Creating a digital ecosystem for healthcare and life sciences researchers and AI service providers to accelerate medical breakthroughs
HONG KONG – February 20, 2025 – Equinix, Inc. (Nasdaq: EQIX), the world’s digital infrastructure company®, has collaborated with AiHPC to launch Orchestration AI (OrchAI), a dedicated open AI healthcare and life sciences platform on Platform Equinix®. This strategic collaboration aims to accelerate healthcare and life sciences R&D, clinical trials and the application of advanced biomedical technologies in Hong Kong, attracting top-notch innovative enterprises and research organizations from around the world to set up operations in the city.
Medical research institutions are increasingly prioritizing investment in AI and high-performance computing (HPC) infrastructure to overcome bottlenecks in computational power and data exchange limits for complex analyses. Particularly in research-intensive regions like Hong Kong, where AI is projected to expand to US$1.03bn in 2025 and to $3.43 billion by 2030 at an annual growth rate of 27.3% from 2025 to 20301, stakeholders often face challenges in managing large-scale data operations, implementing AI solutions and maintaining efficient workflow processes across multiple nodes. OrchAI, integrated on Platform Equinix with a comprehensive global healthcare and life sciences ecosystem, will bridge local and overseas hospitals, research, and medical institutions, fostering accelerated research processes and collaboration.
OrchAI addresses critical industry pain points by eliminating technological barriers and optimizing resource allocation. Research and medical institutions, as well as tertiary institutes, can access OrchAI to enjoy the benefits of end-to-end digital services. These services include high-performance computing acceleration, data orchestration and manipulation, and edge solution deployment.
In addition, healthcare and life sciences institutions can directly connect to a rich ecosystem of cloud service providers through Equinix Internet Access and Equinix Fabric®. This enables efficient data exchange for hospitals and medical institutions across multiple cloud environments. After deploying OrchAI on Platform Equinix, the upload time to AWS Cloud in Hong Kong or Singapore via Equinix Internet Access has been reduced by over 90%, or up to 22 times faster, compared to the public internet. The robust connectivity infrastructure enhances data scalability and ensures secure and compliant data handling. This empowers healthcare and life sciences organizations to overcome existing limitations and drive cross-innovation in medical research and clinical trials.
This collaborative effort aims to expedite the journey from research to market for innovative healthcare and life sciences solutions. By leveraging AI-powered technologies to enhance service delivery, the goal is to solidify Hong Kong's position as a crucial super-connector in the Asia-Pacific region. This will attract key healthcare stakeholders in the Greater Bay Area (GBA) and throughout the Asia-Pacific region to conduct groundbreaking medical research in Hong Kong.
Dr. Sam Chu, Founder, AiHPC, said: “The challenges posed by Hong Kong's aging population and the city's journey to becoming an international health and medical innovation hub have highlighted the urgent need for new healthcare solutions. Our objective of establishing Hong Kong's first integrated AI and HPC ecosystem is to streamline academic research, healthcare implementation, and cross-border collaboration between Hong Kong, the Greater Bay Area and the world. Based on the professional IT services and advice offered by our technology arm Ripen, we have chosen to deploy OrchAI on Platform Equinix. Equinix's global footprint, cloud connectivity, and a vast ecosystem of AI and healthcare and life sciences stakeholders provide unparalleled infrastructure advantages, differentiating us from traditional cloud or standalone HPC solution providers in the industry.”
Joanne Hon, Managing Director, Hong Kong, Equinix said: “Equinix has faithfully served as a digital backbone in Hong Kong for over two decades. As the demand for AI and HPC in healthcare continues to surge, our collaboration with AiHPC highlights our commitment to advancing digital capabilities in the healthcare industry. This partnership with AiHPC empowers institutions to adopt bolder approaches in addressing increasingly complex and globally interconnected healthcare challenges, propelling Hong Kong’s strategic position in the Greater Bay Area and ambition of becoming a global healthcare and life sciences innovation hub.”
Additional Resources
About Equinix
Equinix (Nasdaq: EQIX) is the world’s digital infrastructure company®. Digital leaders harness Equinix’s trusted platform to bring together and interconnect foundational infrastructure at software speed. Equinix enables organizations to access all the right places, partners and possibilities to scale with agility, speed the launch of digital services, deliver world-class experiences and multiply their value, while supporting their sustainability goals.
About AiHPC
AiHPC (Artificial Intelligence High-Performance Computing) is a pioneering organization dedicated to advancing healthcare through the integration of artificial intelligence and high-performance computing. By providing a comprehensive platform that includes high-performance computing acceleration, data orchestration and edge solution deployment, AiHPC empowers medical institutions and researchers to overcome technological barriers and optimize resource utilization.
Forward Looking Statements
This press release contains forward-looking statements that involve risks and uncertainties. Actual results may differ materially from expectations discussed in such forward-looking statements. Factors that might cause such differences include, but are not limited to, risks to our business and operating results related to the current inflationary environment; foreign currency exchange rate fluctuations; increased costs to procure power and the general volatility in the global energy market; the challenges of acquiring, operating and constructing IBX® and xScale® data centers and developing, deploying and delivering Equinix products and solutions; unanticipated costs or difficulties relating to the integration of companies we have acquired or will acquire into Equinix; a failure to receive significant revenues from customers in recently built out or acquired data centers; failure to complete any financing arrangements contemplated from time to time; competition from existing and new competitors; the ability to generate sufficient cash flow or otherwise obtain funds to repay new or outstanding indebtedness; the loss or decline in business from our key customers; risks related to our taxation as a REIT and other risks described from time to time in Equinix filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission. In particular, see recent and upcoming Equinix quarterly and annual reports filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission, copies of which are available upon request from Equinix. Equinix does not assume any obligation to update the forward-looking information contained in this press release.
Equinix Media Contact (Asia-Pacific)
Annie Ho
annho@ap.equinix.com
Equinix Media Contact (Hong Kong)
Silvia Wu
silvia.wu@teamlewis.com