2021 Internet medical inventory: Internet companies do medical treatment, really more than just sell drugs

When you talk about Internet + Medical, what comes to mind first? Maybe the registration of medical treatment has become an online appointment, maybe it is the various medical and health science content that is often brushed in the mobile phone, or it may be a number of Internet hospitals that have been urgently activated during the epidemic in Xi'an... In fact, the most recent incident related to the Internet and medical treatment that has aroused explosive attention in the public eye is the Wei Zexi incident, which occurred in 2016.

In just 5 years, the industry ecology and public impression in the field of Internet + medical care have undergone earth-shaking changes, and there is no doubt that the Internet is reshaping the medical and health industry.

Why has the industry changed? Combing through the influencing factors, there are the far-reaching impacts brought about by the epidemic, the high-standard transformation brought about by the entry of Internet capital, the promotion and standardization of regulatory policies, and the comprehensive embrace of the Internet by hospitals and doctors.

The Internet and medical care are two fields with different temperaments, and their integration is whether the doctor opens his arms first, or the Internet hands out an olive branch first? There are all, but different opening postures cast different corporate genes, and a variety of trial and error incisions also bring different trial and error postures.

Today, two years after the outbreak of the new crown epidemic, what is the current situation of the Internet + medical and healthcare industry? What are the biggest challenges facing the industry? In 2021, what kind of innovative attempts have you made? Where will the industry go in 2022? The "Internet + Medical" research group of nandu health alliance will launch a series of thematic inventory to observe the latest development of the Internet + medical industry in 2021.

The third special topic launched today focuses on Internet hospitals led by Internet companies. Catalyzed by the epidemic, the Internet medical and health industry has grown against the trend and is favored by capital, while the clarity and tightening of regulatory policies have controlled the "fire" for the industry.

In the situation where the profit model is unclear and the crowd is fighting, where is the value space of Internet companies? In general, from the perspective of the exploration direction of various enterprises, there are four obvious changes: resource links from online to offline, the scope of services from medical treatment to great health, the focus of innovation from "medicine" to "medicine", and the diversion channel from heavy channels to heavy content.

status quo

The Internet medical and health industry bucked the trend of growth and many companies launched listings

According to the "China Internet Development Report (2021)" released by the Internet Society of China in July 2021, in 2020, the scale of China's Internet medical and health market reached 196.1 billion yuan, an increase of 47% year-on-year, and the report predicts that in 2021, China's Internet medical and health market will reach 283.1 billion yuan, an increase of 45% year-on-year; the overall revenue of the big health industry will reach 7.4 trillion yuan, an increase of 7.2% year-on-year; the scale of the medical information market will exceed 65 billion yuan, an increase of 18.6% year-on-year.

Year-on-year growth of 47%, this growth rate exceeds other Internet industries such as online audio and video (44%), cloud computing (33.6%), and it can be described as amazing in 2020.

The capital market is also blue-eyed. In 2021, large amounts of financing in the Internet medical industry are frequent, and the head effect is emerging. According to the "2021 Internet Hospital Industry Report" of arterial network, from August 2020 to September 2021, there were 16 financing mergers and acquisitions in the primary market of the Internet hospital field, with a total financing amount of 23.4 billion yuan, about half of which was in the C round and after, of which there were a number of financing mergers and acquisitions of Yuanxin Technology, WeDoctor, Dingdang Fast Medicine, Kangaiduo, and Good Mood that occurred in 2021.

In 2021, the Internet medical industry ushered in a wave of listing tide, WeDoctor, Dingdang Fast Medicine, Zhiyun Health, Yuanxin Technology have submitted listing applications to the Hong Kong Stock Exchange, and Medical Pulse has successfully listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange.

There are already listed companies in the industry "Big Three" Ping An Health, Ali Health, Jingdong Health, this time, unicorn companies stand at the forefront of the capital market.

In 2021, Ping An Health, Alibaba Health, and JD Health continued to cultivate deeply. Although they still take the income of pharmaceutical e-commerce as the main revenue pillar, they are continuing to increase investment in medical services, and extend upstream and downstream in the industrial chain, basically covering the fields of medicine, medicine and insurance, and are committed to the collaborative integration of online and offline resources.

policy

Regulatory policies are further clarified and tightened The red line of the industry is gradually emerging

In the rapid progress of the capital market, the regulatory policies of the Internet medical industry have been further clarified.

As soon as 2021 began, "standardized development" became the main tone of the policy aspect of the Internet medical industry. In the 2021 government work report, "Internet + medical health" was written in the third year, and the word was "standardized development".

After Internet medical care obtained the official "birth permit" in 2018 (that is, the "Internet Diagnosis and Treatment Management Measures (Trial)" and other three documents were issued), the re-diagnosis of common diseases and chronic diseases on the Internet was explicitly permitted, and the relevant management and supervision measures also had a framework and system design. In the following years, the number of Internet hospitals in China has increased rapidly, and various new problems and controversies have emerged in actual operation, and it is urgent to further clarify and delineate the boundaries of regulatory measures, such as the definition of "follow-up diagnosis", whether the first diagnosis on the Internet can be liberalized, and the compliance issues of online prescription drugs.

In November 2021, the above questions were answered in the newly released "Detailed Rules for the Supervision of Internet Diagnosis and Treatment (Draft for Comment)", the first consultation on the Internet is still not open, and only online follow-up consultation is currently allowed, but at the same time there are more clear norms on how to judge the follow-up consultation, that is, the judgment power is handed over to the receiving doctor, and the doctor needs to get the relevant certification materials from the patient.

For the problem of online drug rebates exposed in the industry in 2021 and the problem of irregularities in online purchase of prescription drugs, the above-mentioned draft for comments also makes it clear: it is forbidden to cause problems such as unified parties and supplementary prescriptions, and the personal income of medical and health personnel must not be linked to the income of drugs and medical examinations.

"As medical reform enters the deep water area, the development of Internet hospitals should become a booster for deepening medical reform, rather than a safe haven around medical reform," said Chen Qiulin, deputy director of the Health Industry Development Research Center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, saying that Internet medical treatment is destined to be a "strict supervision" field, because medical behavior must be a process of full supervision, traceability, and responsibility.

On the one hand, it proposes prohibitive measures for a number of industry ills, which will become the basis for future rectification and law enforcement actions, and will also affect the trend of the industry, on the other hand, it further clarifies the general principle of online and offline integrated management in details, in the words of a doctor, online medical records should also be included in the management of outpatient medical records, and kept for 15 years like offline, which means that "medical records must be written, as in the past' It's not okay to prescribe in seconds, and it's not okay to prescribe medicine first and then make up the prescription."

"Without standardized supervision, there is no healthy development", Zhou Qiru, head of the Internet Medical Center of the Second People's Hospital of Guangdong Province and chairman of the Internet Hospital Special Committee of the Guangdong Clinical Medical Association, summarized the above draft for comments as "ten clear, four prohibitions", he believes that the regulatory policy is also a system design, in order to solve the problem of insufficient quality of medical services, the current irregularities will be dealt with in the future, and the future supervision will also be a tightening trend.

In general, Chen Qiulin believes that after the new crown epidemic, the progress of Internet medical related policies is optimistic, when the epidemic first appeared, multiple departments issued policies to promote the development of Internet medical care, and the regulatory rules are to promote the development of the industry while putting forward normative requirements for the industry.

Wang Hang, founder and CEO of Good Doctor Online, believes that Internet medical care has undergone a transformation from technology-driven to policy-driven, and with the popularization of public awareness, the industry has entered a new stage of user-driven development, "The industry needs to improve service quality to cope with more and more needs of users."

At the same time, medical insurance access, one of the "pain points" of Internet medical treatment, is also being liberalized. In April 2021, the Ningxia Medical Insurance Bureau issued and implemented the "Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region "Internet +" Medical Service Medical Insurance Payment Management Measures", which clarifies that medical institutions that have been approved to carry out Internet diagnosis and treatment activities can apply for inclusion in the scope of medical insurance designated medical institutions after having the access conditions.

Profit model

The industry is hot but where do you get your money?

"Although this industry is very hot, but it does not make money, the industry is still in the initial stage of development", this is Chen Qiulin's basic judgment on the Internet medical industry, pointing to the problem of the profit model of Internet medical companies that have not yet been clear.

For Internet hospitals dominated by public hospitals, Internet medical care is a part of the cause of public health, and the issue of profitability is not discussed, while for Internet hospitals dominated by Internet platforms, profitability is the basic driving force for the development of the industry and a prerequisite for sustainable development.

Under China's medical and health system, medical resources are mainly concentrated in offline public medical institutions, in the case of public hospitals have been admitted in large numbers, the Internet platform to run Internet hospitals, where is its value space?

This problem can be glimpsed from the process of Internet companies all the way to explore the transformation. Medical care is a shortage of resources and information serious asymmetry in the field, at the beginning of the popularization of the Internet, registration is the first demand of the public, to WeDoctor, good doctor as the representative of the rise of the registration platform; with the rise of Internet forum culture, Lilac Garden came into being, gathering a large number of doctor users, and accompanied by the outbreak of the content industry and play a popularity and influence; after the Internet factory entered the game, the newly born industry giants with the distinct imprint of matriarchal capital, such as Ali Health, Jingdong Health on the pharmaceutical e-commerce as the main pillar.

With the liberalization and standardization of policies, online consultation has almost become the "standard" function of Internet medical enterprises, and in the context of the tightening of online prescription drug supervision, it is foreseeable that many pharmaceutical e-commerce platforms on the market will have a closer relationship with Internet hospitals with the right to consult and prescribe.

From the current situation, the only area that has been proved to make money is pharmaceutical e-commerce, and the situation in other fields is different, which is closely related to the operational ability of the enterprise itself, and has shown the siphon effect of the head enterprise.

Although there are already head companies leading the way, Internet medical care is still in the industry ecology of the crowd and a hundred flowers, and the anti-monopoly stick has not yet hit this field.

Explore innovation

Develop Internet tools for doctors

In 2021, the exploration attempts of Internet medical companies will be more diversified.

What everyone is silently making up for is the content field. Ping An Health launched a doctor science popularization contest in the first half of the year, and within a few months, nearly 2,000 popular science videos from doctors were collected; Ali Health's medical deer APP also carried out an open call for papers, focusing on big health, maternal and infant classes, beauty classes, evaluation classes, etc., and the call for papers marked the level of the manuscript fee: 800 yuan / article; Baidu is also creating a new popular science content "Baidu Health Medical Code", with the help of the search entrance for the user's hot spot information advantage to produce content; ByteDance entered a little later, and its "Xiaohe" The APP has set up a unique patient case sharing section, and is carrying out social action, and has also begun to put in the video products that the parent company is good at.

Membership is a product model that many platforms are trying. According to the preliminary statistics of the research group, Good Doctor Online, Spring Rain Doctor, WeDoctor, People's Good Doctor, Lilac Doctor, Ping An Health and other Ping An have opened different forms of membership services, including monthly and annual private doctor services enjoyed by units of time, "family packages" with prices ranging from 9.9 yuan to thousands of yuan, and personalized customized packages for different needs of different groups, such as pediatric exclusive packages, Mengxin mother cards, rhinitis rehabilitation cards, etc.

Some of the others have targeted the doctor community. At the beginning of 2021, Tencent Health launched the cloud workbench "Tencent Cloud Doctor" for doctors, using the WeChat Mini Program entrance to help doctors with patient management and follow-up. Baidu launched the "Light Bamboo Health" brand, launched the mini program "Light Bamboo Butler" and the Light Bamboo Health APP Doctor Edition to assist doctors in patient management, and launched relevant project plans to support doctors and MCN institutions. Lilac Garden has been operating in the field of doctor community for many years, and while upgrading mature products such as medication assistants, it has also continued to cultivate grassroots doctor training.

There are also enterprises that are deeply cultivating on the road of specialization. Adhering to the "serious medical" strategy, the Federation of Medical Associations has set up academic committees, launched a multidisciplinary expert consensus project, and launched an online disease management SOP for diabetes and other diseases. Jingdong Health has continued to explore specialized diseases, and has opened 27 specialized centers such as heart centers, ear, nose and throat centers, traditional Chinese medicine hospitals, respiratory centers, and spiritual psychology centers, and led the establishment of the "Internet Medical Expert Committee" to explore online and offline integrated quality control standards.

Step out of the comfort zone to empower the big health industry and offline institutions

More companies are stepping out of the medical circle and intervening in the marketing chain of the big health industry. In November, Lilac Garden launched the digital marketing service product "Barley Tea", providing professional digital solutions for medical enterprises and mass consumer goods enterprises; Dr. Chunyu deeply cultivated dermatology, pediatrics, nutrition, gynecology and psychology, etc., exploring C2M's specialized vertical solutions, such as dermatologists and Jinan University Genetic and Pharmaceutical Engineering Center cooperated to develop medical-grade skin care products, nutritionists and New Hope Group jointly recommended new intestinal probiotic yogurt.

Internet medical companies are also cooperating with offline medical and health systems to build and become assistants for local medical systems to carry out "digital medical infrastructure". Tencent Health cooperated with Wuhan to build the "Wuhan Model" of a smart and healthy city, participated in the construction of the Wuhan public health emergency command system, and jointly built an Internet hospital with the First Hospital of Wuhan. Ping An Health has obtained the qualification of self-built Internet hospitals in at least 10 cities, and has reached agreements with 205 hospitals to cooperate in building an Internet hospital platform. Jingdong Health has landed in Ningxia Yinchuan, Tianjin, Henan Zhengzhou, Sichuan Zigong and other cities have landed in Internet hospitals. WeDoctor has built and operated 27 Internet hospitals.

Offline cooperation can be a government department or a developer. Dr. Chunyu actively cooperates with real estate enterprises to land in residential communities and build "Chunyu Health Stations" in more than 20 cities across the country to provide public health and family health services for residents in the community. On this basis, Dr. Chunyu's first outpatient clinic opened in Tianjin.

"I hope to do a good job in the role of 'connector' and 'assistant'," said Zhang Meng, vice president of Tencent Health, at the 2021 Tencent Digital Ecology Conference.

Producer: Nandu Health Alliance "Internet + Medical" Research Group

Coordinator: Yin Lai, Wang Daobin, You Mani

Written by: Nandu reporter Li Wen