Six appointments on both sides of the hospital door

Mandate

Fit an IT estate built through acquisitions to a thinner margin, to the new personal-information and data-security laws and to traceability requirements, without disrupting deliveries to hospitals.

Outcomes

• Retired 162 of 438 applications; IT run cost fell from RMB 172 million in 2022 to RMB 131 million in 2025.
• Introduced code verification at receipt in nine logistics centres; carton association errors fell from 0.84 per cent to 0.05 per cent.
• Cut code-related rejections at hospital receipt from 1.9 per cent of delivery lines to 0.2 per cent.
• Moved 40 of 41 multinational principals to an onshore portal; no pharmacy personal information is transferred abroad.
• Raised security spending from RMB 14 million to RMB 29 million; 23 systems graded at level three pass their assessments.

Decisions in context

I became chief information officer in April 2021, succeeding a predecessor who had built Shuheng's systems through fifteen years of acquisitions of regional distributors. I inherited 438 applications, three warehouse systems and a budget about to be squeezed by procurement reform. My mandate from the president was to make the estate fit for a thinner margin and for the new data and security laws without disrupting deliveries to more than three thousand hospitals. I lead 386 colleagues and about 140 contractors, with nine direct reports covering applications, infrastructure, integration, security, data governance and hospital-services technology. The work since has followed three lines: retiring what we could not afford to maintain well, verifying traceability data before it reaches hospitals, and keeping patient data where it belongs. I attend the Strategy Committee and Audit Committee when technology or data is on their agenda.

Reason for the move

Current role. Not seeking an executive move; considering one independent directorship with my company's approval.

Mandate

Build and deploy the technology for a new service managing medical consumables inside hospitals.

Outcomes

• Deployed the consumables platform in 21 hospitals by March 2021, each inside the hospital's own network.
• Reduced ward-level consumables stock by an average of 31 per cent in the first year of each deployment.
• Kept every patient-identifiable usage record within the hospitals; Shuheng received item-level data only.
• Built the integration team and interface practices later extended to all hospital connections.

Decisions in context

Shuheng hired me in March 2019 to build the technology for a new business: managing medical consumables inside hospitals, from the hospital's central store to ward cupboards and patient bills. I reported to the vice president for hospital services, with a functional line to the CIO, and built a team of 64 engineers, integration specialists and implementation staff. The defining decision was architectural. A competitor was offering hospitals a free cloud platform that held patient-linked usage data; I chose to deploy inside each hospital's network and keep patient identifiers there, at more than twice the cost per hospital. We lost tenders in 2020 because of it. By March 2021 we were running in 21 hospitals, ward stock had fallen by about a third in each, and the platform had become the basis for the hospital connections I later took over as CIO.

Reason for the move

Appointed Chief Information Officer when my predecessor retired.

Mandate

Strengthen IT controls after a compliance review and adapt the China systems to new data and procurement rules.

Outcomes

• Moved China customer-relationship and employee data from the regional data centre in Singapore to hosting inside China in 2017–18.
• Rebuilt order-to-cash for the two-invoice rules as the distributor base consolidated from 160 to 38, with electronic invoice matching.
• Introduced role-based access reviews across 22 systems; audit exceptions fell from 41 to 6 in two years.
• Graded the Wuxi plant's production and laboratory systems under the multi-level protection scheme.

Decisions in context

Vestrell's China business sold prescription medicines through about 2,800 medical representatives and made some of them at a plant in Wuxi. I joined as head of IT in February 2015, reporting to the China general manager and functionally to the group's Asia-Pacific CIO in Singapore, with a team of 48. Two changes defined the role. The two-invoice rules from 2017 forced us to rebuild order-to-cash around fewer, larger distributors and stricter invoice matching. The Cybersecurity Law, effective in June 2017, led us to move China customer-relationship and employee data from the regional data centre in Singapore to hosting inside China, a project the regional office first resisted on cost. I also learnt what a multinational expects of access control and audit trails. I left in 2019 to return to Chengdu and to work closer to hospitals.

Reason for the move

Wanted to return to Chengdu and to operations closer to hospitals; Shuheng offered a new hospital-services technology role.

Mandate

Replace separate departmental systems with an electronic medical record and a hospital-wide integration platform.

Outcomes

• Introduced an electronic medical record in all 62 wards.
• Built an integration platform linking 37 clinical and administrative systems.
• Cut the median outpatient pharmacy wait from 24 minutes to nine.
• The hospital was assessed at level four of the health ministry's electronic medical record grading in 2014.

Decisions in context

Yuejiang General Hospital asked me back as director of information in March 2010, seven years after I had left its information centre. The hospital had grown to 3,600 beds and about four million outpatient visits a year, and its clinical departments ran separate systems that did not share patient records. I reported to the vice president for administration and led 58 people with an annual budget, including equipment, of about RMB 46 million. Over five years we introduced an electronic medical record in all 62 wards and an integration platform linking 37 systems, and we cut the median wait at the outpatient pharmacy from 24 minutes to nine. I also handled the hospital's side of supplier integration, receiving data requests from distributors and vendors and learning to ask what each was for. Vestrell then offered me a view of the industry from the manufacturer's side.

Reason for the move

Recruited by Vestrell to run IT for its China business; wanted to see the industry from a manufacturer's side.

Mandate

Deliver hospital system implementations in county and city hospitals across the southwest.

Outcomes

• Led implementations in 46 hospitals across Sichuan, Chongqing and Guizhou.
• Restored systems at eleven hospitals in affected counties after the May 2008 earthquake.
• Introduced a standard go-live checklist built around pharmacy and billing counters.
• Reduced average implementation time from eleven months to seven.

Decisions in context

I joined Qiaoyun Health Software in July 2003 as an implementation consultant in its Chengdu branch and became delivery director for the southwest in 2007. The company sold hospital information, laboratory and imaging systems, mostly to county and city hospitals. Over seven years I led implementations in 46 hospitals across Sichuan, Chongqing and Guizhou, and my team grew to about 70. The work taught me how much depends on a hospital's own people: the pharmacist who maintains the drug dictionary, the finance clerk who reconciles insurance claims. After the Wenchuan earthquake in May 2008, my team spent eleven weeks restoring systems at eleven hospitals in affected counties, some working from temporary buildings. I left when Yuejiang invited me to return and run its information department, where I had once been a junior engineer.

Reason for the move

Invited back to Yuejiang General Hospital to direct its information department.

Mandate

Build the hospital's first network and support its first hospital information system.

Outcomes

• Built the hospital's first campus network, connecting 1,100 terminals.
• Supported the 1999 outpatient go-live and its recovery from first-week queues.
• Extended the system to inpatient billing and the pharmacy store by 2002.

Decisions in context

I joined Yuejiang's four-person information centre in July 1998, straight from university, to build the hospital's first network. Within a year I was supporting the go-live of its outpatient information system, where an overwhelmed pharmacy printer left about three hundred patients queuing on the first morning, the experience that still shapes how I judge a system. I became lead for the hospital information system project in 2001, extending it to inpatient billing and the pharmacy store, and migrating years of paper and spreadsheet drug-stock records. The team had grown to nine by 2003. I left because I had seen one hospital's system from the inside and wanted to learn how such systems were designed, sold and implemented across many hospitals with far fewer resources than ours.

Reason for the move

Wanted to learn how hospital systems were built and implemented across many hospitals.