Reporter | Yuan Yiming
Edit | Xie Xin
On October 24, the Shanghai Municipal Public Security Bureau cracked a case of manufacturing and selling counterfeit well-known brand medical equipment products, arrested more than 120 people involved in the case, destroyed 15 criminal dens, investigated and punished 15 medical beauty institutions, and seized 54 counterfeit medical aesthetic medical devices of multiple well-known brands, more than 46,000 consumables such as probes, and more than 61,000 packaging materials, involving an amount of more than 92 million yuan.
On October 25, the State Administration for Market Regulation announced the 2021 Typical Cases of Anti-Unfair Competition Enforcement in Key Areas (the third batch), which mentioned various types of behaviors such as medical beauty institutions falsely publicizing doctors' qualifications, institutional qualifications and honors, efficacy of medical aesthetic products, service efficacy, and false publicity through "brushing single speculation letters" and live broadcasts.
Even if it is repeatedly cracked down and investigated, the black medical beauty is still repeatedly prohibited. According to the statistics of the China Consumer Association, from 2015 to 2019, complaints in China's medical aesthetic industry increased significantly, and there were 6138 complaints in the medical aesthetic industry in 2019, which was nearly 13 times that of 2015.
At the "China Medical Beauty" online conference co-sponsored by the China Plastic Surgery and Beauty Association and Jike Group, Song Weimin, founder of Yanshu Medical, said that at present, almost every life beauty salon and studio on the market can carry out skin-breaking projects such as water light needles, and these seemingly common behaviors are actually unlicensed medical practices.
Regular medical and aesthetic institutions have said that in such a situation, bad money has expelled good money. "Unlicensed institutions have attracted a lot of consumers with price advantages, and formal institutions simply can't 'do' informal institutions." Song Weimin said.
Since 2016, many ministries and commissions have also repeatedly put forward opinions and notices on the problem of "black medical beauty". In 2018, the General Office of the State Council issued the Guiding Opinions on Reforming and Improving the Comprehensive Regulatory System of the Medical and Health Industry (Guo Ban Fa [2018] No. 63); this year, the National Health Commission and eight other ministries and commissions once again issued the Notice on Printing and Distributing the Special Rectification Work Plan for Combating Illegal Medical Beauty Services (Supervision Letter [2021] No. 273 of the National Health Office), and decided to jointly carry out special rectification work to combat illegal medical beauty services from June to December 2021.
However, consumers enter black medical beauty institutions, and the more important reason is the "blindfold method" of medical beauty market advertising, so that consumers cannot distinguish which is a regular institution and which is a black agency. Jing Xuan, director of the Industry Development and Supervision Self-Discipline Committee of the China Plastic Surgery and Beauty Association, said that in recent years, medical beauty consumers can almost only understand institutions, doctors and products through fragmented information or commercial platforms, and there is no industry publicity platform to provide the public with true, accurate and authoritative information inquiry services.
Gu Shangfei, chairman of Shanghai Jike Intelligent Technology Group Co., Ltd., said that 90% of the medical aesthetic complaints it handles are due to excessive marketing and forced buying, but most consumers will not identify the moisture of these marketing. If there is such an authoritative platform, institutions that cherish their feathers and brands will stand out, and the "bad money" that drags down the reputation of the industry will be nowhere to be seen.
On October 21, at the press conference of "Medical Beauty Authenticity Commitment" co-sponsored by Lige and Bloomage Biology, Liu Cheng, senior product manager of Bloomage Biologics Pharmaceutical and Equipment Line, introduced that Bloomage Biologics took the method of "scanning code verification" and enabled 4 sets of anti-counterfeiting codes. Consumers can enter the query page through the WeChat "sweep" function, click the query anti-counterfeiting code to enter the scan result page, or scan the code query through the "China Code" APP to obtain product details.
Although various upstream companies, including Bloomage Biologics, have launched their own scan code verification, each company has a different approach and is in a relatively decentralized state. In this regard, the Industry Development and Supervision Self-Discipline Committee of the China Plastic Surgery and Beauty Association has launched the construction of the "Chinese Medical Beauty" platform.
The "China Medical Beauty" platform is a WeChat mini program of the medical beauty inquiry platform, and also the first official medical aesthetic compliance service inquiry and supervision self-discipline platform in China. This platform integrates the query services of multiple enterprises, which can further facilitate the public to inquire.
The platform publishes information about compliant licensed institutions, physicians, medical aesthetic products and user institutions. Jing Xuan introduced that the "Chinese Medical Beauty" Mini Program can be searched by map, city, name, etc., and at present, a number of medical beauty institutions and medical beauty groups have been settled and entered the internal testing stage. The details page can also find the registration information, legal representative information, address, category, approval authority, contact information, real photos, medical subjects, registration numbers, and labels of compliant products. In addition, the platform will also introduce professionals from third-party public welfare organizations, including lawyers, to provide services such as appraisal, evaluation and mediation for medical aesthetic patients.
At present, the platform is in the trial operation stage and has completed the certification of 573 institutions. Gu Shangfei said at the press conference that he strives to complete the certification of 5,000 institutions in 2022 and 10,000 institutions in 2022 and 2023, respectively. In the next step, the Industry Development and Supervision Self-Discipline Committee of the China Plastic Surgery and Beauty Association also plans to join hands with more third-party platforms, including Weibo's black cat complaint platform, to publicize illegal medical incidents and institutions.