Mobile medical pain point: Who can pry the doctor's resources?

After a trial of 8 months, Zhang Qiang decided to mirror the apricot forest development of the "Case folder" software to do a "image endorsement."

The experience of medical education in the United States has allowed him to establish evidence-based medicine as the chief vascular expert at Ward Medical Center in Shanghai, where Zhang Qiang records patients ' information in detail during medical practice and follow-up. In his early years, he had a hand-written record, always wanted to have a portable equipment, store patients ' images, transcripts, can be called at any time during the follow-up. Zhang Qiang says the case clip is very close to his dream.

Like Zhang Qiang, Zhang's rise is also a medical background. The difference is that Zhang Qiang has become the famous Dr Smile for his attempts to set up a system of free practice, and Zhang's rise in the United States after seeing an unstoppable wave of movement, home in 2011 founded the Apricot Grove, he now has 600,000 users.

At that time, mobile medicine was also in the ascendant in China.

That year, the medical family born Rui left NetEase, set up a location in the light of the Doctor spring. "My idea was to build on a mobile platform, not a PC platform," he said. "Rui that the two are fundamentally different, like two separate cities. "If the PC platform is Tianjin, then the mobile platform is Beijing." ”

It's not just the forces. During that period, the "old" medical internet company clove Garden from Alibaba dug to Feng Dahui, began to dabble in mobile medicine, the introduction of drug assistants, clove guest and other mobile applications. After five or six years in the Internet field, Wang decided to push the "good doctor" to a full transformation.

"We are not an internet company, and the advent of mobile internet will make our service flow smoother, but that's all." "In January 2014, Wang to the 21st century economic reporter said that the question was made clear two years ago." "You find that you have to have a professional medical team in order to go deep in this industry," he said. ”

Follow such a line of thought, Wang to the team carried out "big change". By the time the company was founded, the Internet team accounted for 70% of the dominant position, turning into a group of medical professionals now 70%.

Also since 2011, China's mobile medical market began to grow rapidly.

The market for mobile medicine reached 1.86 billion in 2012, up 17.7% from the previous year, according to data from the media. It is expected that by the end of 2017, the size of China Mobile medical market will exceed tens of billions of dollars to reach 12.53 billion yuan.

The data show the bright future of mobile medicine, but it also reflects the weakness of the present. Although the two years of mobile medicine is so hot, the most understand the "aunt" of the man Rauschecker even began to worry, many teams hit the money to get good-looking users just to cheat investors.

"Any industry practitioner with irresponsible attitude into the industry, will be excessive, too fast to generate industry development, resulting in unhealthy expansion of the industry, to the end of the entire industry premature depletion." "Aunt?" founder Rauschecker said in the media, the mobile medical industry is the need for professional knowledge of the slow-heat industry.

One powerful evidence to prove firewood's judgment: Until now, no firm has explored or demonstrated a truly sustainable mobile medical business model in China. Those who are committed to changing China's health care system are still looking for ways.

By contrast, epocrates, Vocera and other similar companies in the United States and Japan have been listed. "The same market volume of China, there must be such a listed company." "Zhang met with confidence in the future, but a series of constraints so that the listed companies are still difficult to appear."

Regardless of the direction in which to explore the business model, but because the medical resources are still firmly tied to the walls of public hospitals, so the real core problem for mobile medical companies is how to pry this resource.

Believers in China Mobile internet

Self-diagnosis, consultation and guidance are the complete service chain of spring rain

2014 New Year's Day, Spring rain Doctor launched a membership version. The introduction of the membership version means that spring rain began to charge. Even if the members only need to pay 8 yuan per month, but the news of "spring Rain" still quickly disturb the whole mobile medical circle, which touched the most sensitive one nerve: profit model.

No profit, is a hot mobile medical industry an embarrassing situation.

"How can you not earn money?" "Rui doesn't care much about this situation. In his view, China's medical resources are so scarce and demand so large that making money is almost guaranteed. He told the story of "4.8%" again.

The Chinese Physicians Association conducted a survey in 2009, and the people who chose to go to the hospital were 4.8% when their bodies were unwell. This means that more than 95% of people do not go to the hospital when they feel unwell, and the doctor's light interrogation is to face the crowd. Rui added: "This data directly contributed to the start-up of the spring rain." ”

It's not just that simple. Rui in the choice of entrepreneurial direction in the first use of the exclusion, the Internet field of social do not do, online games do not do, the medical field of hardware does not do, hospital walls do not do. Not that there is no prospect in these areas, but Rui very clear that their team is not suitable. "After all, hope to become a lifelong career." "The implication is that he wants to find an industry that is growing well and developing long term."

"My father is a pediatrician, enthusiastic, and there are countless calls coming home every day, but most of them are not serious problems," he said. I just wondered if it was possible to solve their problems through the Internet. "Such perceptual experience and clear statistics, eventually contributed to the 2011 years of the founder of the Doctor, but also the early emergence of m-health products."

If the work and family background led Rui into the mobile medical door, then the impact of his practice in this industry is Kelly. "I am a believer in Kelly, and I think that in the Internet field, the marginal cost of products is free." To achieve the marginal cost of zero, we need to implement unmanned operation. "The internet will have a dream, is to let machines replace people." ”

The first two years after the line, the doctor spring rain to implement all the free strategy. Two years down, accumulated nearly 15 million active users. However, the spring Rain free service is not without cost, for those who answer the user questions of the doctor, spring rain needs to pay them.

In Rui's view, the significance of this is to train a self diagnosis through interrogation and accumulate data for self diagnosis. After two years of market education practice, doctors and users initially formed in the spring rain platform to communicate the habit and scale. Tens of thousands of questions per day, the spring rain accumulated a lot of real data on the interrogation.

Thus, the RUI concept of unmanned services revealed the embryonic form: Intelligent search engine. Users enter their own symptoms, the search engine will provide the possibility of disease and the past doctor-patient communication information. This system of self diagnosis, in the current, spring rain will be free to all open to everyone.

The consultation becomes the spring rain to provide the user the advanced service, but as a cost service, the spring rain has introduced the member system. Although there are still concerns about market maturity, spring Rain's user survey on its platform shows that more than 25% of users are willing to pay for advisory services.

"January, we have nearly 50,000 paid members in one months. "After the introduction of the membership version of the results let Rui quite satisfied." At present, the spring rain has been with several large mobile internet platform to cooperate to provide free self diagnosis services, while the sale of paid members. "We now pay 5% per cent of our new subscribers each day." Speaking of which, Rui also sold a: At this rate, at the end of this year to reach an alarming level.

However, such a spring rain doctor is still incomplete. At present, in all the problems of the doctor spring Rain, can be solved online only 60%, 40% still need to go to the hospital to find the answer. "Air Hospital" is Rui's next plan, which is set for April this year.

"The first batch of 500 private hospitals will be introduced to provide guidance services and charge a fee," the company said. "This in the spring rain service chain on a further step: guidance. "Free self-diagnosis, to C-fee consultation and to B-fee guidance, constitutes a complete spring rain." "Rui said.

Back to the age of craftsmanship

The essence of the pharmaceutical industry is the service sector

Rui determined to be a mobile internet company. So far, his team has only 7 medical professionals. And Wang is completely different from this, currently his team has 70% of medical professionals, he gave a clear positioning of the doctor is a professional medical service platform.

It's a bit unlike the traditional impression that good doctors leave behind.

A good doctor has a huge database of nearly 320,000 doctors. Doctor information is currently the largest use of a good doctor: the site has 3.5 million visits a day. The system was built almost entirely by hand.

"The doctor's basic information is not readily available. We run a hospital, pat someone else's introduction, back to input. We've been doing this for three years. Until now, the proportion of physicians actively updating information is still low and needs to be maintained by our team. "Wang to the 21st century economic reporting reporter.

In the profession, the information asymmetry extremely prominent medical profession, the good doctor accumulates this resource extremely scarce and is expensive. But the king has opened the database for free. "There are now more than 20 websites using our data. ”

Even more bizarre, the good doctor has repeatedly refused to come from the drug companies and private hospitals in the case of a large number of visits by doctors and patients in two groups. "I also know, like Baidu every year from private hospitals advertising on the sea, but that is not the business model we want, we serve the patients." ”

Good doctors try to build a business model from a patient perspective. For example, online counseling and a good doctor's main income channel telephone counseling.

However, Wang also admits that the amount of counseling currently being consulted is generally relatively small, subject to a perception of the value of the medical service and to the patient's pay habits. However, "we started the telephone consulting business in 2009, and since 2010 the consultation volume doubled every year and was stable." "Wang was right to prove his choice.

"The first list we received on the phone calls gave us a special sense of accomplishment." Wang suddenly inserted a story: it was Sunday 6 o'clock in the afternoon, a suicidal depression patients call to hope to find a doctor for help. Wang's team contacted a psychologist for half an hour and finally helped the patient overcome his mental handicap.

"The timeliness of this kind of telephone counseling can play a big role in many key times," he said. Wang again stressed the significance of a telephone consultation, he had to look for this is a good doctor's future.

Telephone counseling includes several links: according to professional requirements of the patient's illness data collection, good Doctor team to give the program, including the choice of appropriate doctors, coordination between the time, and finally connect the two sides of the telephone. It is this telephone consulting business that has changed the original team structure of the good doctor.

Wang has formed a team of more than 100 professional medical personnel to provide triage services for telephone counseling. "I also want it to be fully automated, but the medical treatment is too complex to make any mistakes, and a mistake can be costly." Wang The starting point for a good doctor.

"The essence of the pharmaceutical industry is the service sector, now put a lot of cool tags, big data, the Internet, the quality of service in the end how?" Can a patient come to you and serve him well? Our most critical problem is to set up a service platform, to serve every patient well, to produce scale effect, to obtain quality reputation. This is the industry itself. ”

In Wang's view, such things as mobile internet can only be a good doctor's tool, not the core. "Our core is actually the entire service platform." There are a number of factors on this platform to ensure that the services can be carried out smoothly, whether the docking of adequate medical resources, the operational capabilities of the platform to reduce costs, whether to maintain adequate professionalism. "Wang said.

Aiming at the pain point of the medical system

Choose a different incision to enter, there will be a different business model.

Spring rain doctor and good doctor in intelligent and artificial choice, went to two completely different direction. But one thing they are the same, they are all from satisfying the patient's medical needs and improving the patient's doctor experience. And the apricot trees that have risen are different.

Apricot Forest provides three products mainly related to case collection, medical literature and medical information, the main group of services are doctors.

"In the absence of a hospital internship in foreign countries, I deeply feel that Chinese doctors are too inefficient, often not used for medical treatment and research, not to help support their system." Zhang met the Doctor of Concord and knew the pain point of Chinese doctors. He put his starting point in the apricot trees plain straightforward slogan: let you practise medicine easier.

Familiarity with the American mobile-medicine industry has also made Zhang aware of another benefit of the model. "If you cover a sufficient number of doctors, there will be companies willing to pay for mobile medicine," he said. "Zhang met Sheng said.

The benchmark is no doubt the world's first mobile medical listed company Epocrates. Its flagship product is the drug and clinical treatment database, which has been covered by 40% of doctors across the United States on the market. Its main profit model is to collect fees by providing accurate advertising and market research services for pharmaceutical companies.

In the entire mobile chain, it is clear that the pharmaceutical enterprise is an active link. Clove Garden founder Li Tiantian has talked about, many pharmaceutical enterprises, medical device companies for mobile applications favored by the addition of adequate budget, generous, eager to open new promotional channels.

But this kind of money may not be good to earn. The Lilac Garden, which gathered a large number of professional doctors, was founded for 14 years. But until recently, Clove Garden formally established the "Drug Data + technical Services" core business model.

"In the whole medical industry chain, there is no outside the hospital, doctors, patients, these three core subjects, of course, there are pharmaceutical enterprises, insurance companies and so on." Then you choose a different incision to enter, there will be a different business model. However, unlike in the United States, domestic doctors still belong to the hospital. "Zhang met Sheng said.

This difference makes it possible to have zocdoc in the United States to help patients make appointments, help doctors get patients and charge doctors directly. But at home, there are still few mobile medical companies that charge doctors. However, Hingjian has successfully put mobile internet into the service flow of public hospitals.

At the end of August 2012, Hingjian's first product--palm Zhejiang one on-line. This application can help patients to achieve intelligent guidance, appointment registration, test to take orders. Subsequently, Hingjian further extended his platform to Wenzhou, Ningbo, Shanghai, and even Hunan.

Hingjian has explained his ideas, the first vertical service to a single hospital, and then further the hospital information between the joint sharing, and then form a corresponding to a region of application. If possible, eventually a nationwide mobile medical application platform is constructed.

At present, platform construction and follow-up maintenance are the two main income sources of Hingjian Zhoujian technology. He said that after working with seven or eight hospitals, the company has basically achieved a break-even.

Palm Zhejiang can be at the beginning of the advent of public hospital recognition, and the software "family" is not unrelated: The National 863 Project sub-project "Digital Medical Hospital Demonstration" construction of the components.

As the current level of medical marketization is low, the resources that remain in the hands of the government are rarely left to the space of mobile medical imagination, which is equally evident in the insurance sector. So far, China's mobile medical industry has not appeared like the United States WellDoc companies, can be charged to insurance companies.

Foreground: Disaster or big?

Mobile medical Company's core problem is to pry the doctor resources

"If commercial health insurance can be developed, it can greatly improve the development environment of mobile medicine." At least to a large extent to overcome the patient pay habit barriers. Because the mobile medical company can obtain the payment from the insurance company. "Zhang met that the development of insurance to the United States mobile health benefits very much."

But for mobile medicine, commercial insurance is not a particularly tricky issue, and at least that is not the only way to see the proceeds. With doctors ' resources still firmly tied to the walls of public hospitals, the real core problem for mobile medical companies is how to pry the resources.

In the case of an ascending apricot tree, although it is a tool for all doctors to practise medicine, it is in fact more important for a freelance practitioner who has greater autonomy than Zhang Qiang. Or more specifically, the mobile internet needs to be used by doctors for reasons.

Rui, though firmly positioned as a mobile internet company, has been exploring mechanisms to motivate doctors over the past two years.

"The spring rain on the platform with the main physician, we want them to have the power to answer the user's questions on the phone." In the past two years, we have been exploring the incentive mechanism, evaluation mechanism and quality control mechanism to inspire this kind of motivation. "Rui said.

Wang, who has relocated a good doctor to a medical service company, relies more heavily on doctors ' resources, but he must carefully distinguish between doctors ' advice on a good doctor's platform and his practice in hospitals.

"First, the Doctor is not practising, not doing medical treatment; second, the Doctor provides the recommended services, is a business behavior, should be concerned that he took the money in accordance with the law to pay taxes, this is OK." "Wang said.

Not only are companies providing health services, but doctors ' resources are as important for the more popular wearable devices that are nowadays. Because only they can analyze and judge the data and provide improvement programs. Otherwise, the equipment collects only a bunch of meaningless data. Coupled with the lack of a unified industry standard, in Li Tiantian's words, the big data is likely to become a great disaster.

When Li worries about the industry's lack of standards every day, Rauschecker began to care about the other side of the problem: access thresholds.

Rauschecker that the industry turmoil has attracted government attention, but regulation could be a double-edged sword: the benefits of regulating the order of the industry are obvious, but the attendant is likely to be a very high threshold for entry and a lengthy and difficult game to get a licence. But his mentality seems rather contradictory: "If you can standardize the implementation of industry standards, do not blow bubbles, the industry is still very promising." ”

But it still seems hard to stop people from looking forward to the future of mobile medicine.

According to a survey by the Economist think-tank, 80% of Chinese respondents believe that the widespread use of mobile medicine is inevitable and will become a reality in the near future. Among the Chinese surveyed were 103 consumers, 76 doctors, 31 hospital administrators and 14 government officials in the health care sector. Respondents with similar views, the United States accounted for only 70%, India only 60%.

"The future direction of development is right and wrong, the medical market will become more open." Rui that, in this, the advantages of mobile internet is obvious, "it can optimize the resource allocation of industrial chain, help solve the problem of shortage of medical resources." ”

(Responsible editor: Lu Guang)