Dr. He Peng, CEO of "Shanggao Yikang", interviewed: 1 million cancer patients were left in the local area for diagnosis and treatment

At the beginning of the new year of 2022, The Sunco Group (Shineco, Inc. NASDAQ transaction code: SISI), announced the formal completion of the acquisition of Xiangpeng Youkang (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd., successfully formed a new team of "Shanggao Yikang" and released a new strategy for the digital medical industry, one of the key industrial layouts is to accelerate the investment in the digital medical oncology market, and strive to build "China's largest digital oncology diagnosis and treatment platform", which has aroused strong concern in the industry.

In order to deepen the background and logic of the digital medical industry and look forward to the development of the digital medical market pattern, we interviewed Mr. He Peng, the forerunner who sounded the trumpet of China's digital medical as early as 2015, the CEO of Shanggao Yikang, and the doctor of oncology medicine of Peking University.

The picture shows the signing site of Shangao-Yikang. The second from the left is Zhang Yuying, chairman of Shanggao Group, and the second from the right is Dr. He Peng, CEO of Shanggao Yikang

"Shanggao Yikang's industrial layout focuses on the high-certainty and high-quality track in the field of digital health, mainly including five major sections: digital tumor diagnosis and treatment platform, full-life cycle health management platform, life science research institute, biomedical science and technology achievement transformation base, and medical education and training base. The 'China's largest digital medical platform for oncology' that we are building truly realizes the sinking of high-quality medical resources to the grassroots level through digital technology empowerment, creates a tumor diagnosis and treatment network covering 100 million people, and strives to keep 1 million cancer patients in the local area, so that they can enjoy more professional, more efficient and lower-cost diagnosis and treatment. ”

——Dr. He Peng, CEO of Shanggao Yikang

Abandoning medical entrepreneurship and blowing the forerunner of China's digital medical charge

Malignant tumors have long ranked as the first lethal disease of mainland residents, and the deep evolution of the tumor prevention and treatment system cannot be delayed. According to the "2020 China Cancer Annual Report" and other data, in 2020, the population of cancer patients in China exceeded 32 million, with 4.57 million new cancer cases and 3 million cancer deaths. Behind this series of shocking figures are countless families whose life savings have been hollowed out, whose lives have been torn apart or even destroyed, and whose sense of happiness has disappeared. And, of course, the countless sleepless nights of these families wailing.

Compared with the number of patients rising year by year, the high-quality medical resources of tumors have been unable to incrementally break through, and they are highly concentrated in the top three hospitals in first-tier cities, and the majority of patients rush from all over the country to the north, Shanghai, and Guangzhou for centralized medical treatment.

He Peng, a doctor of cancer medicine at Peking University and CEO of Shanggao Yikang, spoke of this topic in an urgent tone: "Beijing has about 70 million patients from other places every year, of which tumor patients account for at least two-thirds, plus an average of 1-2 family members, which is a huge group of hundreds of millions of people. People who have taken the Beijing subway have the feeling that in addition to the morning and evening rush hours on weekdays, the subway can squeeze people to deformation, and the riding experience at other times is still OK. What is the concept of the waiting hall of the cancer hospital? 365 days a year, 24 hours a day, every minute and every second is playing the peak of the subway. The gap in Beijing's high-quality medical resources is a rigid gap, and the pressure is no less than holding up an elephant with one finger. ”

In this context, the medical experience is a completely false proposition, because tumor treatment is the speed of life and death, racing against death. But the huge gap between resources and demand cannot be filled by sleepless registration queues. During the three years of clinical practice at Peking University Cancer Hospital, He Peng encountered a variety of helplessness but endless loops: "After three days and three nights of queues, there was no number; it was difficult to hang up the number, and he found that he was wrong and cried; or he hung up the number, and there was only two or three minutes of face-to-face communication with the doctor, and the patient was dazed and overwhelmed; of course, there was more painful, the number was right, but the operation schedule was postponed to one or two months later, delaying the best treatment time." When He Peng described these scenes, he sighed from time to time.

It is this front-line experience that makes He Peng fully aware of the huge pain points of people's livelihood in the field of tumor medical treatment. A dream began to burn in his heart, that is, to challenge three huge problems: how can the efficiency of cancer medical treatment be improved? Let the experience of ordinary people improve a little. Can the price of medical care come down? Let the people's money bags not be hollowed out due to illness. Can the treatment be improved? Let the people pick up hope for the future... This confusion, which was difficult to let go, constantly forced He Peng to think hard, but the answer could not appear in his mind.

Unexpectedly, when he watched a video of hollowing out logs to make canoes, he suddenly burst out with an inspiration: the weight of the canoe is reduced compared to the log, and the load-bearing capacity is increased several times - subtraction is more effective than addition - then, the solution to the medical problem of tumors may not increase resources, but reduce loss! Along this line of thought, He Peng quickly designed a solution: since it is impossible to achieve incremental high-quality medical resources in a short period of time, then sort out the medical business flow, find ways to improve the efficiency of existing resources, build a medical service platform, gather professional medical personnel, help patients improve the efficiency and experience of medical treatment, and the intensive diagnosis and treatment process will also reduce costs.

In March 2015, He Peng found three other friends who were also from Peking University School of Medicine to discuss entrepreneurial ideas, and the four of them hit it off, and the predecessor of Shanggao Yikang's digital tumor prevention and treatment platform, "Yikang Medical", was established. In June, the patient-oriented E-Kang Medical App was launched, and in October, the E-Kang Medical Assistant App for the service-oriented side was launched. In this regard, China's first generation of one-stop medical service platform based on digital technology was born. This is two months earlier than China's first Internet hospital established in Wuzhen.

Seven years and one sword, rewriting the new pattern of digital medical treatment for tumors

Almost all industries will inevitably produce bubbles and chaos in the initial stage of development, and Internet medical care is inevitable. As we all know in the industry, the current application model of digital health is far from mature, and it still needs time to explore and polish. The business themes and profit methods of the leading enterprises in the industry all point to e-commerce to sell drugs. One of the chaos in the industry is to package the online sales channels of drugs into the main value of Internet medical treatment, which is obviously "referring to the cat as a tiger".

E-commerce to sell drugs, is nothing more than the original community bottom business pharmacy cashier on the online platform, no matter how large the scale is, the industry ranking to do more advanced, always can not get rid of the harvest of physical pharmacies background. Online drug sales are one of the basic components of the digital medical system, and are by no means the ontology of digital medical treatment. For example, a pot of sheep scorpions cannot be called a whole sheep feast.

Second, the online consultation, which is regarded as the business model of the Internet hospital, the current service scope is more suitable for common mild or chronic diseases, such as cold fever, type 2 diabetes, etc., and the medical institutions and doctors who can treat these diseases have sufficient resources, which can basically achieve the equalization and homogenization of resources nationwide, and there are almost no regional differences. For example, children have a cold, often go directly to the clinic at the entrance of the community to solve it in time, and then go to the nearest county and city children's hospital for treatment, which is convenient and efficient. If we only lock in the main value of digital health here and boast about ourselves, and cannot be committed to the allocation of medical resources for major diseases with more urgent needs, then digital health will lose its minimum dignity and simply become a money-making tool for capital and business.

The "e-commerce of medicine" in Internet medical treatment, as well as the inability to "load the gun" of online consultation, stems from two aspects: first of all, the active strategic choice of the practitioners, compared with the time-consuming and labor-consuming reconstruction of medical resources, online drug sales to make money can be described as easy and pleasant. The second is the problem of the medical habits of patients with major diseases, the reason why they run the top three across the region is that they feel that only by letting the doctor face to face "through the eyes" is reliable, the reason is like eating a working meal can be taken out by the US group, but the business reception must be to go to the hotel box.

So, in the booming and suddenly mutated digital medical market, how will Shanggao Yikang be laid out? At the beginning of 2022, Xiangpeng Youkang was officially merged into Shanggao, and the two sides formed a new team "Shanggao Yikang", which refers to digital tumor digital diagnosis and treatment.

He Peng said, "The tumor digital medical treatment we are involved in is not a subdivision track of the existing Internet hospital system, but a new exploration of digital medical application scenarios and a virgin land that truly realizes the value." The 'country's largest digital oncology diagnosis and treatment platform' that we are building is committed to solving three problems about cancer medical treatment that the people care about: whether the efficiency has increased, whether the price has come down, and whether the effect has gone up. ”

"Whether it is the previous Yikang International (Xiangpeng Youkang's one-stop digital medical and health service platform) or the reloaded Shanggao Yikang, the core business does not involve pharmaceutical e-commerce, but always focuses on the digital medical field of major diseases. The medium- and long-term development strategy involving the field of oncology is to build three major medical and health infrastructures of self-built advanced medical laboratories, well-known oncologist groups, and Internet hospitals, empowering the medical resources of the two major systems of public hospitals and private hospitals in various provinces and cities, creating more than 100 cancer diagnosis and treatment branches, reshaping the new ecology of the tumor diagnosis and treatment value chain through platform digital technology, and providing medical and health services of the same quality as the top hospitals in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou nearby, such as early tumor screening, tumor precision drug screening and full treatment. Solve the problem of nearby diagnosis and treatment of tumors in non-first-line cities. ”

New mechanism: pre-testing, to achieve high-quality medical resources leverage multiplication, improve the efficiency of diagnosis and treatment

Different from the flat hardware expansion of traditional medical institutions and the digital empowerment of general Internet hospitals, Shanggao Yikang has found a third path to incremental high-quality medical resources. He Peng, CEO of Shanggao Yikang, said, "In the next three years, Shanggao Yikang will successively build 10 new advanced medical laboratories, and it is expected to undertake the full inspection commission of about 100 city and county hospitals, of which tumor prevention and treatment testing is the core business. The laboratory is equipped with a series of industry-leading facilities and technologies such as CTC circulating tumor cell liquid biopsy and capsule endoscopic robot image detection, which can provide cost-effective, high-precision and high-experience tumor screening services for local residents. In addition, we will continue to launch high-end scarce detection equipment such as PET-CT in 100 cooperative hospitals, so that local patients can enjoy the same advanced diagnosis and treatment as first-tier cities at their doorstep. ”

Under the premise that the total number of existing physical hospitals, doctors and medical facilities in the region remains unchanged, Shanggao Yikang invests in the precision medical inspection link of the medical industry chain, and places the flow funnel of the existing Internet hospital online consultation to its own medical laboratories distributed throughout the country, releasing the inspection pressure of physical hospitals, shortening the patient treatment process, empowering collaborative medical institutions from the two dimensions of hardware facilities and information flow, bringing leverage multiplier effects to high-quality medical resources, thereby improving the efficiency of diagnosis and treatment.

New technology: big data sharing and mutual recognition, tumor precision drug screening black technology, to achieve medical treatment fee reduction and quality improvement.

"Famous doctors with unique skills" is the core of high-quality medical resources, different from the existing mainstream Internet medical system only attaches importance to the number of practicing doctors, and the platform is only weakly related to the status quo, Shanggao Yikang in the allocation of its own medical resources, is forming a national, global well-known oncologists as the main body of the doctor group.

He Peng, who graduated from Peking University with a doctorate in oncology, has an innate advantage in the field of gathering top tumor doctors, "The thousand-person scale oncologist group that Shanggao Yikang is building has both top medical celebrities and medical stars, and the strong lineup is enough to shock the entire medical community." He Peng, who was born in Ningxia, shows the heroism of the Northwest Hanzi when describing the future team structure.

According to relevant statistics, the per capita cost of detection and medical treatment for cancer patients in mainland China is about 150,000 yuan, and the overall scale of the mainland tumor market is about 4.8 trillion yuan. Among them, the cost of medical testing accounts for about one-third. Due to the difference in the diagnosis and treatment concept system of various hospitals, the test reports do not recognize each other, and patients often need to re-examine each time they go to a hospital, which invisibly generates "overlapping costs".

The establishment of the doctor group can greatly narrow the difference in diagnosis and treatment concepts, realize the sharing and mutual recognition of big data in the same testing system, and "one test, the whole process of green pass", thereby reducing unnecessary repeated tests and avoiding "overlapping costs". According to He Peng's team calculations, the average tumor patient will do at least 4-5 times of repeated testing in the whole process of diagnosis and treatment, once the test big data sharing mutual recognition is realized, patients only need to do a precise test to "customs clearance", and the corresponding cost of about 50% is reduced in the inspection link (based on the standards of Beijing Top 3 Hospital). In addition, because Shangao has the domestic production qualification of PET-CT, it will greatly reduce the cost of facility delivery and indirectly reduce the cost of PET-CT testing by at least 50%. "At present, the price of PET-CT testing in major hospitals in China is from 7,000 yuan, and some hospitals even charge up to 9,000 yuan." Once Shangao completes the laying of PET-CT in 100 cooperative hospitals on the platform, the cost of a single test is expected to drop to about 3500 yuan. ”

In the treatment process, because each patient's tumor genes are different, it is necessary to repeatedly try drugs during the treatment process until the optimal combination of drugs is found, which increases the medical burden while causing the patient to bear great physical and mental pain. Clinical studies have shown that 70% of all tumor patients are ineffective, and many patients waste the best treatment time and node in ineffective drugs. Shanggao Yikang's "chipless" digital PCR technology platform and the consultation team of famous doctors can provide more accurate drug screening programs for tumor patients, so as to formulate more suitable personalized treatment and medication guidance programs, improve the effectiveness of drug use for tumor patients, and reduce treatment costs by 50%-70% while improving the quality of treatment (based on the standards of Beijing Top 3 Hospital).

New Ecology: The five major layouts of the digital medical industry are synergistic and value-added ecology

According to He Peng, the industrial layout of Shanggao Yikang focuses on high-certainty and high-quality tracks in the field of digital medical treatment, mainly including five major sections: digital tumor diagnosis and treatment platform, whole life cycle health management platform, life science research institute, biomedical science and technology achievement transformation base, and medical education and training base, creating a collaborative value-added ecology that forms multiple industrial chains of medical services, health management, biomedicine, and education and training.

At present, Shanggao Yikang is upgrading the original one-stop health management platform and building a full-life cycle health management platform on its original basis, which has seen a prototype. The digital oncology diagnosis and treatment platform that is being fully built is expected to be initially implemented this year, and the other three sectors such as the Life Science Research Institute will also be launched.

"The Institute of Life Sciences is positioned as an incubator for biomedical achievements, bringing together a global team of scientists in the field of biomedicine, with domestic laboratories as the center, multi-directional collaboration with overseas laboratories such as Europe, the United States and Japan, and ensuring the advanced nature of Theo's industrial ecological technology support system through independent research and development, technology introduction, mergers and acquisitions."

He Peng further introduced, "Biomedical science and technology achievements transformation base base, around gene cell therapy, tumor precision medicine, tumor immunology and other subdivisions, is committed to the clinical unmet demand-oriented transformation and industrialization of scientific and technological achievements, products focus on the field of tumors and moderate diversification, product pipeline covers tumors, autoimmune diseases, ophthalmic diseases and other fields, and strive to create a complete industrial chain from APIs to preparation products."

The main function of the medical education and training base is to provide medical vocational education for fresh junior and senior high school students, provide training and continuing education for medical professionals, and provide service-oriented talent support for the digital medical industry ecology of Shanggao by building professional learning channels. ”

In the future, Shanggao Yikang will continue to play a leading and supporting role in scientific and technological innovation and digitalization, based on the two focus points of benefiting the whole population and covering the whole life cycle, with digital tumor diagnosis and treatment as the core, committed to providing high-quality and affordable one-stop digital medical services, and finally creating a new "two-line collaborative" digital medical ecology supported by the online digital platform and offline medical and health service output as the core, rewriting China's digital medical pattern and boosting the industry into a new climax.

It is an amazing fit with the "14th Five-Year Plan" That is the right time for Shanggao Yikang Digital Medical to speed up the pace

Just last week, China's State Council issued the "14th Five-Year Plan for the Development of the Digital Economy" on January 12, which specifically mentioned accelerating the promotion of digital supply and networked services of medical and health resources, accelerating the development of digital health services, and developing remote, customized, and intelligent digital health new formats and many other content closely related to the digital health industry.

This coincides with He Peng's continuous exploration, practice and improvement in the digital medical industry over the past seven years, and also opens a window of rapid development policy dividends for Shanggao Yikang, which has just set sail. 2022 is the first year of Shanggao Yikang's digital industry layout, the highlight of which is the integration and sinking of high-quality cancer medical resources through the industry's first business model, and the output of one-stop tumor diagnosis and treatment service programs through the combination of online and offline methods, leaving patients in the local area for effective diagnosis and treatment, which will effectively alleviate the urgent need to solve the pain point of people's livelihood that tumor patients are difficult to see a doctor.