Botong Medical: To create a digital therapy-enabled pain diagnosis and treatment service platform to serve hundreds of millions of pain patients

"Someone is determined to burn all their life."

Professor Wang Jiejun, former director of the Department of Oncology, Changzheng Hospital Affiliated to the Second Military Medical University, has been practicing medicine for more than 30 years and has been engaged in tumor treatment. At the same time, he has also made important contributions to continuously promoting the standardized management of cancer pain in mainland China, especially in the field of promoting tumor support treatment and palliative care.

It is reported that Professor Wang Jiejun participated in the construction of more than 1,000 demonstration wards for the standardized diagnosis and treatment of cancer pain and nearly 100 demonstration bases for the standardized management of refractory cancer pain in the country; participated in the completion of the formulation of standards and norms such as the "Expert Consensus on Refractory Cancer Pain", the "Expert Consensus on Cancer Eruption Pain", the "Guidelines for the Rational Use of Drugs in China for the Treatment of Cancer Pain" by the Expert Committee of the National Health Commission, and the "Cancer Pain Diagnosis and Treatment Specifications" of the National Health Commission.

"Cancer pain" is one of the most common symptoms of tumor patients, and it is also one of the important factors affecting the quality of life of patients. Since 1986, the World Health Organization has introduced a three-tiered cancer analgesic treatment program worldwide to relieve pain and help patients improve their quality of life. In 1990, the mainland officially began to implement the three-tier pain treatment for cancer.

But whether on the mainland or in the world, standardized cancer treatment still has a long way to go.

Fill gaps in patient pain treatment with digital therapies

According to the latest global cancer burden data released by the World Health Organization's International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) in 2020, there were 4.57 million new cancer cases in China in 2020, accounting for 23.7% of the world's total. For more than a decade, the overall incidence of cancer in the mainland has shown an increasing trend. With the increase in the incidence of cancer, cancer pain is an increasingly clinical problem that cannot be ignored.

However, according to the survey report on the rational use of cancer pain in 100 hospitals nationwide released in 2018, the proportion of patients receiving analgesia treatment in the mainland is very low every year, between 10.8 and 11.8%. There is a gap in the reserve and application of analgesic drugs between different levels of hospitals, and grass-roots hospitals often face the status quo of insufficient drugs. In addition, there is a long way to go in terms of improving clinicians' awareness and operational level of controlling and treating cancer pain.

Professor Wang Jiejun is the leading expert of this survey. In this interview with Arterial Network, he said: "Not only is the pain of tumor patients not well managed, but the pain management of other non-tumor patients is actually the same lacking and not paid enough attention." ”

This shows the current pain points in the field of pain treatment in the mainland. In addition, there are also problems in mainland pain treatment, such as insufficient allocation of resources such as pain department personnel and beds, and the untimely update of pain diagnosis and treatment concepts, professional knowledge and skills of medical staff.

Epidemiological surveys in Western countries show that the incidence of chronic pain accounts for about 30% of the total population. According to the Blue Book of China's Pain Prevention and Control and Health Promotion Strategy: Report on the Development of Pain Medicine in China (2020), there are more than 300 million chronic pain patients in mainland China, and they are growing rapidly at a rate of 10 million to 20 million per year.

According to a research report by British market consultancy Brisk Insights, the global pain management drug and medical device market reached $37.8 billion in 2015, with a compound annual growth rate of 4.3% from 2015 to 2022 and $50.8 billion in 2022. This shows the huge size of the pain management market.

In this context, the "Botong" medical treatment with the vision of "no pain" was born.

"In the face of so many patients, sometimes it feels that being a doctor is too small." After retiring, Professor Wang Jiejun founded Botong Medical in 2019, hoping to integrate his years of accumulated treatment experience, understanding of medicine and some medical resources into a digital platform to realize the vision of serving more people through the platform.

Botong Medical is a digitally empowered pain diagnosis and treatment service platform: based on intelligent technology-driven and data interaction platform, focusing on pain diagnosis and treatment services. The Botong medical team believes that the role of Internet medical treatment in the chronic disease management scenario is becoming more and more important, and digital therapy, as an emerging means, can include family and community scenarios in the entire chronic disease management.

In the wave of medical digital transformation, domestic digital medical care is moving from the periphery of "connection" as the main function of Internet hospitals to a more core circle. Taking digital therapy as an example, based on evidence-based medicine, the treatment and intervention of diseases are carried out. In November 2020, the first digital therapy NMPA registration certificate in mainland China was issued, officially opening the prelude to domestic digital therapy.

According to the "China Digital Therapy Industry White Paper" of arterial network, digital therapy is divided into four categories according to discipline classification: psychology, neuroscience, rehabilitation medicine and pharmacology, and the indications cover anxiety disorders, irritable bowel syndrome, Parkinson's disease, diabetes, Alzheimer's disease, obesity, sleep apnea, hyperactivity, asthma, arrhythmia and so on.

In the field of pain, there are also digital therapies that specifically target different types of pain such as migraines and musculoskeletal pain. Platinum Tong Medical is the first pain management service platform empowered by digital therapy in the field of pain in China.

Professor Wang Jiejun also said that the coverage of digital medical care is very extensive, and people's acceptance of digital products is also getting higher. Digital therapy is a way to meet the needs of a new generation of disease treatment subjects. The digitization of pain treatment internationally is very hot and is becoming more and more subdivided.

Platinum Tong Medical's digital therapy platform has laid out a number of products for cancer pain and non-cancer pain, including multi-dimensional assessment of pain, prediction of pain complications, cognitive and behavioral training, etc. According to reports, in the product design pipeline of Platinum Tong Medical, more than a dozen products have been prepared, of which 4 have been launched; offline Platinum Tong Medical has also landed 3 diagnosis and treatment centers.

"Dumbbell" layout,

Data-connected pain management full program

How to understand the business layout of Botong Medical, Professor Wang Jiejun vividly used the example of "dumbbells", and the two endpoints of dumbbells are the two major business sectors of Botong Medical. One end is the medical service sector; the other end is the training and clinical research section for the doctor group; and the two ends rely on the data interaction management platform to do the connection, that is, the data at both ends is precipitated on the platform, and then the platform data is used to enrich and upgrade products, and feedback to the business at both ends.

On the medical service side, Platinum Tong Medical first uses the products on the digital therapy platform to help patients make assessments, and then according to the evaluation results, patients are treated accordingly at offline medical service points. After treatment is completed, it is then managed over a long period of time through its digital therapy products. If new problems arise in disease management, it will be re-evaluated, diagnosed and treated, and managed to form a closed loop of services for the whole course of disease management.