Nevember 15^th, hosted in concert by the China CDC’s Clinical Center of TB, the Innovation Alliance on Tuberculosis Diagnosis and Treatment (Beijing)(hereafter, IATB), the Beijing Chest Hospital, the China TB Hospital Consortium, the China TB Clinical Trials Consortium (CTCTC), and the Shenyang Chest Hospital, the 2018 National Symposium of Heads of TB Hospitals was successfully held in Shenyang. More than 300 heads of TB hospitals coming from all 31 provinces, autonomous regions, municipalities attended the event, where new ideas of TB treatment and prevention were clashed.

The opening ceremony was moderated by Mr. Li Liang, Standing Vice-Director of the IATB, Vice-Director of the Beijing Chest Hospital. Mr. Xu Shaofa, Director of both IATB and Beijing Chest Hospital, delivered the opening remarks, in which he said that during the 5 years since its founding, the China TB Hospital Consortium has really lived up to its expection of rallying all China’s TB hospitals under one banner. Together we have bore witness to the adjustment and development of TB clinical institutions brought by the new round of national reform on the health system, contributed to the founding and development of the IATB, even the overall national anti-TB efforts.

Mr. Xu, continued by saying that under this year’s main theme ‘Embracing the Internet Era: Intellegent TB Treatment’, we are going to establish a National Internet Hospital Group, which is a daring attempt and exploration aligning with the National Policy for Developing Internet based Medical Services. 78 TB-designated medical institutions from 30 provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities will become the inaugural members of the group. Establishment of this group will be condusive to the realization of an optimized triage system of diagnosis and treatment as well as permeation of high quality medical services into the grassroots, alleviating the differences created by uneven regional development. This symposium will also introduce for the first time the ‘TB Imaging Artificial Intellegent Diagnosis System’ , which hopefully will greatly improve TB detection rate, bring down rate of misdiagnosis at grassroots as well as elevate the overall quality of TB-specific medical services.

On the opening ceremony, Mr. Xia Gang, Vice-Director of the Beauru of Disease Control, National Health Commission (NHC) also delivered a speech. On behalf of the NHC, Mr. Xia first congratulated on the success of the symposium, expressed gratitute to all the TB experts and professionals despite busy schedule attending the event. Currently, we are half way through the 13^th Five-Year National TB Program, continued by Mr. Xia, that more than ever, a renewed devotion and dedication is needed to meet the program’s targets. In light of the WHO’s ‘End TB’ by 2035 strategy, and as a high TB burden country, China has been working hard in terms of national TB control. Especially in recent years, the country has introduced a number of ‘new technologies, new measures, new concepts’,  by which our TB control efforts have been greatly advanced. However, China’s TB control is still faced with many challenges. In the future, more emphasis will be put on elevating population health awareness, strengthening management of case diagnosis and treatment, improving key disease regions’ madical capacities as well as disease prevention in key populations, further containing the spread of MDR-TB and patient support programs, ultimately advancing the national anti-TB efforts. Mr. Xia also pointed out that rapid development of science and technology has brought about an unprecedented opportunity for reforms and innovation to take place in the field of TB control, IATB’s attempts in establishing a standardized national TB hospital big data platform, an internet hospital platform as well as developing this TB imaging AI system will definitely play a positive role in improving medical service capacities at the grassroots. Mr. Xia hoped that IATB along with other developers will proactively accumulate and analyze the experiences gained from all these explorations, and use them to solve real problems, so as to better the overall anti-TB efforts.

The two-day event included not only usual conferencing such as working reports, policy interpretation, experience sharing sessions, but also bore witness to the first ever ‘Human-AI Contest in Chest Imaging Interpretation’, the founding of the Internet Hospital Group, the National Training Center of Chest Imaging, nomination of the IATB Clinical Trial Bases for In-vitro Diagnostics, the expanding of the NDIP (New Drug Introduction & Protection) project sites as well as naming of NDIP Sites of Excellence.