ASTRAZENECA PLOTS CHINA'S ROBOT OFFENSIVE

ASTRAZEBECA plots China robot offensive to counter price cuts.

With smart cancer diagnostics, one-stop-shop diabetes kits and AI systems to improve ambulance pick-ups for patients with chest pains, AstraZeneca aims to move from simply supplying drugs to become a healthcare provider in China.

Tech tie-ups with the likes of Alibaba and Tencent will not directly lift the British group's  drug sales, since they are not specific for only one company's products and in many cases will be low cost or free.

But it will expand the overall market and represent soft power play that dovetails neatly with Beijing's  support for  Internet-based  healthcare systems to alleviate a lack of doctors, overcrowding and poor grassroots healthcare.

''Down the line we benefit , our products benefit, because we have better relationships with doctors and hospital mangers and also because we diagnose more patients and they get better treated,''  Chief Executive Pascal Soriot .told Reuters.

Surrounded by latest Gizmos at World Internet of Things Exposition in Wuxi, eastern China, Soriot says he wants to use the power of  artificial intelligence , robots and apps to help transform diagnosis management.

AstraZeneca has been on a tear in china, more than doubling its sales since 2012, helped by regulatory reforms to  fast-track  new drugs, and today generates  18 percent of revenue in the country    -a far higher proportion than rivals.

Yet Soriot is anxious to do more to keep doctors and government officials on-side in the world's second-biggest drug market, as soaring demand strains the state insurance system and squeezes medicine prices.

The company's underlying conviction is  that it has the right medicines across chronic diseases like cancer, diabetes and respiratory disorders to win in China.

Soriot believes that can keep  AstraZeneca growing in a pivotal market in the coming years, even though annual growth is likely to slow to nearer 15 percent  from the breakneck 33 percent seen in the first half of 2018.

With  1.4 billion people in China, around 18 percent of the world's population, China has more cases of  cancer and diabetes than any other nation, fueled by fast food, smoking and pollution, global health data show [Agencies]