Lead
Since 2020, in the face of the "three-phase superposition" of the entrepreneurial period, the expansion period and the epidemic period, Xuetong has deeply realized that the company is in urgent need of new changes and development. Zhou Xingyuan and his team withstood the pressure, adhered to strategic focus and continuous innovation, achieved a 30% performance growth under the impact of the epidemic on normal operations, and took the initiative to assume the social responsibility of helping Wuhan Central Hospital and donating medical supplies. Since its establishment, Xuethotong has taken solving the practical problems of patients, medical care and the industry as its mission, deeply cultivated medical informatization and digital smart healthcare, and used the power of business and technology to create economic value and social value. Facing the future, the smart medical market will usher in a "battle of scale" and "innovation war", how to find the right track to break through and achieve the value of social entrepreneurship win-win and sustainable development?
Text / Qian Jing, Qu Yi, Zhang Mei
On New Year's Day 2021, all employees of Xuetong received a New Year's message from Zhou Xingyuan, the founder and CEO of the company. In the past year, the "three-phase superposition" of the start-up period, the expansion period and the epidemic period has made this start-up company, which focuses on the overall intelligent solution in the field of nephrology, face huge challenges. Zhou Xingyuan and his team withstood the pressure, adhered to strategic focus and continuous innovation, achieved a 30% performance growth under the impact of the epidemic on normal operations, and took the initiative to assume the social responsibility of helping Wuhan Central Hospital and donating medical supplies.
Since its establishment, Xuethotong has taken solving the practical problems of patients, medical care and the industry as its mission, deeply cultivated medical informatization and digital smart medicine, and used the power of business and technology to create economic value and social value. Facing the future, the smart medical market will usher in a "battle of scale" and "innovation war", how to find the right track to break through and achieve the value of social entrepreneurship win-win and sustainable development?
Identify pain points: save the will to help, go to the call
Hemodialysis is difficult to "pass"
Before devoting himself to smart healthcare, the founder Zhou Xingyuan worked hard in the steel industry and served as a regional agent for a well-known domestic steel giant. After 2008, the domestic steel industry became increasingly saturated, and the steel trade was also hit by the economic crisis. As a serial entrepreneur, he is still looking for new entrepreneurial opportunities, hoping to find the best combination of economic and social value to build his own brand.
Zhou Xingyuan has been involved in the aquaculture industry and the trade industry, and finally took hemodialysis informatization as the entry point for entrepreneurship, which he believes is the most entrepreneurial opportunity to solve social needs and build a brand. Zhou Xingyuan's attention to hemodialysis can be traced back to 2003. At that time, Zhou Xingyuan's child came to the hospital for examination when he had a cold, and the test report showed that the uric acid index was high. During the period of accompanying his child to the hospital, through his own personal observation and communication with experts and medical staff, he realized that the traditional nephrology management model, which relies entirely on human labor, has seriously limited the efficiency of treatment and affected the patient's medical experience. In nephrology, healthcare workers have a tremendous workload, and the most common work they do is hemodialysis. Hemodialysis is one of the renal replacement therapies that can effectively prolong the survival time of patients with end-stage renal failure, helping patients to drain water, inorganic salts, urea, etc. that cannot be metabolized to the outside of the body. In general, one medical staff member is responsible for hemodialysis in five beds at the same time, and each patient needs to undergo dialysis two to three times a week, and each dialysis session lasts for more than four hours. At the same time, due to the shortage of beds and medical resources, many new patients are waiting for dialysis opportunities every week. However, the existing management methods of hospitals have a low degree of informatization, and medical staff rely on manual recording of information, and there is a lot of duplication of work.
Zhou Xingyuan was deeply touched by the high load of medical staff and the medical system. Therefore, since 2003, Zhou Xingyuan has consciously paid attention to the policy dynamics of the medical industry, consulted and communicated with experts in the field, and virtually accumulated a social network and resource base to enter the medical industry in the future.
After 2008, Zhou Xingyuan began to formally set out to develop the idea of a management information system for hemodialysis into reality. The realization of hemodialysis informatization can not only improve the efficiency of clinical treatment and resource planning, but also strengthen safety management and reduce risks. However, the barriers to entry in the medical industry are often high, and the development of clinically usable management tools undoubtedly requires a combination of professional knowledge, practical insight and industry resources.
Innovate and break the game
In 2015, Zhou Xingyuan officially founded Xuetou Medical Technology Co., Ltd. in Shanghai, and is committed to building a high-tech enterprise focusing on overall intelligent solutions in the field of nephrology. Zhou Xingyuan believes that cross-border is not enough to constitute an obstacle, but can break through the inherent cognitive limitations in the industry, and truly create value with user-centricity and problem-solving orientation.
Through exchanges with industry experts and in-depth investigation and research, Zhou Xingyuan further clarified that the entrepreneurial direction of promoting management informatization in the hemodialysis industry has great development potential and social significance. In mainland China, there is a huge group of patients receiving hemodialysis services (see Figure 1), with a total of 685,000 patients in dialysis in 2020, and 145,000 new patients, which are expected to exceed 3.15 million by 2030. The number of medical institutions providing hemodialysis services has also continued to increase (see Figure 2), and the number of hemodialysis centers nationwide has reached 6,800 in 2020.
At the same time, the macro policy environment at that time was also conducive to the development of hemodialysis-related enterprises. Since 2015, the critical illness insurance system for urban and rural residents has been gradually improved, providing financial security for many patients to receive hemodialysis services. In 2016, the National Health and Family Planning Commission promulgated the Basic Standards and Management Specifications for Hemodialysis Centers (Trial), which clarified the standards and norms for the establishment of independent hemodialysis centers and encouraged the development of hemodialysis centers into chains and collectivizations. In 2017, the National Health and Family Planning Commission issued the Decision on Amending the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Regulations on the Administration of Medical Institutions (Order No. 12 of the National Health and Family Planning Commission), which determined to add five types of medical institutions, including hemodialysis centers, and included them in the field of social investment, bringing opportunities for the development of this unpopular subdivision of hemodialysis.
Contradicting the strong market demand and favorable policy environment, many hemodialysis centers still rely on manual records and simple and extensive management. The time of medical staff is occupied by a lot of repetitive labor, which is heavy and inefficient. Because it is difficult to obtain the required data and information in real time, it is also difficult for managers to carry out more granular quality control and resource coordination. Naturally, this also limits the patient experience. Zhou Xingyuan and his team decided to develop an information-based auxiliary tool based on daily clinical work scenarios and management needs to help the hemodialysis industry improve the efficiency, effectiveness and effectiveness of services, and transform to digitalization and refinement.
Development opportunities: cross-border integration, market exploration
Assemble a team
At the intersection of medical management and information technology, learning through requires a R&D team with a composite background and can work together. After really devoting himself to the cause of smart medical care, Zhou Xingyuan found that it was not easy to form such a team. Many job seekers either have only experience in the medical industry or computer skills. For this reason, Zhou Xingyuan decided that there was no suitable talent on the market, so he would rely on his own internal training. If you don't have medical experience, you will train for medical experience, and if you don't have technical knowledge, you will learn about it. Zhou Xingyuan took the lead in setting an example, devoting himself to the study of medical and information technology knowledge from scratch, and learned almost all related technologies except programming. The knowledge structure of the team is also constantly enriched in the progress of the project, and it is developing while exploring, and it is constantly maturing in practice. Excellent knowledge and skills, positive learning attitude and team spirit of "struggle, dedication, innovation and focus" have laid a solid foundation for subsequent product research and development.
In terms of employee motivation, "employees first, shareholders second" is one of the basic principles of corporate governance and development. Although Xuetou is still in the development stage of "entrepreneurship is difficult", and the money and material treatment cannot reach the most ideal level, the company's shareholders and management adhere to the principle of employee first, and continue to provide employees with more and better growth space and job promotion opportunities through the company's development.
Polishing the product
While assembling the team, Xueditong began to seriously polish their first product, XTT hemodialysis intelligent management system, which was launched to the market in 2018. The design of the intelligent management system is based on the actual workflow of hemodialysis, aiming to provide a full range of information-assisted management for hemodialysis, systematize and automate hemodialysis treatment, improve the work quality and economic benefits of the department, and provide data support for the academic research of the department, so that patients can enjoy better medical services.
The R&D team modularized the whole process of hemodialysis management, and subdivided the information management needs of different personnel such as patients, doctors, nurses, nurses, and engineers (see Figure 3). Starting from the needs of patients, the R&D team of Xuetong has developed business functions such as dialysis process display, large-screen bed row display, large-screen propaganda and queuing and calling based on blood purification standards based on blood purification standards, patient safety management as the core, and the establishment of electronic medical records for blood purification specialists. In order to reduce the burden on doctors, business functions such as electronic medical records, examination information, examination information, statistical reports, and dialysis quality management have been developed in the doctor workstation module. In order to improve the efficiency of nurses' information management, business modules such as automatic bed arrangement, consumables management, drug management, expense management, and health education have been developed in the nurse workstation module. In order to standardize the nursing work, a mobile nursing workstation module was developed, and business functions such as shift management, disease course recording, dialysis process management and treatment room management were set up. In view of the frequent technical maintenance of hemodialysis equipment, the system also sets up an engineer workstation module to develop business functions such as dialysis machine management, water treatment management, hospital infection management, dialysate management and dialysis water. The R&D team makes full use of the Internet of Things and Internet technology, which enables the system data to be connected with the weighing machine, blood gas analyzer, dialysis machine data collection and blood pressure monitor in the hospital, and the Internet technology enables the data to be associated with mobile phones and other devices and WeChat applets on the mobile terminal for easy query and management.
After two years, Xuetou finally successfully launched this smart hemodialysis solution, which realized the collection automation, workflow consistency, quality control process standardization, information sharing of all employees, mobile application intelligence and scientific statistical decision-making in the hemodialysis management process. In the first year of promoting the product, Xuetou received a number of letters of praise from medical institutions such as Shanghai Tongji Hospital, Taizhou Fourth People's Hospital, and Zhongshan Hospital affiliated to Xiamen University.
Rapid growth: smart medical care, learning thoroughly
In the two years of exploring the market, Xuetou has built an entrepreneurial team with professionalism and innovative spirit, and developed a set of hemodialysis smart solutions that are widely recognized by the market. In 2017~2019, on the basis of the existing products, Xuetoutong carried out vertical extension and horizontal expansion respectively, and officially entered a period of rapid growth.
Extended longitudinally
With the gradual maturity of hemodialysis intelligent system products, Zhou Xingyuan began to lay out the company's future direction. Due to the accumulation of certain knowledge, technology and resources, Zhou Xingyuan continued to conduct in-depth research in the nephrology to find the future development direction.
Since the kidney disease that the first product, XTT Hemodialysis Intelligent Management System, focuses on, it is a typical chronic disease, and patients need to receive long-term and frequent treatment. Based on the accumulation in the early stage, Zhou Xingyuan decided to lead the team to expand vertically in the field of nephrology and deepen the management of chronic diseases in the direction of nephrology. Guided by the concept of "health management + medical services", we have designed CKD smart chronic disease management, a solution for hospitals and medical groups at all levels of administrative regions, by integrating Internet and Internet of Things technologies. From the perspective of the practical application of hospital departments, relying on the CKD chronic disease management team of the department, CKD smart chronic disease management builds a patient-centered medical service platform for the whole course of the disease involving both in-hospital and out-of-hospital management, so as to improve the work efficiency of medical staff, improve the medical experience of patients, reduce the incidence of chronic kidney disease, and achieve the goal of establishing the brand value of hospital departments and improving the quality of medical services.
Relying on the Internet of Things and Internet technology, the smart chronic disease management system can provide remote monitoring (blood pressure, blood glucose, ECG, sleep monitoring), disease management (file management, intelligent screening, abnormal identification, automatic intervention), Internet (appointment registration, two-way referral, online consultation, health reminder) and full follow-up (disease follow-up, health education, dietary guidance, sports rehabilitation) services. The online service team, including psychological counselors, intervenes in a timely manner for the problems encountered in the process of rehabilitation. The intelligent platform and online team, in close cooperation with the offline disease management center and the offline operation team, have realized the functions of chronic disease screening, doctor-patient communication, data analysis, health monitoring, health education and health follow-up, providing health services for patients with chronic diseases, and greatly improving work efficiency and patient satisfaction.
Product Expansion
As of 2018, LearnTransparency has provided professional management services for more than 100 hemodialysis centers, taking a solid and enterprising step in the smart medical market. After the advent of chronic disease management products, Zhou Xingyuan led the team to continue to explore the path of professional management of nephrology and continue to expand the products. At the policy level, the liberalization of the construction of independent hemodialysis centers has also created a broader "place for learning" and penetration. As kidney disease receives more and more attention from the government and society, there will be more independent hemodialysis centers in China, and national, provincial and municipal quality control centers at all levels will inevitably put forward higher requirements for hemodialysis quality control.
In the process of long-term cultivation of the hemodialysis industry, Zhou Xingyuan and his team found that there are two major pain points in the current hemodialysis quality control: first, the hemodialysis center lacks an effective quality control management platform, the provincial and municipal quality control centers cannot effectively supervise and guide the subordinate hospitals, and the information between hospitals is not connected, and a standard quality management system cannot be built. Second, there is a lack of data management methods, incomplete data and lack of effective application, and it is impossible to grasp the situation of patients.
In response to the above pain points, Zhou Xingyuan led the team to tackle technical problems and create a provincial and municipal quality control platform solution suitable for domestic hemodialysis centers. The program takes the quality control center (responsible for the overall monitoring of the quality of all aspects of hemodialysis medical work and the formulation of medical management plans) as the core, uniting hospitals, medical staff and patients to form a quality control management information platform integrating medical management, data monitoring and life supervision. Through the national blood purification medical record information registration system, the platform connects the provincial quality control center, the municipal quality control center, the hospital and the dialysis group (a collection of hospitals responsible for hemodialysis), and realizes data sharing, platform authority management, intelligent analysis and statistics, patient health file management, hemodialysis center information file and data collection and reporting.
At the same time, Zhou Xingyuan's team integrates the knowledge of medicine, management and information science and technology to establish a set of dialysis quality control management platform system that meets the needs of intelligent management of quality control centers at all levels. The system has the ability of automatic statistical analysis of data, intelligent monitoring of dialysis quality, trend analysis and prediction. With the help of the system, medical staff can achieve precision medicine through big data analysis, reduce the cost of dialysis medical care and further improve the quality of medical care. At the same time, the treatment cycle of patients is shortened, the cost of dialysis is reduced, and a mutually beneficial and win-win situation has been achieved for provincial and municipal quality control centers, hospitals, patients and other parties.
Steady expansion: improve management and share value
Within three years of its establishment, Xueditong has successively launched a number of top-notch nephrology professional products in the industry, such as hemodialysis intelligent system, intelligent chronic disease management, and quality control solutions. The brand of learning through has gradually become popular in the industry, and products such as chronic disease management have gradually entered the public eye. In 2019, as Xuetong entered a period of expansion, Zhou Xingyuan and his team began to think about key issues such as how to expand, where to expand, and which industry partners to unite.
Build your brand
In the expansion period, Zhou Xingyuan believes that Xuetong should give priority to the development of its own value, build core competitiveness, find out the positioning of the enterprise, solidify the corporate culture, and improve the competition model.
In terms of corporate positioning, Xuetoutong adheres to the enterprise spirit of "learning thoroughly, doing the best" and the core value of "everyone needs to be healthy, learning through - making health a way of life", and is committed to providing one-stop solutions for smart specialties for nephrology departments across the country, so that 130 million patients with chronic kidney disease in mainland China can receive personalized digital treatment and health management services of "early detection, early treatment, excellent efficacy, slow progression, and no five stages". Talking about the future development vision, Zhou Xingyuan believes that based on the implementation of the "Belt and Road" strategy and the broad prospects of world medical cooperation during the new crown epidemic, Xuetong may go abroad in the future and is committed to becoming a world-leading kidney health management service provider.
Zhou Xingyuan attaches great importance to the construction and implementation of corporate culture. In team building, we always advocate down-to-earth, struggle and dedication, learn thoroughly, and do the best team spirit if you want to do it. In terms of service concept, Xuetou firmly believes that service creates value and moves users with heart. In terms of corporate values, Xuethotong adheres to the user-centered, takes effective output and value creation as the foundation, advocates struggle, encourages innovation, and pursues win-win value and sustainable and healthy development. In the future, Xuetoutong will continue to strive for the realization of the corporate mission of "science and technology to promote smart medical care and serve healthy China".
In practice, Xuetong has also built its own core competition model. The model includes four major sections: the first is technology, which is determined to become a long-term cultivator of medical informatization and new digital smart medicine, and everyone in the team knows the importance of technology for a high-tech medical technology company. The second is brand, product and word-of-mouth are the foundation of brand communication. To learn thoroughly, we must always adhere to pragmatism and professionalism, follow the internal laws of doing things, and insist on the "three good" pursuit of "good products, good service and good reputation" without distraction. The third is marketing, in order to ensure the coverage of products, Zhou Xingyuan's team provides professional hotline services, training services and remote services. In just a few years, with the concept of grasping the professional market and precision marketing, the customers who have learned through have covered almost all provinces in the country. The fourth is management, Zhou Xingyuan's team believes that enterprise managers need to focus on the creation of social value, adhere to the management concept of employee first in internal management, and achieve and empower employees through the development of the company.
Build an ecosystem
While building the core competitiveness of the enterprise, Zhou Xingyuan noticed that with the continuous deepening of the reform of the medical and health system in the mainland, the medical security system has been gradually improved, new medical service models have been emerging, and the informatization and digital construction of hospitals are in the ascendant. Hospitals, patients, pharmaceutical companies, software equipment suppliers, public health institutions, insurance institutions and other entities constitute an organic medical ecosystem, which is interconnected and mutually reinforcing, and ultimately realizes the value added of the entire medical ecosystem. Based on this understanding, Zhou Xingyuan decided to start the construction of a smart medical ecological alliance and seek common development with industry partners.
The LearnThox Ecological Alliance consists of three parts: the Medical Industry Alliance, the Solution Alliance, and the Technical Solution Alliance. In terms of the construction of medical industry alliances, as a leader in integrated nephrology solutions such as smart nephrology, chronic disease management, and scientific research data governance, Xuetou has been deeply engaged in the construction of medical informatization in mainland China for a long time, and has forward-looking market insights and leading technical strength. Through cooperation with ecological partners, Xuethotong has realized the full process coverage from construction plan to consulting, top-level design, and intelligent operation and maintenance, and continuously explored the deep integration of information technology and all medical scenarios, so that its medical information construction has the ability to meet the needs of the digital ecological construction of the entire medical and health system in an all-round way.
In the solution alliance, Xuetong can also serve as an excellent ecological partner. We are committed to building an unbounded ecosystem, where we can work with partners to incubate competitive solutions, focus on high-value scenarios, and work with partners to bring customers the best choices, contributing to the healthy development of the digital transformation industry. In terms of technology solution alliances, Xuetoutong can provide comprehensive digital solutions such as cloud computing, big data, big Internet, and the Internet of Things, and work with ecological partners to focus on the value of technology integration with the concept of integration and openness, and help the intelligent transformation of cooperative institutions.
Based on this, the ecological alliance can provide a driving force for the construction of the medical ecosystem platform and the innovative development of the medical service model. With the construction of independent ecological alliances, Xuetoutong not only brings mutual benefit and win-win results to both parties while product cooperation. In 2020, Xuetoutong reached a number of strategic cooperation with partners. For example, in terms of the construction of medical industry alliances, Xuetou and medical giant AstraZeneca have reached a blockbuster strategic cooperation to promote the construction of a smart chronic disease kidney treatment ecosystem, and in terms of technical solution alliances, Xuetou and the Fourth Hospital of Hebei Medical University have carried out smart medical innovation exploration, and the project "AI+ Online Diagnosis and Treatment to Help the Whole Process Management of Chronic Kidney Disease" won the "4th Smart Medical Innovation Competition" of the "2020 Digital China Innovation Competition" In terms of solution alliances, Dongguan Donghua Hospital, a partner in the management of CKD chronic diseases, has newly installed the CKD chronic disease management clinic to provide patients with one-stop and standardized chronic disease management and medical services.
How can the "three-phase superposition" continue to develop?
After years of rapid development, the number of hospital users has expanded to hundreds, and it has reached cooperation with many well-known large-scale tertiary hospitals and non-public dialysis chain groups such as West China Hospital of Sichuan University, the First Affiliated Hospital of Zhengzhou University, Shanghai Changzheng Hospital, Shanghai Yisheng Dialysis Chain, and China Mintou Dialysis Chain. At the same time, Xuethotong has built a complete marketing system covering 31 provinces, municipalities and autonomous regions across the country and the core technology advantages represented by high intelligence and high informatization, and the company's internal digital management system and corporate culture have gradually improved. In the future, Xuethotong will continue to move forward steadily along the established strategic layout and development plan from "point" to "line" and from "line" to "surface".
Since 2020, in the face of the "three-phase superposition" of the entrepreneurial period, the expansion period and the epidemic period, Xuetong has deeply realized that the company is in urgent need of new changes and development. As a start-up enterprise that has not yet introduced external financing, it still faces certain resource constraints in technology research and development and business expansion, and the recurrence of the epidemic will inevitably affect the normal operation of the enterprise. Facing the future, in the wave of "digitalization", "intelligence", "transformation", "cross-border" and "integration", the field of smart medical care is bound to usher in a "battle of scale" and "innovation". In this battle, how should the "three-phase superposition" learn through how to find the right track to break through and achieve the win-win and sustainable development of social entrepreneurship?
(Shen Sijia and Fang Xiaotong, School of Economics and Business Administration, Beijing Normal University, also contributed to this article)
About the Author | Qian Jing is a professor at the School of Economics and Business Administration, Beijing Normal University, and the director of the Research Center for Management and Organizational Psychology.
Qu Yi: Master student, School of Economics and Business Administration, Beijing Normal University;
Zhang Mei: Senior Technical Manager of Beijing Huibo Yuntong Software Co., Ltd.
Editor-in-Charge | Zhou Yang([email protected])
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