Summit brings health knowledge closer to the people

The first Tencent Medical Enlightenment Summit kicked off on Monday in Beijing, with hundreds of thousands tuning in online to lean about the latest achievements and breakthroughs in the medical field, including cancer and AIDS.

Titled "Decoding Life", the summit was jointly held by Chinese internet titan Tencent Holdings Ltd and the New England Journal of Medicine, a world-renowned English-language medical journal.

Zhang Meng,,vice president of Tencent Medical, said the event is meant to bring cutting-edge medicine closer to the public and contribute to the improvement of health literacy in China.

"Today, people have a growing need for reliable healthcare information. We aim to build a bridge that helps the public to cross the cognitive divide in the medical fields," Zhang said.
During the summit, Tencent's medical-information platform Tencent Yidian announced it will work with NEJM Medical Frontier to set up special columns, sharing the latest medical concepts and telling stories.

The two sides also unveiled a scientific short video program to encourage young doctors to actively post related content online, in a move to popularize medical knowledge and improve the public's understanding and appreciation of the field.

"We are fully aware that Tencent cannot fulfil the task of popularizing science on its own, and we would like to work with more partners to do this," Zhang added. "The summit is just the first step. Tencent will consciously work to contribute to the improvement of national health literacy."

Xiao Ruiping, deputy chief editor of NEJM and executive editor of NEJM Medical Frontier, highlighted the important role of popularizing science in people's daily lives.

"It is of great significance to offer the public standardized and reliable medical and healthcare information, especially as fake health news spreads on the internet." Xiao noted.

With blossoming mobile internet technologies, Chinese is used to relying on the internet to search for medical information amid widespread concerns about health.

To cater to their need, Tencent launched Tencent Yidian in 2017 to offer professional and reliable medical content for the public, based on specialist medical and healthcare information licensed by WebMD, the world's leading medical and health information platform.

As of September Tencent Yidian has covered over 10,000 diseases, including severe conditions such as tumors. The platform claimed it has established cooperation with more than 3,000 medical experts, including over 100 academicians and academic leaders.