Internet-plus healthcare is entering the medical industry with force. During pandemic control, online consultations at hospitals under the National Health Commission grew 17-fold versus 2019, and some third-party platforms saw consultation volumes rise more than 20-fold. From local governments to hospitals to enterprises, many players are moving into the blue ocean of internet healthcare.
Policy support builds
The State Council’s 14th Five-Year digital economy plan calls for accelerating internet hospitals, promoting health consultation, online diagnosis and teleconsultation, and standardising new models such as home health monitoring, chronic-disease management and elder care nursing based on smart health devices.
On public services, the plan urges faster development of digital health: completing electronic health records and e-prescription databases, sharing medical data, digitalising and upgrading hospitals, promoting telemedicine, and developing remote, customised and intelligent digital health services.
Analysts describe online hospitals as entering a 2.0 era: with registration apps marking 1.0, hospital-led participation is now building the ecosystem, moving toward a system linking medical care, pharmaceuticals and insurance around personal health. Frost & Sullivan projects online consultations to rise from 6% of total consultations in 2019 to 42% by 2024 and 68.5% by 2030, with the online consultation market growing from RMB 9.0 billion in 2019 to RMB 155 billion by 2024 and RMB 407 billion by 2030.
By official figures, over 7,700 secondary and above hospitals have appointment and online service systems, and more than 1,100 internet hospitals have been built nationwide. Internet healthcare has shifted from an optional extra to an essential service in many medical institutions.
Local build-outs widen
Hainan invested nearly RMB 200 million in a medical-insurance-pharmacy data network project and plans a ‘smart healthcare’ model for 2022. Henan’s new infrastructure action plan targets 5G healthcare demonstration scenes, regional health platform upgrades, telemedicine integration and AI-assisted diagnosis centres for imaging, pathology and ECG.
Ningxia, a national internet-plus-healthcare demonstration region, runs a three-tier online clinic system that brings Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou specialist resources down to the region and regional tertiary-hospital resources down to counties, so serious illnesses can be treated without leaving the county. It has also built a five-tier telemedicine system covering remote ECG, imaging, pathology and foetal heart monitoring, plus a prescription review platform and one-stop settlement across basic medical insurance, serious-illness insurance, medical assistance and commercial insurance.
Zhejiang’s 14th Five-Year health services plan promotes a ‘health brain plus smart healthcare’ reform across the province: cloud-network projects, smart hospital construction, electronic medical records at level 5 or above in tertiary hospitals, and a community model combining family doctors, regional specialists and cloud physicians.
Financing rises, but caution on idle hospitals
Financing climbed with the tailwinds: eight digital healthcare platforms raised over RMB 1.15 billion in 2021. LinkedCare closed a USD 100 million Series D led by Investcorp; Youlai Doctor raised nearly RMB 200 million in Series B led by Baidu; Haoyisheng Cloud raised over RMB 100 million in Series A; Zuoshou Doctor raised RMB 100 million in Series B led by Qiming Venture Partners; and Fangzi Technology and Yibei Cloud Service raised tens of millions of yuan each.
Platform scale is growing too: Ping An Good Doctor holds self-built internet hospital licences in nine cities with partnership agreements on about 100 offline hospitals; WeDoctor connects over 7,800 hospitals, including 270,000 registered doctors from more than 95% of tertiary hospitals, and runs 27 internet hospitals; Alibaba Health’s Alipay has signed up over 15,000 medical institutions, with insurance payment live in nearly 400 tertiary hospitals across 17 provinces.
Yet caution is warranted: a 2021 report from the National Telemedicine and Internet Medicine Center found that of 1,004 internet hospitals built by 2020 – nearly 70% initiated by public hospitals – over 90% sit idle or barely used. Online diagnosis and treatment in China remains exploratory: policy implementation lags, service flows and treatment standards are incomplete, doctor onboarding and process supervision are weak, and many internet hospitals are numerous but small, with short build cycles and unimpressive operations.
The next stage, industry watchers say, is deeper rather than superficial: bringing qualifying internet medical services into insurance coverage, with public hospitals leading the reform, more doctors joining, and patient trust and stickiness building as a result.
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