When a hospital has been running its core information system for 26 years, how difficult is it to replace and upgrade everything?

At Peking University People’s Hospital (PKUPH), one of China’s leading tertiary hospitals, the answer can be found in numbers: 46 new or replaced systems, 74 existing business systems connected, 49 contractors involved, and 762 interfaces rebuilt, all completed within just 4.5 months.

This extraordinary effort reflects not only the technical complexity of modern healthcare IT, but also the new era of digital transformation sweeping through China’s public hospitals.

From History to Urgency

PKUPH has long been a pioneer in healthcare informatics. In 1996, the hospital developed China’s first hospital information system (HIS), and over the years it has led the way in electronic medical records (EMR), mobile nursing, HRP, integration platforms, and medical alliance systems, earning multiple domestic and international awards.

However, as the hospital grew larger, its old systems came under increasing pressure. Designed originally for fewer than 3,000 outpatient visits per day, PKUPH now handles 18,000 daily visits across multiple campuses. Multi-campus coordination, unified management, and the sheer growth of patient demand made traditional upgrades insufficient.

When a new leadership team took office in 2022, they quickly identified information system renewal as a top priority. By adopting a new middle-platform architecture, PKUPH enabled unified multi-campus management, achieved a stable core system switchover.

Selecting the Right Technology Partner

One of the boldest moves PKUPH made was bundling its core HIS and EMR systems into a single tender, ensuring smoother integration and demanding higher overall capability from suppliers.

According to the Director of the Medical Information Center in PKUPH, a supplier could not simply solve current needs, its framework had to anticipate future development. With the rise of large language models and AI in healthcare, PKUPH sought a partner willing to co-develop innovative applications with long-term value.

Ultimately, the hospital selected a unified architecture based on an integrated foundation, supporting platforms for infrastructure, capabilities, and user experience, and covering five domains: service, clinical, management, research, and collaboration. The aim is to realize a digital hospital through unified management, unified operations, and unified coordination, ensuring the successful delivery of its digital transformation goals.

The Challenge of Scale

The upgrade’s scope was staggering:

• •    46 new or replaced systems
• •    74 existing systems
• •    762 interfaces across 49 vendors

Every hospital department was affected, requiring extensive research, requirement validation, and cross-team coordination.

The financial system proved especially critical, as every physician’s prescription and every test or procedure had to be linked to billing. During peak adjustment periods, finance staff, IT teams, and vendor engineers worked side by side almost around the clock.

Data migration added another layer of difficulty: 26 years of historical records had to be accurately moved to the new system. Normally, hospitals take at least six months, more often a year, and sometimes nearly two, to migrate a core system. PKUPH accomplished the task in just 4.5 months.

From Support to Value Creation

For PKUPH, digital transformation is no longer about simply supporting hospital operations, it is about creating new value.

Under its strategic plan of “technology + quality,” the hospital is using IT to drive high-quality development. One example is dynamic bed allocation at the Tongzhou campus: the system flexibly adjusts bed ratios across specialties based on occupancy rates, something only possible with a deeply integrated IT backbone.

Patient services were also upgraded. The new system expanded one-stop scheduling into mobile and kiosk self-service booking, giving patients more convenient options. For common exams like blood tests, patients can now track queue progress online, freeing them from long waits. Future upgrades will extend to pre-procedure communication, informed consent, and reminders, all designed to maximize patient satisfaction.

Outpatient services have also moved toward paperless workflows. While some patients and doctors still prefer a single printed guide sheet, the hospital’s next milestone is to fully eliminate printers by mid-2024 and shift guidance onto patients’ mobile devices, a vision branded internally as “One Phone for People’s Hospital.”

Accessibility remains a priority: self-service kiosks automatically enlarge text for elderly users, and mobile messages will follow suit. Traditional services remain available for those who cannot adapt, ensuring inclusivity.

Building Data Assets

Looking ahead, PKUPH is focusing on turning scattered data into assets. The hospital plans to establish a standardized indicator system within a year, governing how data is defined, sourced, and used.

Data governance will support clinical care, research, operations, and management. Specialty databases are already being built for intensive care, leukemia, and bone marrow transplants, enabling structured research from decades of clinical data through mapping, natural language processing, and modeling.

Beyond healthcare delivery, IT is also being applied in frontier areas such as imaging recognition and risk prediction models, requiring close collaboration between clinicians, engineers, and scientists.

A New Starting Point

For PKUPH and many of China’s top public hospitals, digital transformation is no longer a supporting function, it is the foundation of modern healthcare. Each upgrade is not just about systems, but about enabling clinical excellence, patient satisfaction, and long-term innovation.

Originally published by: Caijing HealthCare WeChat Official Account

(Translated and Adapted by Chatgpt)

About Peking University People’s Hospital

Founded on January 27, 1918, Peking University People’s Hospital (PKUPH) is the first general hospital financed and operated by Chinese nationals. Throughout the past century, the hospital has had a consistent commitment to providing high-quality patient care, excellent education, and innovative research.

Currently, nearly 5,000 staff work in three campuses equipped with over 3,000 beds in Beijing.