Online consultation on the Internet Medical Business Model Series (1)

Background

Technological innovation and the upgrading of consumer demand are two of the most important drivers of the business world's reinvention, as well as in the area of health services. With these two great impulses, today's health-care services have spawned many innovative business models, although in this volatile and yet unformed market, innovators are always groping forward, iterative, but uncertainty is the source of opportunity, these business models of the forerunner or will become the industry subversive. The Internet Medical Research Institute of Arterial Network will explore and analyze these innovative business models for you, introduce domestic and foreign pioneer cases, and understand their intrinsic logic, value appeal and future trend. This series of reports hopes to provide more decision-making references for entrepreneurs and investors who are interested in Internet health care. The business model discussed in this issue is online interrogation.

Online interrogation value Space

To put it simply, the online interrogation model provides services for medical care professionals to provide disease diagnosis and advice on health counseling to some people remotely, using internet means such as email, online quiz, instant messaging, SMS, voice, video and so on.

A rapidly growing market environment

Online interrogation mode is a kind of remote health service model. According to inMEDIA's 2013 report, the global tele-health industry will grow rapidly in both equipment and services, and the market will reach $850 million by 2017. IHS, a market research agency, predicts that by 2018 Tele-health will become a 1.9 billion-dollar industry. According to data released by rock Tiyatien in early October, the VCS invested 172 million dollars in telemedicine in the 3 quarter of 2014, becoming the focus of investment in the health industry. More and more people will get more convenient, cheaper and more real-time health care through remote mode.

Although online interrogation patterns have not been born long, people have been receptive to it very quickly, even though many people think it feels better to be hospitalized. Cisco's 2013 survey of the willingness of patients to use telemedicine in the United States showed that 70% said it was better to communicate with doctors via email, SMS, video and other telemedicine than live communication.

Make good use of resources and facilitate medical treatment

China's outpatient treatment, has been not a good experience, a long time there are many difficult to cure experience pain point, in the same time for medical institutions and doctors are not ideal. Many physicians have been in a state of heavy workload over the years, while other non-core medical institutions have been deficient in attendance. In conclusion, the traditional outpatient system has the following problems:

Severe uneven distribution of medical resources caused overcrowding;

(a) Mild illness is an unnecessary occupation of high quality resources;

There is a limitation of distance and time in patients ' visits;

The lack of resources utilization of doctors in Non-core medical institutions.

According to a survey by the Chinese Physicians Association, only 4.8% of the urban population will choose to go to a hospital if they feel unwell, while the majority of the 95.2% will not go to the hospital. The reason why they don't go is that it's not convenient to go a long way, there is no time, there is too much waiting time for the hospital outpatient, and it is not worth 5 minutes to see a doctor; Little problems are not necessary. The huge 95.2% is a potential market for online interrogation patterns, some of whom do not have hospital visits, but still hope to learn more about the causes of physical discomfort in a more convenient way.

In addition, there is still a large proportion of people who choose to go to a hospital that do not require on-site treatment, with data known as 70%. If there is a mature online consultation service, can also solve this part of the needs of the population.

Personalized information with higher reliability

Nowadays people get a lot of health information channels, but the credibility is mostly low. There is a flood of health advice, some even contradictory, that the general public cannot distinguish. Especially network information. Many of the content is under the guise of health advice, which is actually an advertisement for health products.

In September 2014, a survey by the China Youth Daily showed that 63.8% of respondents thought that online medical information was confusing and true. Only 26.1% of respondents felt that the results were reliable, 24.9% were unreliable, and 49% said they were "not good". These distrust the main reason is: diagnosis and treatment of professional requirements are very high, the search is too one-sided (43.5%), medical advertising rampant, fraud (39.7%), medical web site management confusion, easy to mislead (34%), affect the timely treatment of patients (32.5%), the patient's own health literacy Limited (28.5 %)。 Even with a low level of trust in online information, 67.1% of respondents said they felt unwell and searched the internet for symptoms first. The doctor's diagnosis and the medical information on the network were more than 58% of those surveyed said they believed in doctors. 65.1% of respondents believed that community health care should be connected to the network to better allocate medical resources. On the other hand, each person's specific situation is very different, it is difficult to find really targeted information.

These results show that there is a strong demand for network information, but reliable network information channels are limited. People hope to find a more credible, convenient and personalized health care advice. These may not involve real medical treatment, but are more a suggestion from healthy habits and awareness. In online interrogation mode, professional physicians will provide the public with higher credibility of medical and health counseling services, while online inquiry platform to establish their own credibility, will be able to greatly meet the needs of the market.

Online consultations in different ways

Currently, the main methods of online interrogation are: email, online quiz, instant messaging chat, telephone/voice, video, SMS. Different means, its quick and convenient nature and professional accuracy are also different. The faster and more convenient, often professional accuracy is relatively poor. Doctor's response time varies according to different forms, ranging from 15 minutes to 24 hours.

Light Interrogation mode

Online questions and answers, emails, and text messages are all ways to communicate. The patient describes the symptoms, raises questions, and can attach a picture or inspection report document, and the doctor provides the patient with basic diagnostic advice and health advice through an understanding of the material's information. This type of pattern is called the Light interrogation model.

Since 2011, the light interrogation mode has started to have a certain user group in China, such as spring rain doctor, quick ask doctor, Baidu asks Doctor all belong to light Inquiry mode. Usually the doctor's response time is relatively fast, the domestic spring rain doctor promised within 15 minutes to give a reply (Rain Doctor case analysis details please see here). There are also a number of service providers in the country, such as livechatwithdoctor of the United States, thanksdoctor in Britain, and Doctorspring, headquartered in India but with doctor resources in a number of countries, As well as the present HealthTap of video interrogation is also a light interrogation mode at the beginning of the establishment.

The accuracy of the diagnosis is poor and does not apply to all illnesses because the doctor cannot really see the patient's condition or confirm the patient's authenticity. In addition, there is no direct communication, a doctor who can not see, he will also discount the credibility. Only through the text communication of the light mode of inquiry, according to the arterial network understood that the current domestic and foreign existing simple mode of inquiry service companies can not prescribe. As a result of these restrictions, the professional value of physicians is not fully reflected in many light interrogation services and means that it is difficult for a physician to receive sufficient rewards for a single, light interrogation service. As far as the overseas light service providers are concerned, the number of service providers is large, but the resources are dispersed and the individual scale is limited.

On the other hand, the light interrogation model is simple and quick, and also means low cost. Each case takes up less time and energy than the doctor, and every question and answer is likely to be resolved within 5 minutes, and many physicians simply have to spare time to deal with these problems, thereby costing them less.

In fact, the greatest value of the light interrogation model is triage screening patients and providing advice on health advice:

Triage screening patients: After the use of light interrogation, some patients can exclude the need to go to the hospital, while the other part of the patient will be advised to go to the hospital site for further examination. From the role of triage screening patients.

Health advice: More reliable health advice can be obtained faster through a light interrogation. For example, during pregnancy what food is not suitable to eat, baby eczema how to deal with, chronic gastritis how to maintain and so on. Such problems do not require on-site medical treatment, but health guidance can be obtained through light interrogation.

Video interrogation

Online interrogation through video channels requires a higher degree of professionalism, as well as higher requirements for remote devices and network technology, but because the communication is fuller, the doctor can have more information available, thus providing more accurate diagnosis or advice. Overseas companies providing video interrogation such as HealthTap in July 2014 launched the HealthTap Prime service, Livehealth Online, Google investment been on demand and so on. (For more information on HEALTHTAP case analysis please see here)

At present, because of the lack of policy freedom for the flow of doctors ' resources, there is no medical service outside the system that can legally provide voice/video consultation as a more professional online interrogation program. In the United States, there are a number of voice/video service providers that can prescribe directly to patients after a diagnosis, and can even send an electronic prescription directly to a pharmacy near the patient. Video service providers often also use SMS, e-mail, online quiz and other tools to provide multi-dimensional medical and patient communication platform. For example, HealthTap's online question and answer platform is designed to educate the general public about health knowledge, rather than serious patients, and the sections that use video interrogation are much more serious.

Take Livehealth online, for example, because of the differences in U.S. state regulations, the provision of services is also different, most of which are already available through video online interrogation services, and, if necessary, the doctor's electronic prescriptions, and a few state doctors can not prescribe, In 6 areas, online interrogation services are not available.

In Europe and the United States, the development of video service providers is far better than only to provide online questions and answers, e-mail, text messages of the light interrogation mode, the development scale is much larger. for voice and video interrogation, due to the relatively formal means of communication, usually to solve the more formal disease problems, patients usually need to pay a certain consultation fee.

(To be continued, the profit model of online inquiry will be introduced in the next chapter)

(Responsible editor: Mengyishan)