Guangdong Provincial Key Laboratory of Smart Healthcare Service and Management
Director: Prof. Wenhui ZHOU
The GuangdongProvincial Key Laboratory of Smart Healthcare Service and Management is hostedby the School of Business Administration at SCUT. It serves as a key provincialresearch platform dedicated to addressing national strategic priorities,supporting the Healthy China initiative, and fostering deep interdisciplinaryintegration between management science and the healthcare sector.
The Laboratoryis led by Professor ZHOU Wenhui, Associate Dean of the School of BusinessAdministration, a recipient of the National Science Fundation for DistinguishedYoung Scholars and Principal Investigator of a National Natural ScienceFoundation of China (NSFC) Innovative Research Group project. AssociateProfessor DANG Yuanyuan, a national-level young talent, serves as DeputyDirector.
Responding tothe urgent needs of the Healthy China strategy and the digital-intelligenttransformation of healthcare systems, the Laboratory focuses on three coreresearch areas: smart hospital operations management, health service management,and healthcare resource allocation. Guided by an integratedFour-in-One perspective—encompassing medical care, healthinsurance, pharmaceuticals, and proactive health—the Lab systematicallyinvestigates critical management challenges and governance issues in healthcaredelivery. It conducts integrated research spanning theoretical innovation,methodological breakthroughs, and practical applications, aiming to establish adistinctive research system that deeply fuses data-intelligence technologies withmanagement-driven innovation.
As of 2025, theLab has assembled a high-caliber, well-structured research team with stronginnovation capacity, including 4 postdoctoral researchers, 13 Ph.D. candidates,and 16 master’s students. The team has published over 100 papers in top-tierinternational and domestic journals such as Management Science, MIS Quarterly,and Journal of Management Sciences in China, and has led more than 10 majornational projects—including NSFC Innovative Research Group grants, DistinguishedYoung Scholar grants, and Key Program grants—producing influential outcomeswith significant academic, policy, and practical impact.
FeaturedCollaboration Case Study
HealthcareSystem Design and Operational Optimization
— Buildingan Intelligent Health Service System for County-Level Medical Consortiums
In alignment with China’s national initiative todevelop integrated county-level Medical Consortiums and expand high-qualitymedical services to grassroots communities, Xinyi City in Guangdong Provincefaced significant challenges: insufficient clinical competency among primarycare physicians, limited healthcare access in remote areas, and low publicawareness of proactive health management.
Against this backdrop, Xinyi People’s Hospital (the leadhospital in Maoming City, Guangdong) spearheaded a key national project with atotal investment of approximately RMB 92.12 million, including over RMB 46million in central government funding. This project represents a criticalimplementation of the national strategy to strengthen primary care and empowercounty-level healthcare systems in Guangdong.
The research team served as the chief architect andauthored the Design Proposal for the Xinyi County MedCom Resource-SharingCenter and Central Pharmacy Construction Project. Centered on empoweringboth clinicians and patients, the proposal introduced an AI-driven “One Core,Two Wings” intelligent health consortium solution, systematically addressingsystemic bottlenecks through three strategic pillars:
1. Empowering Physicians to Enhance Clinical Competency: A unified digital platformstandardizes core workflows such as initial consultations and referrals. Itintegrates AI-assisted diagnosis and a clinical knowledge hub to supportevidence-based decision-making. Additionally, a multidisciplinary teamcollaboration mechanism enables specialty capabilities from the lead hospitalto effectively extend to grassroots facilities.
2. Equipping Village Doctors for Precision Patient Management: An intelligent service platformwas developed for all 979 village clinics and 1,155 village doctors acrossXinyi, featuring tools such as AI-powered early warning, automated follow-ups,and dynamic risk stratification for chronic disease management. Since itslaunch, village doctors access the platform nearly 20 times per day on average,significantly boosting frontline service efficiency.
3. Establishing a Digital Incentive Mechanism for Sustainable Operation: A tripartite digital pointssystem—covering physicians, patients, and village doctors—links behaviors likecare coordination, follow-up compliance, and daily health check-ins toperformance evaluations, career advancement, or preferential healthcarebenefits. This positive reinforcement ensures consistent, high-quality adoptionof digital health interventions.
Post-implementation results demonstrate markedsuccess: outpatient and emergency visits at the lead hospital increased by17.86%, inpatient volume rose by 6.34%, and out-of-county medical insuranceexpenditures dropped to just 6.12%. These outcomes have strongly supportedXinyi People’s Hospital in achieving its designation as the city’s firstGrade-III Class-A hospital.
This case exemplifies the Laboratory’s comprehensivecapabilities in MedCom development, healthcare system optimization, andintelligent health service innovation. It offers a replicable, digitallyenabled model for deep integration and sustainable development of county-levelhealthcare consortia nationwide.
