One of the beneficiaries is Yangtze River Pharmaceutical Group, a Chinese pharmaceutical group in Taizhou, East China's Jiangsu province.

Hua Honglian, director of the Application System Implementation Department of the company's information center, said the pharmaceutical industry is concerned about how to use technology to improve production efficiency, ensure product quality, control manufacturing costs, achieve drug traceability, and support innovative research and development.

"We have been following the technological trends and hoping to accelerate digital transformation," Hua said.

The company has deployed IBM Cloud Pak for Automation, a cloud solution from IBM, to realize cross-organization, cross-department, cross-system and cross-user business process automation.

Xu Weijie, sales manager of East China and South China businesses at IBM China Technology Group Cloud & Data Platform, said before the pandemic, many medical institutions did not have a strong desire to embrace digitalization.

But the COVID-19 outbreak has changed that. They realized the importance of using digital technologies to boost efficiency, especially when people could not meet each other amid the pandemic, Xu said.

Unlike other industries where companies only need to consider efficiency, the medical sector needs to take into consideration efficiency and compliance requirements at the same time. Digital technologies can help them meet the two demands, Xu added.