Huawei's Cloud for Good aims to shape a better future 

At the Huawei Cloud Summit Singapore 2024, President of Huawei Cloud Marketing, William Dong, noted that cloud and artificial intelligence (AI) are not just the backbone for technical operations that help to improve productivity and help organisations to stay ahead in the race to digitalise operations.  

He shared that these technologies can be harnessed for good to innovate healthcare solutions, protect the environment, and educate and develop new talent.  

This is what Huawei aims to do with Cloud for Good - develop technology to make society and lives of ordinary people better, Dong shared at the Huawei Cloud Summit Singapore 2024.  

The Cloud for Good initiative aims to promote a sustainable future with cloud, AI, and other technologies, focusing on four areas: environment, healthcare, education and digital inclusion.  

These projects align with Huawei Cloud’s vision of “everything as a service” – the goal is integrating infrastructure resources and technologies into cloud services for an intelligent future, Dong said. 

Revamping healthcare with AI  

As AI and large language models (LLM) have boomed over the past years, Huawei Cloud has identified how these models can be applied for the greater good.

This led to the creation of the Pangu Medical Model, a pre-trained intelligent assistant for doctors and patients can tap on during medical testing, diagnosis and health management.  

The AI model is trained on high-quality data from 16 million academic journals and over one million knowledge graphs on clinical practice. This dataset enables the model to explain over 4,500 test items and 2,800 diseases. The model is being applied in China. 

The value of training such AI models  

“The hospital just inputs test reports, and the AI model can give doctors suggestions on diagnosis and treatment,” explained Dong. 

“We used AI medical model in a hospital in China to help identify 11 patients with a rare disease called adrenal insufficiency,” he added. This prevented them from being misdiagnosed and informed doctors on the most effective treatments. 

Runda Medical, a healthcare service provider in China, developed a medical AI model based on Pangu, and it is expected to be adopted by 4,000 hospitals for report interpretation and diagnosis. 

Safeguarding the rainforest with data-based solutions 

Huawei Cloud is also empowering nature conservation groups to leverage technology and protect the world’s oldest tropical rainforest from deforestation and logging, in Sarawak, Malaysia.  

With the use of cloud computing and AI technologies, the groups installed solar-powered acoustic sensors in the forest to identify signs of illegal activities in real time. 

The sound sensors transmit data to the cloud for analysis, which sends a warning through automatic alarm reporting if the sound is effectively identified as gunshots, chainsaws or motor vehicles. 

So far, the monitoring system has covered over 30 square kilometers of rainforest, collected 14,500 hours of sound data, and deployed 55 warnings against theft and illegal logging.  

This approach ensures sustainable coexistence of tech and nature through innovation, Dong said.  

Digital skills for an intelligent future 

Since its establishment in Singapore a couple of decades ago, Huawei has promoted digital inclusion and upskilling programs to empower local communities as they navigate digital transformation.  

“We hope to build a talent alliance to cultivate more professionals in technology, IT, and AI for Singapore and beyond, enabling more people to integrate cloud and AI into their daily lives,” Dong shared.  

For instance, the long-term Singapore-oriented Tech4City programme has encouraged local youths to leverage AI for the public good, developing ideas into helpful contributions to society. 

Additionally, the Youth Learning Journey programme in Shenzhen, China, has enabled students in Singapore to bring back the knowledge learned from Huawei’s experts, innovate and contribute to their communities. 

Beyond local borders, the company’s Seeds for the Future programme “has benefitted nearly 3.4 million people worldwide, [bringing] outstanding college students to China to learn about the latest digital technologies,” Dong shared.  

Moving forward, Huawei aims to continue giving back to society by cultivating talent and promoting education, as part of bringing innovation to life, Dong said.