In April 2018, the Health Industry Summit (tHIS) took place at the National Exhibition and Convention Center in Shanghai, China.

This event is one of the largest gatherings of healthcare industry professionals in the world with more than 200,000 attendees from 150 countries, and around 7,000 exhibitors.

In accordance to President Xi’s call for greater promotion of the health industry at the Boao Forum for Asia, this leading health industry event covers the entire industry value chain, including key segments such as medical devices, pharmaceutical production, drug distribution and natural health and nutrition. It is becoming China’s solution to promoting technology innovations and academic exchange on the grandest scale.

Now in its fourth edition, tHIS saw more than 350,000m2 exhibition space with 160 individual events and conferences alongside the main expo.

Key events of the summit included China’s top medical equipment and pharmaceutical exhibitions China International Medical Equipment Fair (CMEF), PHARMCHINA and API China, which featured cutting-edge technologies such as virtual reality (VR), augmented reality (AR), wearables and artificial intelligence (AI) as part of the new Intelligent Health exhibition, while traditional medicine was also highlighted at the show as China’s own solution to treatment and prevention which runs parallel to modern medicine and drug development.

Leading companies with a major presence included medical device giants such as GE, United Imaging, Siemens, Philips and Mindray, as well as major pharmaceutical groups in China, including Sinopharm, Shanghai Pharma and CR Pharmaceuticals.

The majority of the most innovative companies in the medical field chose the show as their new product launch platform in the Asia Pacific, and more than 600 new product launches took place during the four-day show.

tHIS was organised by Reed Sinopharm, a joint venture (JV) between the event organiser Reed Exhibitions and China’s state-owned medical and pharmaceutical giant Sinopharm (ranked 199th on the Fortune 500 list). The next edition of the event will be held in May 2019 in Shanghai.