AI-enabled Specialty Operations and Intelligent Operations | Sub-forum Successfully Held at the 4th China Hospital Operations Management and High-Quality Development Conference

From 15 to 17 May 2026, the 4th China Hospital Operations Management and High-Quality Development Conference was held in Guangzhou. The conference was co-organised by the Chinese Journal of Health Economics, the Heilongjiang Provincial Health Development Research Centre, the Guangdong Health Economics Society and the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University. Under the theme of "Digital and Intelligent Empowerment, Quality and Efficiency Enhancement – Advancing High-Quality Development and High-Efficiency Governance of Public Hospitals", the conference closely followed the overall deployment of healthcare reform and focused on the development and reform of public hospitals, precision operations management and digital and intelligent empowerment.

Main venue

4th China Hospital Operations Management and High-Quality Development Conference

More than 1,000 hospital administrators, health authority leaders and experts and scholars from hospitals of all levels and types across the country attended the conference, conducting thematic discussions on tripartite health system reform, health insurance payment methods, business and finance integration, lean performance management, specialty and workforce development, AI integration in healthcare, smart hospitals and medical consortium building.

Operations sub-forum

Embracing New Quality Productive Forces for the Future: New Paradigms of AI-Empowered Hospital Operations Management

Session chairs

The sub-forum was co-chaired by He Qianran, standing member of the Party committee and chief accountant of the provincial general hospital affiliated to Wuhan University, and Yang Dongmiao, standing member of the Party committee and chief financial officer of the provincial hospital of integrated Chinese and Western medicine in Guangdong. The sub-forum aimed to provide a high-level platform for academic and practical exchange, using AI technology innovation to address hospital operations challenges and support the high-quality development of public hospital operations management.

He Qianran, standing member of the Party committee and chief accountant of the provincial general hospital affiliated to Wuhan University

Keynote reports by Yang Dongmiao, standing member of the Party committee and chief financial officer of the provincial hospital of integrated Chinese and Western medicine in Guangdong

The keynote reports covered a range of frontier topics and practical scenarios in public hospital operations management.

Liu Jie, vice-president of the provincial general hospital affiliated to Southern Medical University, presented the specialty capability building pathway developed by his hospital, centred on "strengthening technology, improving efficiency, ensuring quality and enhancing patient satisfaction". Through five core initiatives — establishing an end-to-end clinical technology service system, scientific classification-based management, efficient approval and oversight, translation of new quality productive forces into practice, and tailored training — the hospital advanced core technology development and reinforced specialty competitiveness. Resource allocation was optimised through case type classification, safety was safeguarded through total quality management, and the service experience was refined through tiered satisfaction management, achieving dual improvements in technological innovation and quality and efficiency.

Yu Xianlan, chief accountant of Qilu No. 2 Hospital affiliated to Shandong University, presented an operations management system built on "data integration, intelligent analytics and hospital- and department-level linkage", achieved by connecting multiple in-house business systems to enable unified data collection and multi-party sharing. Key dimensions such as National Assessment indicators, case type costs and resource efficiency were incorporated into operations analytics, providing precise support for department-level decision-making. A capacity-building mechanism combining training, coaching and review was established to embed operations management tools in clinical departments. Departments used operations platform data to develop analysis and improvement plans, translating data value into operational performance.

Tan Xiangdong, Party committee member and chief accountant of the municipal people's hospital in Shiyan, focused on the hospital's economic management pathway, driven by both precision and innovation. Guided by the principles of pragmatism, innovation, collaboration and shared progress, he outlined the strategy and outcomes of the "Year of Economic Management" initiative through standardised management, strengthened internal controls, lean operations and demonstration leadership. He analysed debt risks, operational pressures and emerging regulatory trends, explained the key elements of look-through supervision, and presented a financial governance framework covering six dimensions: management structure, comprehensive budgeting, lean cost control, internal controls, smart finance and the finance ecosystem. He emphasised that digital and intelligent empowerment enables the shift from passive compliance to proactive governance, giving rise to replicable "Shiyan experience".

Zheng Haiping, deputy director (in charge of work) of the Operations and Performance Department of the municipal people's hospital in Changzhou, shared the hospital's practice in building an AI-empowered operations management platform. Built on standardised indicator definitions, the platform integrates data on human resources, finance, assets and technology, and develops three operations dashboards — hospital-wide, specialty and surgery — to support multi-dimensional, visualised operations analytics. An "AI Operations Brain" was also developed, combining large model capabilities with industry knowledge and business logic. Leveraging operations management models, causal inference modules and benchmark data, the platform enables data to serve as a core driver of high-quality hospital development.

Fang Lisha, deputy director of the Operations Management and Cost Control Department of the provincial general hospital affiliated to Jilin UniversityFocused on the deepening adjustments in healthcare pricing and health insurance policy, the session addressed precision management, performance-based pay reform, procedure and case type cost measurement, smart operations development and business and finance integration, embedding DRG and DIP concepts across the full hospital management chain. The hospital put forward an innovative tiered development concept of "specialty zones" and built a six-dimensional specialty evaluation system covering professional ethics development, precision management, sub-specialty development, research performance, platform development and talent training, strengthening internal capability building and optimising resource allocation.

Wang Zhigang, founder of Shanghai Penghai Laixun Data Technology Co., Ltd. and council member of the Health Finance and Accounting Branch of the Chinese Health Economics Society, shared proven pathways for building standardised, large-model-empowered hospital operations management systems. The system uses a three-level maturity framework covering strategy translation, organisational process and digital and intelligent enablement, cascading from strategic goals down to department-level indicators. An operating mechanism of "horizontal communication and vertical decision-making" was established, using department operations coordinators as the connecting thread to enable end-to-end collaboration. Built on this foundation, a digital and intelligent platform empowered by large models and AI delivers data transparency, anomaly alerting, intelligent root-cause analysis and countermeasure generation, driving the shift from traditional process-driven operations management to data-driven closed-loop optimisation.