BDCC Partnership
In December of 2012, based on a common mission and vision, Sekwa established a broad strategic cooperation with the Da An Health (www.daanhealth.com ) a company wholly owned by the Da An Group of Sun Yat Sen University.
The Da An Health, since it incorporation in 2004 is now among the three largest third party laboratory service providers in China. With a strict quality standard developed in close cooperation with the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI)[1] (https://www.ihs.com) - Da An Health owns over 1000 local laboratories and 5 regional laboratories in 6 provinces and supports over 4000 community health center laboratories. With a potential client base of some 58 000 community health service centers it is enjoying an annual growth of over 20% with annual revenues over 2 billion RMB. The main mission is to give high quality comprehensive laboratory services to the community health service system in China.
This main aim of this cooperation is to empower local community health service providers (doctors and nurses) the ability to give high quality assured diagnostic services. This is undertaken through a PPP initiative with local, regional and central health authorities providing a service package that includes the appropriate diagnostic tools supported by a cloud based training and quality assurance system. The initial focus and the basis for the model framework is the detection and diagnosis of Diabetes Complications of the Eye (Diabetic Retinopathy).
Diabetes is the greatest emerging public health challenge in China with an estimated 20% of the population at possible risk and 10% having diabetes according to World Health organizations definitions. Some 30% of these are expected to develop diabetic complications. The project is now being expanded to an international partnership under the name Joint Clinical Practice International (JCPI) lending support with its a cloud-based clinical platform called MedLink Professional. Working closely with faculty from the University of Wisconsin-Madison Fundus Photograph Reading Center, the acknowledged leader in retina photograph interpretation for ocular disease classification, Sekwa has developed a highly rigorous training and quality control plan for the acquisition and interpretation of retinal images for the detection of diabetic retinopathy in medical clinic patient populations.
The program has now established formal cooperation with several municipalities in Guangdong province including an initial 9 million RMB funding from the Guangzhou Health Authorities. Plans are now underway for the development of services in Beijing through a Cooperation with Tsinghua University First Hospital and a regional project for Asia is in its planning phase in cooperation with International Diabetes Federation West Pacific Region.
[1] The Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute (CLSI) creates voluntary consensus standards and guidelines regarding clinical and laboratory testing used within the healthcare and medical testing communities. These standards are accredited by the American National Standards Institute (ANSI) and are referenced in government regulations and international standards.