Updates from the science and health panels at the 9th Caixin Summit in Beijing. Follow our full coverage at CX Live.

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Update 2:56 p.m.

Assaf Biderman, Associate Director of the MIT SENSEable City Lab, Founder and CEO of Superpedestrian

Smart Technologies for a New Era of Transport

Several startups are developing technologies that can alleviate transportation problems, Biderman said.

One such startup is HubCab, which started out tracking taxi rides in New York City, and now aims to minimize the number of vehicles serving trip demands. HubCab — which operates in 45 cities globally — uses technology to allocate rides where demand is greatest, thus resulting in fewer total vehicles on the road.

Amsterdam-based Roboat’s efforts are on the water. The startup created a robotic platform that can serve multiple purposes, including “docking” to other platforms to create larger surfaces on the water and even bridges. The boats use different forms of mapping technologies – including lidar and 3D mapping – to effectively visualize their environments.

Biderman’s own Superpdestrian focuses on smart mobility, namely developing two-wheel ransport that can self-maintain and self-assess problems. This could be low-hanging fruit for solving traffic problems, as 50% of all trips cover only short distances.

“This is bringing robotics and intelligence to an industry that today is completely analog,” Birderman told the summit, referring to bikeshare companies in particular.

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Update: 3:28 p.m.

Michael Yao, Senior Medical Officer of U.S. Federal Government, Senior Clinical Review Officer of the U.S. Food and Drug Administration

Tightened U.S. Oversight of Chinese Money in Health Care Will Help China’s Domestic Drug Research

The Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States (CFIUS) has tightened its review of foreign investments in certain industries, including pharmaceuticals — a sector that has seen rapid growth recently in China.

But the move could actually be an opportunity for China, Yao said helping the country “to independently develop technologies, especially biotech.”

To do this, however, China must improve its clinical trials, he cautioned.

“China is a very good base for clinical trials, but our data haven’t been acknowledged overseas, because people think there is data fabrication (in China) and that our doctors change trial plans at will,” Yao said, calling for better education among researchers.

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Update: 4:38 p.m.

Huang Jiefu, Chairman of the National Organ Donation and Transplantation Committee, Former Vice-minister of Ministry of Health

China’s Health-Care Reform Neglects Talent

Huang said that the latest round of reform in China’s health-care industry has focused too much on financial issues such as bringing down costs, and has neglected issues like education and producing a talented workforce.

Huang relayed an anecdote that an administrator of a major medical school told him: Roughly 80% of the children of medical school professors don’t want to follow their parents’ career path — a percentage he found surprisingly high. The smartest high school students used to go to medical school, he said, but this rate is declining.

The background to these trends: Doctors in China take most of the blame after medical-care accidents. Some have been beaten, or even murdered, by the families of patients if the patients don’t recover as expected. Huang said that the dispute between doctors and patients has scared away aspiring talent.

Additionally, the management of medical school students is “fragmented,” he said. China’s education ministry oversees the best medical schools, while the human resources ministry manages students’ job-seeking. As a result, the health ministry doesn’t have a significant role in cultivating talent.

Follow our full Caixin Summit coverage at CX Live.