including vascular stenosis severity and blood flow velocity changes. Coupled with advanced haptic feedback integration, AI delivers highly realistic tactile sensations, significantly enhancing robotic operation precision and surgeon experience.

AI-enabled navigation in interventional robotic systems is translating the surgical experience of leading experts from top-tier hospitals into standardized protocols, paving the way to elevate interventional surgery capabilities in community hospitals and boost procedure success rates.

CV: In light of the inherent long development cycles and high risks associated with AI healthcare technologies, how does your company strike a balance between addressing market demands and investing in technological innovation? Additionally, could you share insights into your R&D investment over the past two years?

YANG: Tackling genuine clinical needs with AI demands a balance between bold vision and pragmatic execution-developing solutions that are not only feasible but also widely accepted and trusted by medical professionals. WeMed Medical has steadily increased its AI investment in recent years and plans to make AI a strategic priority for future growth.

CV: Given the complexity and variability of the human body, AI applications in healthcare face significant challenges related to data privacy, medical ethics, and national security. In particular, how does your company address the issue of data silos in AI medical data?

YANG: The core issue behind AI medical data silos is less about data privacy and more about the healthcare sector's approach to data ownership. While there are established protocols for anonymizing personal information in medical imaging-with relatively low technical barriers-the key to breaking down data silos lies in clearly defining data ownership and establishing fair benefit-sharing mechanisms for commercial use of the data.

At the same time, due to the complexity and variability of the human body, the scale and diversity of medical AI data significantly affect the model's generalization capabilities. In the future, medical AI data will extend beyond imaging to include comprehensive human health data, medical knowledge guidelines, and clinical decision-making by physicians-making the data even more valuable and impactful.

CV: In the era of health and wellness, are medical robots and AI-assisted caregiving merely buzzwords or do they hold real promise? How can AI empower medical devices through deep learning and computer vision to improve diagnostic accuracy? Additionally, how can remote monitoring and intelligent maintenance of medical equipment be effectively addressed?

YANG: In the field of interventional medicine, AI empowerment enhances surgical precision and reduces intraoperative risks across multiple dimensions. At the foundational imaging level, AI delivers a qualitative leap in image quality, enabling physicians to more clearly discern vascular morphology and instrument positioning. Simultaneously, AI provides near real-time quantitative analysis, offering clinicians more accurate decision-making support.

Looking ahead, AI's comprehensive intelligence-embodied in the "Hand," "Eye," and "Brain" of the surgical process-will empower the entire procedure. Significant improvements in navigation, surgical control, and intraoperative safety protection are expected, positioning AI as a transformative productivity tool in interventional surgery.