Pony Ma Huateng, chairman and CEO, Tencent, points to technology's power to help the underprivileged?

As mobile internet and smartphones penetrate every corner the world, social networks and value-added services are changing many aspects of our daily lives. In China, this evolution is happening even faster and going even further than it is in other parts of the world. The trend will be ever more evident in 2019, as it sweeps across industries such as retail and fintech.?

Take Shenzhen, for example, the city in southern China where Tencent was founded 20 years ago. There we can shop online, order food at restaurants or takeaways, pay utility bills and fares for public transport, book a medical appointment or even register to get married - all with a few taps of our finger s on a smartphone screen. Thanks to the internet and other cutting-edge technologies, many of us are now living a better quality of life than we could have once imagined possible.

That is of course welcome. Yet a question across my mind: can we also deploy technology to alleviate the toil and hardship for the disadvantaged and offer help to those in need?

Many people will not hesitate to donate generously for disaster relief, or to help the sick and the poor. However, it takes time both to solicit donations and to get the money into the hands of the needy. Unexpected situations causing further delays may also occur.?

Charitech begins at home?

Four years ago, Tencent (through its Weixin social app, whose sister app in international markets is WeChat) launched the first-ever online donation campaign in China. It enabled donors to give money directly to their preferred charities or philanthropic projects via Weixin Pay and also monitor progress. So far, 9.9 Charity Day (so called because it is held, every year, on September 9th) has raised almost 2.1bn yuan ($309m) from 49.5m people to organizations across the country.

I believe that with the help of technology, philanthropy can be woven into the activities in our daily lives and be more fun, innovative and accessible to more people. For example, our Step Donation Programme converts Weixin users' step counts into matching contributions from participating companies. And our Voice Donation - Programme enables Weixin smartphone users to read out poems and stories which will be transformed into audio books for the visually impaired.?

If we look further ahead, the aging population will put mounting pressure on health systems in China and globally. Can we sue technology to help governments improve the efficiencies of health systems? What can we do to relieve the pain for patients and reduce stress for their families?

It takes about eight years to train a doctor in China, but the demand for medical services far outweighs what is available. There is no shortcut to train medical professionals, but technology can make a meaningful impact by assisting the industry to upgrade to smart health care.?

For doctors , artificial intelligence (AI) is a big help in three ways. First, it can perform simple but onerous tasks, such as compelling reports, thereby saving doctors' time for patient care. Second, it can learn to examine medical images based on big data, thereby increasing the efficiency and accuracy of diagnosis. Nowadays, it takes only one-tenth of a second to locate lesions and develop a preliminary evaluation of polyp properties. Their, AI can learn to match medical images and pathological genes to generate recommendations for personalized medical services.

For patients, social platforms can connect them to doctors remotely, cutting hours of waiting in frustration for themselves and their families. Using their smartphones, people can book their preferred doctors for consultation simply with their fingertips. If they are unable to travel, they can talk to doctors via video chat, pay consultation and prescription fees over Weixin Pay, and then pick up the medicine at a neighborhood pharmacy.

The internet has become deeply entrenched in our lives in ways that reflect the imaginations of the most creative minds, and 5G (the next generation of mobile technology) will speed up the digital evolution to help many traditional businesses make the transition to being smart industries. Let us embrace these opportunities, not only to drive business growth but also to create value for underprivleged communities.?