On July 21, SCPKU was the site of a seminar entitled “Medical Big Data Application Assessment and Safeguards.”  Co-sponsored by the Chinese Health Information Association (CHIA) and the China National Health Development Research Center of the People’s Republic of China (NHDRC), this event was the group’s second seminar focused on this topic which gathered over 80 participants including leaders from CHIA, NHDRC, local members of the Health and Family Planning Commission, and academic representatives from universities, medical institutes and pharmaceutical companies. The seminar concentrated on the fusion of medical big data and health care services, decision outcomes, as well as deployment by the State Council and National Health and Family Planning Commission of the People’s Republic of China (NHFPC).

Following NHDRC Director Wei Fu’s opening remarks, Xuefeng Ling, SCPKU Faculty Fellow, Principal Investigator of the Translational Medical Program at Stanford University and co-founder of HBI Solutions, gave a talk on the application of medical big data in decision support. Dr. Ling introduced big data based business intelligent solutions for health management platforms that hold electronic medical records as structured data. Big data based business intelligent solutions have been shown to yield better performance than traditional unstructured solutions in numerous cases including situational awareness, population approach, and risk information.

University of California-Riverside Bioengineering Associate Professor Jiayu Liao followed with a presentation on Chinese medicine and its contribution to medical big data. Dr. Liao cited the latest clinically validated immunosuppressant inspired by Chinese medicine which is cheaper and more effective than its predecessors.  He also highlighted the first reported Non-peptide GLP-1R Agonist with in vivo efficacy and a new fluorescence resonance energy transfer technique, both of which are based on Chinese medicine.

Harvard Professor of Statistics and Director of Graduate Studies Jun Liu, West China Hospital Vice President and Professor Wei Zhang, and Taizhou Pharmaceutical High-Tech District Health Bureau Director Tao Zhang separately presented on medical big data applications in medical management and service, medical service evaluation and applications based on diagnosis related groups, and Taizhou’s demand and practices.  NHFPC Associate Director and CHIA Chairman Xiaotao Jin and Chinese Academy of Chinese Medical Sciences (CACMS) and Academicians of Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE) Dean Boli Zhang also presented.

Dr. Ling and Health and Development Center Professor Long Cheng closed the seminar with a discussion focused on early investigations into a medical big data application evaluation index system and an international medical big data human resources development cooperation plan. 

On March 30 and 31, 2017, Stanford held two events at SCPKU featuring the latest developments in quantitative finance and financial technology. 

On March 30, the university co-organized with SCPKU, Tsinghua University’s School of Economics and Management and the Department of Mathematics, and Peking University’s  (PKU) Guanghua School of Management and Department of Financial Mathematics, a conference featuring new developments in quantitative finance and risk management with a particular emphasis on trade execution, financial technology, data analysis, and insurance.   This event was the third biennial conference following previous ones at PKU in 2013 and Tsinghua in 2015. Following opening remarks by Stanford Professor of Statistics and Director of Stanford's Financial and Risk Modeling Institute (FARM) Tze Lai, experts from academia and industry including J.P. Morgan, PKU, Tsinghua, Renmin University of China, Daokoudai and the Southwest University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, shared the latest developments in a wide spectrum of quantitative finance topics ranging from conditional quasi-Monte Carlo methods to China’s peer-to-peer lending market. 

FARM and SCPKU also co-organized a forum on financial technology and portfolio management on March 31.  Due to advances in artificial intelligence and big data technologies, the financial industry is facing tremendous pressure to develop and implement solutions yielding improved operational efficiencies.  This forum convened distinguished academic and industry speakers from quantitative trading, wealth management, asset management, financial consulting, and credit rating firms and agencies to explore the current development and future for financial technology and portfolio management.

Stanford’s Center for Innovative Study Design, with co-sponsors including the Stanford Center at Peking University (SCPKU), the International Society for Biopharmaceutical Statistics and Tsinghua University’s Center for Hospital Management, held a Forum on Regulatory Science and Biomedical Innovations at SCPKU on March 22, 2017. The event gathered more than 60 leaders from the Chinese Food and Drug Administrations (CFDA), Chinese Association of Preventive Medical (CAPM), universities, professional organizations, and R&D experts from domestic and international biopharmaceutical companies.

Over the last decade, significant progress has been made in medical research, disease treatment and general health and well-being.  The Chinese government has called out innovation as a major national strategy to achieve sustainable growth.  At the same time, to address public health and safety, the country’s regulatory agencies are tasked with implementing relevant laws to ensure the safety and efficacy of new products and services before they’re available to the public. The ability of regulatory agencies, laws and regulations to promote innovation while protecting public health is an important research question.  This forum at SCPKU was designed to facilitate a high-level discussion on this topic by scholars from academia from both China and the US, CFDA leaders, and R&D experts from biomedical industries.

The forum was structured with four keynote talks and two panel discussions. Dr. Ruiyi He, the Chief Scientist at the Center for Drug Evaluation of CFDA, delivered a speech on CFDA’s plan to enhance regulations on drug evaluation to promote the development of new drugs. He highlighted some major initiatives to align with ICH (International Council for Harmonization of Technical Requirements for Pharmaceuticals for Human Use).  In June 2017, China became a member of ICH. Dr. Dechao Yu, founder and CEO of the Innovent Biologics, Inc., gave a talk on opportunities and challenges in innovative biologics in China. He shared his experience in developing Oncorine and Conbercept in China and the needs for regulation reform for innovative new drug applications. Professor Jiqian Fang from Sun Yat-Sen University reviewed the development of the CFDA in the past two decades and called for open, transparent and academic participation in innovative development of drug review and approval regulations. Professor Baoyan Liu, Vice President of the Chinese Academy of Chinese Medicine Sciences, presented innovations in Chinese medicine (CM) using clinical trials and big data, and the regulatory needs tailored for the sciences of CM.

The two panel discussions were focused on the challenges and opportunities in evaluating the safety and efficacy of innovative biomedical products and collaboration in biomedical innovations. Panelists included a CFDA division director, CFDA biostatisticians, several members of the CFDA advisory committee, a vice president of CAPM, and CEOs of several biomedical startups in China.

Attendees were able to exchange ideas in an open and fair environment and many expressed interest in joining future SCPKU-based forums and workshops on this topic.  Forum participants drew the following conclusions:

·   Regulatory science plays an important role in promoting and supporting biomedical innovations.

·   Regulatory reforms should be open, transparent, science-driven, and in alignment with international standards.

·   Low-quality generic drugs should not be supported.

·   Regulatory agencies, academics, and the biopharmaceutical industry should work together on developing science-based policies to make effective, safe and affordable drugs for Chinese patients.

The Center for Innovative Study Design also held a Workshop on Innovative Statistical Methods in Precision Medicine and Big Data at SCPKU on March 23, 2017. Twelve statisticians from the Chinese FDA, Chinese universities and US universities presented their research on advanced clinical trial design, statistical innovations in big data, and applications of machine learning in biomedical data science. More than 60 attendees from local universities (both faculty and graduate students), government, and pharmaceutical companies joined the workshop and had many insightful discussions.

South Korean President Moon Jae-in and U.S. President Donald Trump recently held a summit in Washington, their first face-to-face meeting in a time of heightened tensions on the Korean Peninsula. Experts from the Shorenstein Asia-Pacific Research Center offered insights in a series of publications and press interviews.

In advance of the summit, William J. Perry Fellow Kathleen Stephens spoke on Bloomberg television about the challenges facing the United States and South Korea, and how those challenges would be prioritized during the bilateral meeting.

Moon would be bringing the message that the U.S.-South Korea alliance is a “strong one and that he remains committed to it,” and that, “only by working transparently and closely together” could the two countries address areas of concern, Stephens said.

“Only when Washington and Seoul are able to talk very frankly to each other and come up with a coordinated plan do we have any chance of making some progress on North Korea,” she added.

Stephens joined the program from Seoul, where a group of Shorenstein APARC faculty and fellows participated in a public seminar and the Korea-U.S. West Coast Strategic Forum, a biannual conference that seeks to foster dialogue about issues affecting the Korean Peninsula and the U.S.-South Korea alliance.

The seminar, held in conjunction with The Sejong Institute, received press coverage; such articles can be read on the Voice of America website (in Korean) and Sisa Journal website (in Korean).

In an analysis piece for Tokyo Business Today, Associate Director for Research Daniel Sneider assessed the outcomes of the summit between Moon and Trump, suggesting that their meeting was satisfactory – without signs of major discord.

“For the most part, this display of calculated pragmatism worked well. There was no visible daylight between the two leaders over how to handle the North and THAAD totally disappeared from the summit talk, at least in public and in the joint statement issued by the two governments.”

The summit, however, may prove to be a “temporary gain,” Sneider added. “Beneath the smiles, there was plenty of evidence of the gaps, and even the tensions, that exist between a progressive government in Seoul, one that echoes the views of its ideological predecessors of a decade ago, and a nationalist, conservative regime in Washington.”

Read the piece in English and Japanese.

Days after the summit, North Korea test-launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), which the United States and South Korea followed by hosting joint military exercises.

Stephens spoke on WBUR radio about the ICBM test launch and the initial reactions of the Trump administration.

“If [President Trump’s] agenda is to take stronger defensive measures against North Korea, I think he will find strong partners in Japan and South Korea,” she said, noting that other measures, such as diplomacy and economic sanctions, have also been used to affect pressure on the regime.

Responding to a question about China’s relationship with North Korea, Stephens said Beijing has not exhausted all possible tools in its efforts to persuade Pyongyang to slow or abandon its nuclear and missile activities. This is because China fears a collapse of the regime and “takes a long view” in its calculus, she said.

This news item has been updated.