U.K. biopharmaceutical company AstraZeneca signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) for strategic partnership with Ali Health on Feb. 2, a subsidiary company of China's internet giant Alibaba. 

Aimed at building a new model for smart healthcare services and realizing the government's "Healthy China" objectives driven by new internet, AI and IoT technologies, the agreement coincided with an official visit of U.K. Prime Minister Theresa May to China. 

As one of the U.K.'s most renowned and innovative biopharmaceutical companies, AstraZeneca has remained dedicated to a "patient-centric" philosophy over the past 25 years, and has worked hard to drive extensive and intensive exchange and cooperation between both the U.K. and China in the realm of healthcare, and to bring innovative healthcare resources from around the world to the China market.

In accordance with the MOU agreement, AstraZeneca and Ali Health jointly announced that the two companies will enter into a long-term strategic partnership revolving around "smart healthcare," with the aim of combining AstraZeneca's innovative and integrated "patient-centric" diagnosis and treatment solutions with Ali Health's technological expertise in areas such as drug traceability, E-commerce, health management, AI and big data. 

Both parties aim to offer safe, convenient, and effective “one-stop” healthcare services, to increase accessibility to advanced therapies, and to drive the development of a new "Smart Health" model.

This partnership is expected to serve more than 1 million patients in 2018, and over the next 3 years will gradually extend todisease areas including cardiovascular, metabolism, respiratory,gastrointestinal and oncologyin order to serve more Chinese patients. 

In addition, this partnership will also leverage Ali Health's big data and AI technologies to develop auxiliary clinical screening and diagnosis models in metabolism and other major disease areas to help clinicians enhancediagnosis efficiency, improve the management of chronic diseases, and bolster public health awareness.

Yongming Wu, chairman of the board of Ali Health, said: "We're very excited to be able to represent China's tech companies as we enter into a strategic partnership with AstraZeneca."

Leon Wang, executive vice president, international and China president of AstraZeneca, said: "AstraZeneca will now join hands with Ali Health,using cutting-edge internet tools, to provide safer, more convenient, and smarter healthcare services for patients all over China."

During her stay in China, Prime Minister Theresa May said at the Sino-UK Business Forum,“Out businesses are already working closely with one another, real commercial partnership brings real benefits, look at AstraZeneca and Alibaba, coming together to build smart a health system.”

Pascal Soriot, chief executive officer of AstraZeneca, said, "As our second largest market, with supportive healthcare policies and increasing demand for innovative medicines, China has played a growing role in our global plans.”

Since entering China in 1993, AstraZeneca has remained dedicated to its"patient-centric" philosophy, and has brought 30 innovative drugs to treat patients all over China. It has invested a total of US$750 million in China for the purpose of pharmaceutical innovation, and is currently driving the development of 7 new "Category 1.1" drugs. The company also continues to invest in collaborative innovation and R&D models to help China improve its ability to develop new drugs, and thanks to its"patient-centric" commercial innovation strategy in China, AstraZeneca continues to create end-to-end integrated diagnosis and treatment solutions for Chinese patients. 

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