On October 14, Tang Wenhong, Director of the Free Trade Zone Port Development Coordination Department of the Ministry of Commerce paid inspection visit to China (Jiangsu) Pilot Free Trade Zone Nanjing Area, accompanied by Wang Xuanqing, special commissioner of the Ministry of Commerce to Nanjing, Zhu Yimin, Deputy Director General of Jiangsu Provincial Department of Commerce, Ding Aimin, Deputy Secretary of the Party Committee of Nanjing Municipal Bureau of Commerce and Director of the Municipal Port Office, and Lin Qikun, Deputy Director of the Administrative Committee of Jiangbei New Area.

Tang’s first stop was the National Health and Medical Big Data (Eastern) Center, where he learned about the role of big data in empowering health and medical industry. During his visit, he raised questions like how to ensure data privacy for patients when big data are applied in health and medical industry and whether these data are shared on open platform or with limited access. Health and medical big data, collected through the combination of bio and information technology, has become a fundamental strategic resource for the nation. The basic data, obtained from multiple channels such as electronic medical records, case monitoring, biological data, public health information, and medical insurance data, can provide strong support to hospital-running, clinical decision-making, drug development, disease monitoring, and health management after in-depth analysis and application based on modern information technology.

The National Health and Medical Big Data (Eastern) Center has storage capacity of 55PB, is able to do 2340TFLOAT/s supercomputing, and can serve as public cloud platform. Together with the gene center, mass spectrometry center, and biobank, it constitutes a service system for biomedical industry, which can also be used in chip design, big data, and artificial intelligence and other fields. So far, the largest gene sequencing base in Asia, with an annual sequencing capacity of 400,000 to 500,000 times per year, has been established in China (Jiangsu) Pilot Free Trade Zone Nanjing Area. It is expected that more health and medical data will be collected given the increasing number of gene companies from home and abroad settled in Nanjing, making the area a fertile land for health and medical industry to develop and grow.

At Nanjing Innovation Center of China Future Internet Engineering Center, Tang listened to the introduction of IPv6 technology, asking about the work on IPv6 root domain name service system and its pilot application as well as the equipment and scenarios for IPv6 application. Nanjing Innovation Center of China Future Internet Engineering Center is mainly responsible for building and operating IPv6 root server system, doing corresponding research on key technologies of the next generation Internet, and developing offshore data outsourcing and IPv6 Internet big data center. IPv6 is fundamental to the development of emerging technologies like mobile internet, cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence and to the continuous progress of the internet. IPv6 applicable smart devices for connected home appliances, smart terminals, unmanned driving, and smart logistics keep rolling out.

Both health and medical big data and future internet are fundamental to the development of new industries, pointed out Tang. Nanjing Area should leverage its strength as a source of innovation, push forward science and technology research and development, facilitate the upgrading of cutting-edge technologies and consolidate industrial foundation based on its technological advantages and industrial features and by giving full play to the pilot free trade zone’s function as a magnet to innovation resources and a provider of extensive services.

In the meeting, Nanjing Geneseeq Biotechnology, Nanjing GemPharmatech, and Nanjing Kingfriend shared suggestions to the work of pilot free trade zone based on their needs.

After listening to the report of companies, Tang instructed that well-thought solutions and improved services based on a better understanding of the demands of enterprises within the Nanjing Area must be provided. On-site visits to relevant enterprises and learning from practices home and abroad in light of the implementation of existing policies are necessary and the pace of reform and the exploration of new paths should be accelerated as we aim to facilitate enterprise development through institutional and policy innovation.

According to Lin Qikun, efforts will continue in compiling the list of enterprises’ demands, of experiences of other regions, and of innovation cases in the process of institutional innovation and reform. We will follow the changes of needs of market players, explore in a systematic and targeted way, compile map and guidelines for innovation, evaluating the achievements of reform from the perspective of enterprises to see if they benefit from it so as to ensure that institutional innovation is truly effective.