BEIJING, CHINA: IT major IBM, recently announced the opening of a healthcare industry solution lab in Beijing, where IBM will work with hospitals and rural medical cooperatives to make healthcare "smarter" as the Chinese government enacts widespread healthcare reform.

Experts at IBM's new healthcare industry solution lab, which is one of eight IBM solution labs in China, would work with healthcare providers to adopt digital medical records, which improve patient care while reducing cost and medical errors, said a press release.

The company also announced new software solutions to accelerate the adoption of electronic medical records in China.

Such smarter healthcare solutions help improve patient care by integrating data - such as family and personal medical histories, lab results, diagnoses and financial information - that sits in isolated and disparate systems across hospitals and health centers.

This would allow health-care practitioners to more deeply understand which treatments and medications work best for specific diseases and medical conditions, said the release.

Through IBM's software, hardware, services and R&D expertise, providers can better serve patients through collaborative, coordinated health systems based on open industry standards.

Much of China faces inaccessible and expensive medical care as large hospitals are overburdened with patients and community healthcare providers remain stagnant, said the release.

China also faces the challenge of integrating "modern" medicine with fast-growing traditional Chinese. Between 2000 and 2005, the number of traditional Chinese medicine hospitals increased from 2,654 to 3,009, and the number of students in the discipline jumped from 77,000 to 385,000.

"The Chinese government's initiative around healthcare reform will create a unified network that connects the nation's scattered system of hospitals and health centers. IBM's new China industry solutions lab will help local and regional health organizations shift their focus to coordinated, integrated care," said Dr. Matt Wang, vice president, IBM China Development Labs.

He added that smarter healthcare, enabled by the latest health information technology, will lead to social and economic benefits, and to better healthcare, for the citizens of China.

IBM has begun working with Guang Dong Hospital of Chinese Medicine, a largest Chinese medicine hospital which receives about four million patient visits a year.

IBM would create an electronic patient record system that blends input from both Chinese and Western medicine.