Guizhou had a press conference of "Internet plus chronicle disease treatment" in Anshun on March 25, gywb.cn reported.

Guizhou Provincial Commission for Health and Family Planning announces its goal for diabetes prevention and control at the Guizhou Diabetes Prevention and Control Center. [Photo/ gywb.cn]

Tencent and Bailing announced that they will further expand their "chronicle disease prevention and control plan" in 2016 to cover 40 percent of the patients.

Guizhou has been actively exploring how to improve chronicle diseases treatment taking advantages of the Internet.

It is estimated that Guizhou has around three million diabetics, with the majority living in the rural areas and are basically taken care by junior medical workers.

To strengthen prevention and control of diabetes, Guizhou Provincial Commission for Health and Family Planning has worked with Tencent, and Guizhou Bailing on establishing the Guizhou Diabetes Prevention and Control Center.

Doctor Tang, a smart glucometer developed by Tencent, will send the data to designated mobile phone and the prevention center. The center will then call the patients if the data is not within normal range.

"Distant medical treatment is an effective way to enhance medical treatment efficiency. Daily diabetes management can be done outside of the hospital while severe or urgent disease is able to be treated at the hospital in time thanks to the alerts," said Gong Zhongming, vice director of the Guizhou Provincial Commission for Health and Family Planning.

Guizhou has made six cities or counties as pilot cities including Guiyang, Anshun and Suiyang. It hopes to expand trials to cover 40 percent of the diabetes patients in the province.

"We hope to establish a distant medical treatment mechanism that has an electronic archive for each patient. Then doctors can learn about patients disease history and give tailored treatment advices," Gong said

With the development of big data, Guizhou is working on distant medical treatment service team. The Gui Health, a healthcare app, has more than 1000 doctors so far. Patients can consult, make a reservation, and search for medicines online.

So far, a dozen hospitals are available to be reserved via the "make a reservation" channel, including Guiyang No2 People’s Hospital, Guiyang Women and Children’s Hospital.

The App also has a self-test function which means, a robot doctor will give e blood glucose result. If the figure is too high, the robot will give diets advices to patients.

If patients are not satisfied with the robots answer, he can choose to "contact the doctor" and chat with real doctor.

Guizhou Diabetes Prevention and Control Center will hand out smart glucometers to rural doctors to encourage regular measurement of blood sugar.

Apart from diabetes, other chronicle disease patients may also consult the doctors online before deciding whether to go to the hospital and which department to go.