Lu Ziyun, a team member dispatched to Tibet in 2017, noticed that doctors had to write down information by hand on test tubes.

 

"It's a waste of time and labor. So we promoted an electronic information recording system in the inspection department at the hospital, which is safer and more accurate," Li said.

 

With the new technology, 100 routine blood examinations take no more than 90 minutes now versus six hours previously.

 

Additionally, 84 local doctors at Shigatse People's Hospital have taken medical courses at hospitals in Shanghai since 2015.

 

For hospitals affiliated with Fudan University, the educational exchanges began even earlier, in 1995, when Shigatse doctors were randomly dispatched. Since 2014, around two to four doctors regularly go to hospitals affiliated with Fudan University to study neurosurgery, gastroenterology, pathology and oncology for up to six months at a time each year.

 

Shigatse People's Hospital doctors Wangdu and Sogchu Ladrin went to Shanghai for further study at the Endoscopy Center of Zhongshan Hospital affiliated with Fudan University in 2014.

 

"The center receives more than 100,000 patients every year, which pushed us to get up before 7 am every morning to learn more about digestive endoscopy before crowds of patients began arriving," Wangdu said.

 

Their three-month intensive study sessions are paying off. Sogchu Ladrin, for the first time, managed to conduct an enteroscopy on a patient suffering from chronic diarrhea. Meanwhile, Wangdu completed his first colon polyp removal procedure in 2014.

 

With the help of the assistance program, eight Shanghai-Shigatse clinic centers have been established since last year.

 

Minimally invasive surgery has been applied to urological surgery, and video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery is increasingly being utilized. Tibet also received its first chest pain center.

 

Beginning this year, hospitals affiliated with Fudan University have been offering remote teaching and practice platforms for doctors in Shigatase.

 

Apart from clinical diagnosis and treatment, Long stressed the importance of medical research in Tibet.

 

He said doctors at Shigatse People's Hospital only published around 60 articles in Chinese publications in the three decades to 2015. However, since then, more than 70 articles have been published, including over 30 articles in key periodicals.