China Is Bringing Medical Data into the Official Market

In China, medical data is beginning to move beyond hospitals’ internal use and enter the formal market.

According to Caixin, a hospital affiliated with Shandong First Medical University sold an anonymised clinical dataset covering liver diseases and transplant status for RMB 30,000 (approximately USD 4,100). The dataset included more than 1,000 clinical cases, and the buyer was a medical IT company planning to use the data to train a liver disease diagnostic model.

This is not an isolated case.

In Beijing, Xuanwu Hospital sold 2,550 records related to carotid artery stenting through the Beijing International Big Data Exchange for the development of medical devices. A hospital in Minqing County sold a database covering neurology, cardiology and geriatrics for more than RMB 450,000 (over USD 62,000). In Wenzhou, the target for this year is to bring 45 medical data products to market and complete at least 10 transactions.

Behind this trend is China's broader strategic approach. Data has already been recognised at the national level as a new factor of production, and data exchanges have been established to facilitate its circulation. In 2024, the authorities launched a three-year plan to unlock the economic value of data across 12 sectors, including healthcare. According to recent estimates, China's data market exceeded RMB 160 billion (approximately USD 22.3 billion) in 2024, growing by more than 30% year-on-year.

In effect, China is seeking to create an equivalent of commodity and stock exchanges for data. Instead of fragmented and closed transactions, specialised platforms are emerging with clearer rules governing access, usage and pricing. This makes the market more transparent and legitimate.

Medical data, however, represents only part of the broader picture. Chinese data exchanges already facilitate the circulation of data in finance, transport, public services, environmental protection and AI. By the end of 2024, more than 3,000 data products had been registered in Beijing, with a combined transaction value approaching RMB 10 billion (approximately USD 1.4 billion). In Shanghai, the market for rights to data products has already generated billions of yuan in licensing revenue and trading volume. Data exchanges in China are becoming key infrastructure through which data and related products acquire legal and market recognition, clear rules of use and opportunities for commercial circulation.

In the global AI race, competitive advantage increasingly depends not only on the concentration of talent, investment volumes and computing capacity, but also on access to high-quality and unique datasets, as well as the conditions for their safe and lawful use. Against this backdrop, a well-developed data economy could become one of the key sources of competitive advantage.