Discussion keeps the world turning.
From the heart of Beijing to the edges of the global stage, you are at Roundtable.
I'm Niu Helin.
Around the world, access to specialized healthcare often depends on geography.
In China, a new experiment is testing whether aviation can close that gap,
not by evacuating patients, but by flying the hospital itself.
For today's show, I'm joined by Fei Fei and Steve Hatherly.
Now pull up a chair and join the conversation.
There was no ribbon-cutting ceremony,
no futuristic lunch video, but with a single regulatory approval,
China has just quietly turned a passenger aircraft into a licensed medical institution,
one capable of diagnosing, treating, and even performing surgery after it lands.
Now the country's first flying operating room can perform complex surgeries,
not just in major cities, but on the wild tarmacs of remote regions as well.
So this sounds very exciting and high-tech, and I want to know all about this new airplane hospital.
Yeah, so first of all,
the approval comes from Shanghai that recently the Municipal Health Commission officially issued a pilot lessons to I and ENT,
which is Ear, Nose, and Throat Hospital of Fudan University to operate.
an airplane hospital that is basically a facility focused on facial health that was converted from a C909,
a short to medium-range aircraft domestically developed in China.