In October 2025, another online platform threw its hat in the ring of internet healthcare.
This move reflects a broader trend in China, where major tech giants and other healthcare-related companies They're creating a comprehensive digital health ecosystem and reshaping how people access medical care.
What does this mean for hospitals and also what does it mean for patients?
We're live from Beijing.
This is Roundtable.
I'm Steve.
Thanks for being with us today.
And for the show, I'm with Yushun and Yushan.
First up.
The October 2025 launch of yet another online affiliated healthcare company marks a significant acceleration in the online platform's push into the digital health arena.
This move is emblematic of a broader transformation sweeping China's healthcare landscape, where Technology titans like Alibaba and JD, alongside specialized healthcare firms, they're converging on the sector.
And by integrating advanced technologies like AI, Seamless online consultations and comprehensive hospital services, these players are constructing an all-in-one digital health ecosystem aimed at fundamentally reshaping the patient journey.
So what will this step mean for the patients on those journeys and also the hospitals?
We're about to find out.
So the news here, Yushan and Yushan, good afternoon.
The news here is that another major online platform has entered into the online healthcare industry.
But the bigger story, I suppose, is about the expansion of the industry itself.
Yeah.
So because first of all, the like online medical consultation kind of thing is not that new.
It's not a new phenomenon.
But recently another tech giant, which is Douyin Group, who owns the short video platform, Douyin has joined this race as well and forming a competitive platform arena led by a lot of these tech giants and online e-commerce platforms like JD.
They have JD Health, Alibaba Health, another one and also Meituan is also in this sector.
And then here we have another Yeah, so it's internet plus healthcare, right?
So let's talk about that.
When we combine those two words, what does it actually mean?
So basically, the market landscape has evolved from the early model of only like online consultations, plus maybe medicine sales, to which is our like general understanding of the internet healthcare industry.
Now it is going to a more advanced system with like AI empowerment plus full chain health services that you can get all of the support or medical services through these online platforms.
Because previously we've been talking quite a a lot about the medical e-commerce, what we call the 医药电商 in Chinese.
That's very common among the majority of Chinese citizens nowadays.
In major cities, for example, people can order, not like order, but like get prescribed with medicines and drugs from apps like Ding Dang Kuai Yao, the one that I use very often, or 大生林 or LBX Pharmacy or 老百姓大药房, all of them have offline stores where people can directly buy medicines, but they also offer online services drug prescription and purchasing and also delivery services yeah and the that's so aside from the prescriptions you and I think as far as I know we've been able to do this for a while If you go onto a platform where you would typically order your food, on the home screen of that app, you'll find various services that are available. and one is medicine and pharmacies.
So you click on that button and then it takes you to a tab where you can see all different pharmacies, and then you can type in the medicine that you're looking for and then you can find it there.
But this is becoming a bigger industry And more and more players are getting involved.
And I guess the surprising thing is it's not necessarily hospitals per se that are joining this online thing.
It's companies that are tech giants, Alibaba, JD, Douyin.
Companies that we wouldn't expect to see perhaps entering into this industry.
Well, to start with, I think all of these major companies you just mentioned, they already have such a foundation, or rather the competence of building such a sophisticated delivery and supply chain for aligning all the drugstores, sometimes even together with hospital services.
In one online network that provides such services online services to the residents of all major cities across China via say.
Apps.
Let's say, and I mentioned that a lot of these online apps or online platforms that we can get medicines from, but not everything is really covered by our medical insurance.
Some we have to pay out of our own pockets.
But there are indeed, like you said Steve, a panel within those say, delivery ordering system or apps where you can search for buying medicine with my medical insurance.
And then that'll give you a list of things.
Yeah, a panel of things including flu tablets, eye drops, the basic stuff and syrup for easing your throat, or even TCM medicine pastes for soothing joint pain, let's say.
Yeah, so your medical insurance will cover a certain list of products, but not all products.
True.
These big companies come in and that's what services we're talking about.
When we're talking as well about the online diagnosis and the treatment and the prescriptions that follow.
How exactly does that work?
So first of all, you get onto these platforms, get some real-time consultations and then you will have follow-ups and electronic prescriptions between doctors and patients.
And then after that maybe you think that you will need a further checkup in a physical hospital.
You can go to a hospital.
And then if you have more information that you want to know or the follow-up treatment that you need to be reminded, you can have that text and video consultations or like chronic disease follow-ups and also e-prescription processing.
So the licensed medical institutions will have their registered doctors provide that online diagnosis or treatment through these hospitals.
Online hospitals yeah, it's really cool about these online or internet hospitals nowadays is that they have two major types of services provided.
The first one is hospital plus internet.
That's something that I've been benefiting for the past say, six months where, for once, I went to this very crowded department of a hospital that's really famous here in Beijing, in central Beijing, and The first, let's say, meet up with the doctor happened physically inside the hospital.
But the follow ups, like you mentioned, the follow up chats with the doctor how do I adjust my medication as time goes by are all conducted online.
It's more like an extension of the physical hospital visits.
So you go, sorry to interrupt, you go the first time for your face-to-face consultation.
And then after that, the doctor already knows what's going on with you.
Yes.
She's got a record.
Yeah, sure.
Online record.
So therefore, you can save yourself a trip to the hospital with the follow-up.
And you don't need to pay for the follow-up consultations?
Ah, that's a good question.
I think it's paid by my medical insurance without me paying extra attention to the payment.
But I would say yes.
It's not like a free thing once and for all.
So that's hospital plus internet, but then there's internet plus hospital.
Yeah, that one is an independent online hospital backed by a physical institution.
More often, people will contact a NAP, let's say, or a online medical platform, and pay for a certain amount of money.
And there is a different tertiary on that as well.
If you just want a quick diagnose and you don't really care too much about who is giving you the diagnose, then you pay as little minimum as a few yuan, less than 10 yuan sometimes.
And then one doctor from a random hospital all around China might be assigned with your order and then he or she will respond to you in a certain amount of time.
But if say, i really want to get someone professional to to give me a more solid diagnose, then you can pay a different tier.
Well, I'm sure they're all professional.
I'm sure, too.
It's just your expectations of the answer.
Yeah, if you want to get a consultation from one of the top doctors at one of the top hospitals, then you do have the choice to pay more if you want to.
That's where the platform is connecting patients with the doctors directly.
When they're prescribing certain things.
I'm guessing that there are certain things that they can't prescribe, because not every case would be able to be solved over the internet.
So I guess the benefit of this consultation is just to get a good idea of what your next step might be.
If it is something as simple as having a prescription that you can go to the pharmacy and pick up yourself or have delivered, then okay.
But if the doctor deems it necessary for you to visit the hospital, then that's going to be your next step.
Yeah.
A lot of the times people just consult online because of our own anxiety, right?
Yeah, yeah, exactly.
I just want to figure out what's going on.
Well, listen, we have kind of a saying in the West.
We have something called WebMD, which is kind of the internet hospital, where people say if you think something's wrong with you, do not ask the internet what's wrong.
Oh, yeah.
We have that kind of thing as well.
So this is just a much, much better option.
So how popular is this?
I mean, with many big players now entered into the game, it's got to be a huge industry already.
Yeah, first of all, a lot of people are using these kind of platforms with people maybe under 40.
Now the core user is seeking these kind of precise and trustworthy and convenient health care services.
And reports from chnci.com is showing that.
This is a leading research institution in China.
China's internet health care market here reached about more than 390 billion yuan.
That's around 54 billion US dollars in 2023 and now is expected to reach 1%.
More than 435 billion yuan, that's more than 60 billion U.S. dollars in 2024.
So analysts from the institute forecast that by 2025, this market size will further expand to over 66 billion.
I think it's not just the market scale that we're talking about, also on the fact that how large of a user scale that it's covering nowadays, because by December 2024, the number of internet healthcare users reached 418 million, which is an increase of over 37 million from the previous year.
And it's accounting for nearly 38% of all internet users here in this country.
So it sounds like The service has been available for a while, but I'm guessing that more and more people are now learning that it's an option for them, since we see that growth, and maybe more and more people are liking it once they try it too.
And I guess there's a lot of different reasons for this.
And the first is probably just the innovation of technology.
Big data, 5G, wearable devices, all of those things.
AI.
Of course, it makes the diagnosis and the treatment and the patient monitoring.
It makes it more intelligent, of course, but it also makes it more efficient and easier, I would think, for the doctors.
And then you've got the integration of regional health data platforms and blockchain-backed security measures to ensure that everything is safe and the efficient.
The efficient information flow goes back and forth between the parties that it's necessary.
And this is just a better, it's a better connected healthcare system.
And they're just moving it online when it can be used for efficiency purposes.
And also, I think, these platforms that we mentioned, they are, first of all, e-commerce giants.
A lot of them, right.
And they have that kind of user group and user base for them to go, let's say, browse everything every day.
And then they are they're not like developing these consultation or medical services uh like over one night, sure they.
They start from maybe first of all give you some ideas or like encyclopedia of your like medical information, some kind of thing like that, and then they get into that like drug selling area and then they go to like consultation, online consultation kind of stuff, step by step, step by step, and then they have the whole cycle of that medical service.
And you ask, why is this so popular here in China?
I think a at its core it's about making things, making hospital visits, as convenient as it can be for day-to-day normal people, citizens of all ages.
And that's achieved, on the one side, by all the online services we're acquiring these days, but also on the sophisticated infrastructure development that happened in recent years.
I think it was back in 2019 when the National Healthcare Security Administration issued the what is it called again?
The Electronic Health Insurance Code.
It's like a QR code.
The QR code.
It's like your medical ID in a way.
Like you show it to get an appointment in the hospital as a way to pay, or you can get like paying for all kinds of medical services, just like paying via WeChat or Alipay.
You can even pull out that electronic health insurance code Via Alipay.
So that's how convenient it is for people now, even though you forget perhaps your health insurance card, that physical card.
It doesn't matter.
It doesn't matter.
You can still pay, at least for the case here in Beijing.
Yeah, I still have that card in my wallet.
Me too.
It's kind of hard to get used to it, right, when things go digital.
But by 2022, over 12 billion users had authorized Mm-hmm.
Then particularly, perhaps older patients might forget a card at home or something like that.
So just having this available is just making it easier.
And then there's policy support as well for this Internet plus health care.
Yeah, the government has been actively promoting Internet plus health care system, just encouraging online diagnosis or electronic diagnosis, prescriptions and data sharing between hospitals as a way of making things more fluent and effective for both the hospital's side and for the patient's side as well.
And also the National Health Commission and National Administration of traditional Chinese medicine.
Together with the National Disease Control and Prevention Administration.
Back in 2024, they issued guidelines for AI application scenarios in the health and wellness industry, where it identified 84 AI medical application scenarios covering areas such as disease prediction, personalized treatment and drug development, etc.
I had the pleasure of trying AI diagnosis out at Uh one time after I finished my you know the annual health check we get from our company and the final stages oh, we've got this AI thing.
Would you like to try?
I'm like, okay.
Basically, it asked me to fill in a form.
It's a very long form.
It could take like 10 to 15 minutes, as long as taking an MBTI test, sort of.
You put in all of your symptoms of uncomfortable parts or what makes you feel stretched, or feel the tension in your body or the pain points in your body, or has your sleep pattern, your eating patterns, things like that.
Oh, it's just kind of a general survey of yourself.
Yeah, a questionnaire for your general health status.
You put all that in and...
One minute later, it generates a very thorough report on how my health is estimated to be and what I should be looking out in the next, let's say, two to three years.
That's how cool it's becoming nowadays.
Yeah, that tool is just kind of like a general starting point.
It's like a screening in a way.
Yeah, in a sense.
Maybe a self-reported diagnosis.
We could say.
So obviously, so many people are using this.
That means so many people are benefiting from this as well.
How?
How?
Actually for patients.
Right, we are having more channels to get to these convenient medical services.
Right, especially these AI driven services make medical access faster and more convenient and offering some instant consultations and report interpretations like what you got right, you got that, the whole checkup report, and then maybe you need a doctor to interpret every details of that.
But yeah, there was a doctor.
Now we have these online platforms.
You can go through that and then also personalized health And also the offline and online integration.
That kind of thing creates seamless healthcare experiences, because some of these online platforms they even offering a whole cycle of that.
You can consult online, get medicines online and then, if you need, go to the physical hospital and then get checkups and then get back to have follow-up online advices.
So these kind of in-person treatment with greater ease is also one convenience that patients can get.
I'm thinking it might benefit the stubborn person.
As well.
I'm thinking of my school days when my mom would say to my dad, go to the hospital.
You need to get checked.
And my dad would say, I don't need to go to the hospital.
I see.
Now, if we have this kind of online, very fast, very convenient online consultation that's covered by your health insurance, that takes just a moment of your time, then why not?
You might catch something a little bit earlier, right?
A doctor might say, oh, well, actually, that is something that you should probably get checked.
Why don't you come in and make an appointment and that type of thing?
And see.
That's one thing that I think a lot of the world health organization or institutions are trying to push forward is for people to realize how important it is to screen your health status from an early stage.
A lot of those people you mentioned, Steve.
They may not realize there's something going on with them until there are symptoms showing.
And by the time when there are symptoms showing us, perhaps in many cases, it could be too late.
And also a lot of those people fall into the category of here, at least here in China.
The case is that many of them stay in the rural areas here in China, where advanced high tech technology and medical services may not reach as far just yet.
There is data showing that over 4800 hospitals nationwide now offer time slot appointment services, which is covering more than 50 of secondary and higher level public hospitals, meaning that old people from a village of a in the Hebei Province, nearby in Beijing they can still get access to the higher level of medical care.
Without having to drive all the way.
Without having to pay a visit.
Sure.
Sure, yeah.
The benefits for the patients are obvious, I think, but there are benefits for the hospitals too.
Yeah, these technologies and also services can help improve the efficiency of interpreting medical reports or even diagnosis, reducing doctors' workload and enabling, let's say, smarter resource allocation, as Yushan just said.
And also the integration of these online and offline systems allows hospitals to expand service reach right.
Right. and manage follow-up care more effectively.
And also these data-driven platforms support better patient management and operational decisions and enhancing their overall performance.
I don't know if it's attributed to what we're talking about today, but I've visited the hospital here in China maybe two or three times, just for nasty colds during the winter season, and the process has been really quick, from the moment you walk in the door to the moment you walk out the door maybe 25 minutes max and that's seeing seeing the doctor.
Um, if this is if what we're talking about here is part of the reason, then i think we can safely say That one of the big benefits for the hospitals is the number of in-person patients actually physically in the hospital.
Right.
That can create very long lineups and very long waits.
If the hospital is a well-known popular one.
So having services online would be beneficial in that sense as well.
Right.
So okay, lots of things to brag about with this, but that doesn't mean it doesn't have its challenges too.
Yeah, that's true.
There are indeed challenges still existing uneven policy and regional implementation differentiations.
Taking buying drugs online as an example.
Different cities they allow very different levels of online medical insurance use.
For example in the city of Qingdao in East China's Shandong Province or in the city of Hefei, also in eastern China.
They both support full drug categories.
But then in Dongguan, in Zhuhai, in southeastern China, they allow only the OTC.
What stands for OTC again?
Over the counter.
Over the counter and medical devices.
And then most other cities only permit OTC sales.
So in some cities, say smaller ones, only five to 10 pilot pharmacies are able to provide such online services, due to limited digital readiness locally.
Another aspect is that right now, even though we're talking about a lot of convenience, Still the pharmaceutical e-commerce, like selling medicines, remains the main profitable approach of a lot of these platforms.
So many specialized platforms kind of.
Um, they're also struggling and fears competition from both public hospitals, right?
Which have built their own online services.
And major tech firms further squeezes the margin, with drug sales showing continuously declining profitability.
So there is a huge market, of course, more channels for patients to go to.
And that also means that more challenges these platforms are facing.
Yeah, I guess the tension here lies between convenience and control, like how to simplify digital access without opening doors to abuse in so many ways, and also for legitimate purposes The systems.
Now they want to make sure that the medicine flows to those in need of it the most.
So the regulators nowadays require facial recognition and drug traceability codes to ensure the legitimacy of the medicine you're getting.
But it's really not that easy, let's say, to solve the problem entirely from a nationwide point of view.
Yeah, but it's a good step, isn't it?
Facial recognition to make sure that the medicine goes to the person that will be using the medicine.
What about... misdiagnosis.
That has to be at least a bit of an issue because it wouldn't be that easy.
Maybe in some cases for a doctor, they can see you online through a video conference and maybe be able to see what's wrong.
But I mean, doctors are humans and having their patient right in front of them many times would lead to a better diagnosis, I would think.
I think that really depends on what kind of consultation you are asking from them.
If it's just normal, like a skin rash, or as common as a flu or a cold, then it's easy to...
For them, for the doctors to give you advice or prescription on how you should deal with it.
But if you just say, I've got a chest pain, it can cause by so many various reasons.
And some can be really severe, some not.
In these cases, many of these doctors will, like you mentioned earlier, just advise you to go to an offline hospital and for a clearer test before getting any medication.
Sure, but if there happened to be a misdiagnosis, then legally speaking, who's responsible for that?
Is it the doctor?
Is it the hosting platform?
I think the current laws are still kind of catching up.
Yeah, that's still a gray area.
Right with these new service models and it leaves the boundaries maybe a little bit unclear for accountability.
But again, that's something that's in the works right now.
So where's this going?
I mean, it's come a long way in the last few years.
So what about for the next few years?
Yeah, this internet healthcare is actually involved, from that one-time consultations to continuous health management and, let's say, chronic disease.
Platforms will enable home monitoring and wearable devices will support More like remote rehab and rare disease networks will connect specialists nationwide.
Maybe in the future.
Yeah, and if you're wearing wearable devices, that's real-time data that's being sent to your healthcare.
Professional but actually like integrated into your personal information and with the, let's say, hospitals around you, is the thing that a lot of these technology companies and also hospitals are working on.
So having actually used.
Or in place, these technologies actually with the patients is the thing.
And I almost feel like every time I do an online consultation like that, I'm contributing to the AI model they're trying to build.
So with the larger AI and multimodal data gradually gathering more symptoms and more diagnosis like this, like imaging or genetic testing results, there will, let's hope in the future, a more accurate and better diagnosis made and more positions and even data driven kind of accuracy on that, so that less mistake can be made.
Yeah, and the goal is, of course, to get the help that is needed to those that need it as quickly and as efficiently as possible, and it seems like everybody's getting on board with this type of health care.
So probably more of this.
We'll be talking about this at some point in the future on Roundtable.
That I can guarantee.
