WeDoctor's Online Healthcare Could Revolutionize How Medicine Is Practiced Globally | EMQQ
WeDoctor is
committed to using technology to empower medical care, driving the “medical
insurance” technological upgrade, and building a world-leading HMO (Health
Maintenance Organization) platform to provide users with the new medical and
health services of “online + offline, general + specialist” to become the
health gatekeepers of hundreds of millions of families. Given China's
rising health care costs and inequities, this healthcare app is attempting to
level the playing field by changing the very nature of personal care [1].
We Doctor Holdings Limited (“WeDoctor”) is China’s leading
technology-enabled healthcare solutions platform, providing seamless online and
offline healthcare services as well as the integration of general practitioner
and specialist doctors. Founded by Jerry Liao and his team in 2010, WeDoctor
operates four main business segments [2], namely:
1. WeDoctor Healthcare
2. WeDoctor Cloud
3. WeDoctor Insurance
4. WeDoctor Pharma
WeDoctor brings together government, hospitals, doctors, pharmaceutical
companies and financial institutions to create an innovative and holistic
healthcare provision and funding ecosystem. On the WeDoctor platform, there are
over:
- 2,700
hospitals
- 220,000 leading
doctors
- 15,000 pharmacies
- 27 million monthly
active users (as of 12/31/19) [3]
WeDoctor has
continued to transform the healthcare system through technology with the
creation of the nation's first Internet hospital - Wuzhen Internet Hospital. It also launched the industry’s first domestic smart health
terminal and has made significant progress in the field of smart healthcare
with the creation of AI-enabled diagnosis systems for both Western and Chinese
medicine [4].
How
WeDoctor Helps
WeDoctor HealthCare has
two disease diagnoses system for Western (RealDoctor) and Chinese medicine
(Huatuo AI Doctor), both of which are facilitated by artificial intelligence
(AI). The latter offer is reflective of the continuing reliance on traditional
medicine in Chinese society.
WeDoctor Insurance offers varying
insurance options for users based on gender and concerns (cancer insurance,
leukemia insurance, children’s insurance) at different price points.
WeDoctor Cloud allows
its partnering hospitals, clinics, government, and businesses to use tools such
as data processing, record management, AI diagnosis, pension management, and
remote consultation
WeDoctor Pharma integrates its healthcare
services to provide patients a “one-stop-shop” to receive a virtual
consultation and receive an electronic prescription that can be immediately
filled.
WeDoctor is hoping to revolutionize a traditional health-care industry
after the coronavirus pandemic underscored its shortcomings.
The Covid-19
pandemic has brought inadequacies in the country’s medical care system into
stark relief, exposing an over-reliance on big hospitals in major cities and
flaws in how the state responds to emergencies, even with a mechanism built
after the SARS outbreak in 2003. The startup has said it launched an online
platform dedicated to treating coronavirus cases on Jan. 23 and has helped
facilitate 1.4 million consultations with doctors in the month since it began [5].
WeDoctor could play a pivotal role in a nationwide effort to wrench its
ailing healthcare sector into the modern age. Beijing envisions a 16
trillion yuan ($2.3 trillion) healthcare industry by 2030 and, in a
blueprint laid out in 2016 called “Healthy China 2030,” vowed to improve public
health emergency preparedness and response capabilities to match those of
developed countries [6].
WeDoctor’s success can be attributed to how it addresses the traditional
pain points related to healthcare: time, distance, and money. Its value also
arises by helping doctors make earlier or more precise diagnosis, and by
speeding up the overall experience. Collecting data real-time and
cross-referencing a patient history with millions of other users can, for
instance, predict a heart attack “with
a high rate of precision,” says
Dan Vahdat, chief executive of Medopad. WeDoctor can become especially valuable
for rural populations who often experience increased difficulty reaching critical
health services. In many ways,
WeDoctor
redefines the very notion of personal care that has been at the core of the
patient-doctor relationship. As the platform continues to grow, its treasure
trove of data proliferates and be valuable to many interest groups.
Sum it Up
Founded by artificial intelligence maven Jerry Liao Jieyuan in 2010,
WeDoctor aims to compete with both fellow startups and major corporations such
as AliHealth in the burgeoning field of online healthcare and
Ping An Good Doctor, another mobile healthcare application considered the “first
health-tech Unicorn” in
China after the company raised $1.1 billion IPO; Ping An Good Doctor expanded
to Southeast Asia and created a joint venture with popular Singapore-based
ride-hailing app Grab in November 2018. Another major competition will be from
Google’s DeepMind Health.
WeDoctor has
found success in a country burdened by rising inequalities, where patients have
to wait in line for hours just to get an appointment or buy a time off
scalpers. The company also launched a $600 Echo-like home device, called
WeDoctor Tong, that can link to user’s wearables and acts as a “doctors’
hotline.” Eyeing the international market, WeDoctor acquired a majority
stake in
the Australian fertility treatment company Genea to focus on its newest
platform, BBlink. Given that inadequate and expensive medical treatment is not
indigenous to China alone we look forward to watching WeDoctor's next steps [7].
Article date: 22nd May 2020.