From Offline to Online: Navigating Challenges, Making Choices, and Upholding Innovation at the Future Healthcare 100 Summit

Dawson woke up again at 4 a.m.

After returning to Chongqing from a business trip to Beijing, Li Datao, who was in home quarantine, felt somewhat anxious. He was deeply worried about another round of the pandemic's resurgence at the time: due to the impact of the pandemic, the 6th Future Healthcare 100 Summit (referred to as the "Top 100 Summit" hereafter), hosted by vcbeat, had to be postponed once again.

It should be noted that since the preparation began in August 2021, the Top 100 Conference has been in preparation for more than half a year, and the multiple uncertainties regarding the holding time have already fatigued the internal execution team.

"Just like waiting for Godot, a clear timeline will never appear." In Li Detao's view, the internal struggles of the team are actually a microcosm of the entire medical and health industry's dilemmas.Facing the recurring pandemic, many medical and health enterprises have encountered significant challenges, with matters such as research and development, market expansion, financing, and publicity being shelved to varying degrees. When they will be able to break away from the current predicament remains an unknown.

In the daily communication between VCBeat and medical enterprises, several founders have expressed that the plans made at the beginning of the year have been disrupted, and their businesses have also been affected.

Sun Yuhui, founder and CEO of Vistel, an ophthalmic artificial intelligence company, told VCBeat: "The repeated outbreaks of the pandemic have disrupted the rhythm of many of our market activities. On the one hand, many exhibitions and academic conferences have been postponed or switched to online formats due to the pandemic. On the other hand, some of the offline activities we had planned have also shifted to being held online because of travel restrictions for guests and venue capacity limits."

This shows that, in the face of the recurring pandemic, how to make the right choices has become a difficult problem for the Top 100 Conference, and it is also a mandatory question for the entire medical and health industry.

In May this year, at the internal seminar of the Top 100 Conference Executive Group, the members discussed whether the Top 100 Conference should be further postponed.

Prior to this, due to the repeated outbreaks of the pandemic, the Top 100 Conference has been postponed from April to May, experiencing multiple setbacks. If it is postponed again to June, there will still be significant uncertainty.

What should be done? This has become an urgent issue for the execution team of the Top 100 Conference to resolve.

“Either postpone or switch to online."In the view of the team leader, each of the two paths has its own pros and cons: the problem with postponement lies in the uncertainty of the pandemic, which would continuously push back the timing of the Top 100 Conference; while hosting an online forum faces significant challenges—firstly, the execution team has never organized an online forum on such a large scale, and secondly, whether external partners will accept and recognize this approach."

One background that needs to be mentioned is that, as the annual flagship event of vcbeat, the Top 100 Conference has reached its sixth edition, growing from 500 attendees to 7,000 last year, becoming a platform for communication across the entire healthcare industry chain. The atmosphere of offline interaction and exchange is one of the reasons why many healthcare companies choose to attend the Top 100 Conference.

“The Top 100 Conference, in our vision, is designed to gather individuals in the medical and health field who are curious about the future. It provides a platform for everyone to share their cutting-edge thoughts each year and, through exchanges and interactions, create a field of intellectual engagement."Li Datao said that whether online or offline, the most important thing is whether the value of the Top 100 Conference can be effectively utilized. 'So the best way to solve the problem is to make decisions beyond the current environment, allowing everyone to see more new possibilities rather than being limited by present difficulties.'"The Top 100 Conference conducting some innovative attempts could be an excellent opportunity for the industry to witness such changes taking place.”

Based on this judgment, the Top 100 Conference was finally confirmed to shift from offline to online.

"At that moment, we felt a great sense of relief," said the executive team leader of the Top 100 Conference. "Once the official decision to move online was made, the team had a clear goal, and morale rose. What we needed to do was break down the goal into various modules, implement, and execute them."

The first challenge in this process is how to ensure that the value of the online Top 100 Conference is consistent with that of the offline forum, and what the attitude of the partners towards it is.

As a result, the executive team of the Top 100 Conference conducted preliminary research, during which a series of doubts emerged: Can the Top 100 Conference achieve the same level of influence as an offline forum? Will the invitation of guests proceed smoothly? Can communication at the event meet attendees' business networking needs? Will the guest speakers and content remain at a high standard? These are all challenges that need to be addressed.

"During the continuous adjustments from the postponement of the Top 100 Conference to moving offline events online, communication with guests has been very repetitive, with various detailed issues requiring ongoing discussion and clarification," said Sun Tao, a relevant official from the conference's ecological partner, Jian Shi Ju.

In the view of Sun Yuhui, founder and CEO of Vistel, after choosing to hold the Top 100 Conference online, whether they can optimize participants' sense of involvement and experience under continuously innovative formats is also a concern for them.

Qifei Qi, Executive Director of Legend Capital, who has been deeply involved since the first Top 100 Conference, also felt quite concerned upon learning that the conference would shift from offline to online over a span of just over a month. The first reason was the lack of time, and the second was that the online and offline scenarios are completely different. How to effectively manage online operations rather than merely transferring content online posed a significant challenge.

To this end, the execution team of the Top 100 Conference has set a strict deadline to reverse-engineer the process based on the difficulties encountered, in order to address the concerns of participants and partners, and complete all preparations for the online forum within one and a half months.

Based on this logic, the preparation for the Top 100 Conference was divided into two key components: one being the recording of online guest presentations, and the other ensuring that participants could have a consistent experience offline.

After the guest invitations were completed, the Top 100 Conference Executive Team officially launched the online guest sharing recording.

The recording was divided into two batches, the first batch was from May 13 to May 15, and the second batch was from May 20 to May 27. At that time, the epidemic situation was relatively severe. The first batch of the recording team in Beijing found a local partner to help, and some colleagues directly went to the scene for logistical support in a 'suicidal' manner (returning from Beijing to Chongqing required 14 days of home quarantine).

It was expected that the offline process would be quite cumbersome due to the pandemic, and there would be many difficulties in recording the guest's sharing. However, everything turned out to be somewhat unexpected.

"Those few days coincided with Beijing's mass screening. To ensure the 24-hour validity of nucleic acid tests, we had to undergo nasal swab testing every day." The enforcement personnel, adopting a "suicidal" approach, expressed their feelings: "Although it was very troublesome, the guests who came to participate in the recording were very cooperative."

Before the recording of the Brain Science Industry Innovation and Development Forum, co-hosted with Sequoia Capital China, NeuroEchos CEO Yang Huan was traveling on business trips across China and had planned to go to Beijing for the recording. However, at the airport, a pop-up appeared on his Health Kit app, forcing him to cancel his in-person participation in Beijing and switch to online involvement instead. During the recording, Yang Huan, CEO of NeuroEchos, rarely mentioned the company’s products or brand. Instead, he called on industry participants to unite and move forward together amid the current challenging environment.

The more difficult the time, the more precious confidence becomes.This is the strongest feeling that the Top 100 Conference Executive Team has had from the active participation of numerous guests in the recording process.

"All parties involved can choose to support each other when encountering difficulties, rather than parting ways. This shows that this matter is highly valuable," Yan Dongxue, head of the co-organizer of the Innovative Development Forum on Assisted Reproduction and the Jian Shi Ju, told VCBeat.

From the data, amid the ongoing pandemic, more than 60 guests have traveled to offline recording venues.Among them, Liang Yucheng, the head of the Digital Therapeutics direction at Danlu Capital, was on a business trip in the Pearl River Delta at the time, carrying only casual wear and sneakers for convenience. In order to participate smoothly in the recording in Shenzhen, he purchased formal attire on the spot. Additionally, to ensure a successful recording, Xiang Peng, the Party Committee Deputy Secretary and Executive Vice President of Jiande First People's Hospital, drove over 100 kilometers to Hangzhou.

Not only that, but Zhang Haozhi, Vice President of Huaxia Eye Hospital Group, originally planned to record online due to a scheduling conflict. However, considering the presentation effect, he specially took a day to travel from Foshan to Shenzhen for the offline recording.

The recording process also presented a minor challenge for the entrepreneurs. "Speaking at offline forums in front of hundreds or even thousands of people is no problem, but strangely, facing the camera makes us nervous," several guests who participated in the recording remarked.

In order to achieve perfection, Dr. Jianan Li, an 80-year-old international academician of the American Institute of Medicine, hardly sat down during the more than half-hour recording; Wang Tian, CEO and founder of Chengtian Technology, revised the script until 2 a.m. on the day before the recording; Fan Yujun, founder of Dangil and general manager of Sridi Medical Technology, carefully reviewed the video effect after the recording, considered whether there were any unclear explanations, and returned for supplementary recordings to present the best results.

The entire process, although intense and busy, still allowed some guests to feel a sense of relaxation during the recording. For instance, during the Hangzhou recording session, Luo Min, the co-founder and CEO of Tengai Health, also arrived at the recording site from her company. Despite revising scripts until the early hours of the morning, when she stepped out of the car at the recording location, the surrounding natural scenery of green mountains and clear waters immediately put her into a more relaxed state. Not only did she complete the recording smoothly, but she even happily asked the photographer to take casual photos for her to share on social media.

One of our partner organizations has been actively mobilizing companies to participate in the conference after the Top 100 Conference shifted to a fully online format. This demonstrates the strong demand for exchanging new trends and perspectives within the industry. Of course, creating an engaging experience for online forums remains a challenge for the execution team.

To fully restore the experience of attending offline forums, this year's Top 100 Conference has built an online networking circle.

Specifically, this network circle is based on the WeChat ecosystem and undergoes secondary development through mini-programs, enabling participants to receive timely reminders and directly contact relevant personnel when connecting with others in the online network.

Interestingly, during the online guest's presentation, an entry point for the guest’s network can pop up, allowing participants to send a friend request to the guest after listening to the sharing. This not only meets the participants' need to exchange business cards but also addresses the poor experience of crowding around the guest to obtain contact information in offline scenarios.

In addition, this top 100 conference also set up an online exhibition hall, which uses 3D modeling to display corporate information in a three-dimensional way. Participants can send business cards to exhibitors through the entrance of the exhibition hall's networking circle. After the initial communication, they can directly initiate an online video meeting. Through the online meeting, they can showcase product PPTs to potential partners and communicate promptly.

Not only that, but throughout the year, the conference's mini-program official website will continue to gain traffic through various online and offline activities and promotional methods. In other words, the end of the conference does not mean the real end; the guests' sharing will be preserved, and more industry professionals with new needs will join the network in the future.

"In the continuous communication and integration between the two teams after the Top 100 Conference shifted to an offline format, we have witnessed the organizer's vision and responsibility for digital transformation. As a long-term partner of the Top 100 Conference, we look forward to exchanging industry insights with professionals on this platform," said Sun Yuhui, Founder and CEO of Vistel. "We have observed that the industry’s focus is gradually shifting from products that are safe, reliable, and registered, to those with higher clinical value. We are also actively promoting the multi-disease trend in ophthalmic imaging products. Previously, a single retinal photograph could assist in diagnosing diabetic retinopathy alone, but now it can help diagnose more than ten blinding eye diseases, with diagnostic results verifiable through clinical trials. This significantly improves diagnostic efficiency and reduces costs across the entire healthcare system."

"This Top 100 Conference, inadvertently shifted online, may become the most groundbreaking one in its history, potentially leading to the upgrade and transformation of VCBeat. It may not be perfect, but I am full of anticipation," emphasized Qi Fei, Executive Director of Legend Capital.

It is with the help and support of all parties that the Top 100 Conference has been able to proceed smoothly.

Under the recurring pandemic, medical innovators are facing significant challenges, which has also led to a surge of negative sentiment in the market.

"The more challenging the times, the more everyone needs to step away from negativity. The shift of the Top 100 Conference to an online format is precisely a strategic transformation and breakthrough. We aim to instill confidence in the industry." Aligning with Li Datao's perspective, during the preparation process, the executive team of the Top 100 Conference also sensed the proactive mindset of innovators continuously seeking optimal solutions. It is this underlying alignment in vision that has enabled the Top 100 Conference to attract an increasing number of professionals from the medical and health industry.

This is because, in the healthcare industry with high barriers and significant R&D challenges, the essence of innovation lies in constant challenge and continuous breakthrough.

The current healthcare sector will give rise to world-class innovative entrepreneurs with distinct local characteristics, a process that naturally entails more global challenges. "We are not afraid of encountering difficulties; instead, we aim to provide our own solutions within these challenges," said Li Datao.

A review of the sharing topics gathered at this year's Top 100 Conference also reveals that innovators are already taking action.

Whether it is the frontier progress of nucleic acid drugs, cell and gene therapy, innovative research in brain science, or the transformation of scientific research achievements, this year's Top 100 Conference focuses on global challenges and future medical trends, as well as important topics such as the innovation strategies of Chinese companies and their expansion into overseas markets.

22 forums, 78 hours of speeches and dialogues, and video recordings of keynote speeches in 8 major cities. This year's Future Healthcare 100 Summit traveled across China from east to west and north to south, all to let everyone hear the true "China story" of future healthcare.

Welcome to the 6th Future Healthcare 100 Summit, June 14th-18th, see you online.