China and Israel Are Ready to Battle: Who Leads the Medical Imaging Artificial Intelligence Market?

In October 2017, China's State Council laid out a plan to develop a domestic artificial intelligence (AI) industry worth $150 billion by 2030, with the aim of becoming a global leader in AI technologies. President Xi Jinping called upon Chinese companies to "step up, and own the core technologies." It is no surprise, then, that the Chinese SenseTime was the highest-valued AI startup, though it held this title for a little less than a month. It was overtaken, unsurprisingly, by another Chinese startup: UBTECH Robotics, valued at an estimated $5 billion. This AI race has spilled over to healthcare, and to medical image analysis, which is the bellwether application area for healthcare AI.