JD Health Wang Yiting: How 'Omnichannel + Omni-scenario' Strategy Drives a New Growth Engine for Health Retail? [2025 VBEF]

Influenced by policies such as the separation of prescribing and dispensing under healthcare reform, volume-based procurement, and the outflow of prescriptions, the market share of the primary terminal—the hospital market (including private hospitals)—in pharmaceutical sales has declined year by year, dropping from a peak of 71.3% in 2014 to 63.3% in 2024.

A large number of pharmaceutical companies have turned their attention to the out-of-hospital retail market. However, sales performance in this sector has also been less than satisfactory. Data shows that the out-of-hospital market experienced year-on-year negative growth in all 12 months of 2024, with its retail scale basically regressing to the level seen in 2022.

Amid the declining share of pharmaceutical sales in the hospital market and the slowing growth rate in the out-of-hospital market, where will the future growth drivers for drug sales lie? Have the channel rules prioritized by pharmaceutical companies undergone new changes?

“This is the question posed to the industry by Wang Yiting, Vice President of JD Health and General Manager of its Instant Retail Business Division, at the 2025 VBEF Top 100 Future Healthcare and Pharmaceuticals Exhibition. JD Health answered it with ‘building a new growth pole for health retail through “omni-channel + all-scenario” integration’—”

“JD Health leverages its omni-channel supply chain advantages across online and offline retail. By strategically deploying B2C pharmaceutical e-commerce, physical pharmacies, and on-demand medicine delivery services with 30-minute home delivery, it has established an integrated omni-channel supply chain system encompassing in-store, at-home, and online channels, thereby comprehensively meeting users’ urgent needs. Capitalizing on the high level of consumer trust in JD’s proprietary brands, JD Pharmacy’s self-operated stores have achieved rapid growth in a short period, providing brand partners with an efficient on-demand retail network that covers the entire country through a single store.”

“There is no single optimal choice, only the optimal combination.”

Wang Yiting added, “User needs are diverse and cannot be concentrated on a single channel. For enterprises to grow, they must adopt an omnichannel strategy.”

Against the current backdrop of channel diversification, competition among pharmaceutical companies will ultimately revolve around product and efficiency. The product itself is tied to a company’s innovation and R&D capabilities, which will not be elaborated on here. Efficiency, meanwhile, hinges on three key factors: channel efficiency, user operation efficiency, and brand efficiency.

From the perspective of channel efficiency, it involves the coverage of drug accessibility.Historically, pharmaceutical companies may have categorized users into offline, B2C, and O2O segments. However, this classification obscures the essential reality: it is users who determine consumption scenarios, and their needs are constantly evolving in real time. Wang Yiting cited an example to illustrate this point: a business traveler who regularly takes metformin at home may become an atypical user of instant retail if they forget to bring their medication while traveling through an airport. Corporate growth stems from the immediate fulfillment of the same user’s needs across different scenarios. JD Health has transformed the previous landscape, where various apps operated in silos across disparate scenarios, by providing a unified entry point, thereby better meeting user needs.

In terms of user operation efficiency, it involves user acquisition and conversion.In terms of user acquisition, larger traffic entry points and more exposure touchpoints translate into a greater user base. As a major traffic hub itself, JD.com has seen surges in areas such as JD Food Delivery, which further contributed to a threefold increase in orders for home-delivered medications, with corresponding traffic continuing to grow steadily. Regarding service conversion, JD Health’s years of industry expertise have enabled it to further support the growth of merchants and brand enterprises through digital grid-based marketing tools, user operation tools, and membership management tools. Notably, its LBS (Location-Based Services) grid-based marketing capabilities allow the platform to better align with user behavioral needs, precisely assisting enterprises in meeting user demands and driving conversions.

From the perspective of brand efficiency, it involves the brand's own premium capability.As the focus shifts further from “physician-centric” to “dual-centric (physician and patient),” better serving patients also means strengthening corporate brand reputation and assets. For pharmaceutical companies, comprehensive online-to-offline network coverage and high-quality fulfillment capabilities are particularly critical. JD Health is helping pharmaceutical companies serve their patients and build brand reputation through its self-operated JD Pharmacy stores.

In 2024, the original JD Hourly Delivery and JD Daojia services were integrated into the new “JD Instant Delivery” brand, marking a comprehensive upgrade of JD Health’s instant retail business. At its core, this represents an instantaneous enhancement of JD Health’s omnichannel retail capabilities. By providing a one-stop supply chain solution that combines in-store and at-home O2O with online B2C, JD Health is achieving efficient user management and driving new growth for enterprises.

Since its implementation, the number of merchants recruited for JD Health’s instant retail platform has achieved 100% growth; meanwhile, online O2O transactions are now available in nearly 3,000 districts and counties. With the development of a healthy ecosystem and the integration of online medical insurance reimbursement, user order volume continues to rise. As of the first quarter of 2025, JD Health’s instant retail service had partnered with more than 150,000 pharmacy stores nationwide, providing users in over 490 cities with medicine delivery services “as fast as 9 minutes.”

Contrary to the public’s perception of instant retail, JD Health has two distinctive features in this sector.

First, JD Health’s instant retail and offline retail operations feature differentiated strategic layouts, going beyond merely providing an O2O transaction platform for merchants and users.

In 2024, JD Health piloted JD Pharmacy Instant Delivery stores in Beijing, covering 80% of the city’s permanent residents and achieving rapid revenue growth. This success is closely tied to the strong public trust in JD.com’s self-operated business model. JD Health holds a particularly pronounced advantage in the serious healthcare sector. The JD Pharmacy Instant Delivery stores are expected to expand nationwide in the future, meeting all online and offline demands. This implies that pharmaceutical companies will no longer need to build extensive sales networks of their own; instead, they can achieve nationwide coverage through instant retail partnerships.

Wang Yiting also emphasized that online SKUs can be increased indefinitely, allowing corresponding enterprises to benefit from JD.com’s self-operated instant delivery service. This will become one of the barriers to entry in future instant retail services. Possessing both platform traffic and infrastructure construction capabilities, this will also be the core of JD Health’s omnichannel supply chain capability.

In addition to its JD Pharmacy Instant Delivery stores, JD Pharmacy also operates new-format stores and DTP (Direct-to-Patient) pharmacies, providing professional, comprehensive, and differentiated services to further meet the needs of patients in the out-of-pocket market.

Secondly, JD Health’s instant retail offering provides not only products but also a fusion of services and products through the construction of a comprehensive service network, delivering a one-stop, closed-loop service experience for patients.

Amid the evolution of the internet industry, some companies have faded into history. In contrast, JD Health achieved annual revenue of RMB 58.2 billion in 2024, with its internet hospital handling an average of 490,000 consultations per day—a testament to its sustained deep engagement in the field of internet healthcare.

Industry insights have also enabled JD Health to recognize the gaps in laboratory testing, examinations, and nursing care within the internet healthcare service chain. In 2024, JD Health significantly expanded its home-based and on-site services. On one hand, its testing business evolved from respiratory pathogen detection to a comprehensive rapid home-testing service, offering 149 at-home test items across 12 core cities, covering a population of 150 million. On the other hand, its nurse-at-home service provides 62 nursing care items across seven major categories, including injections, dressing changes, blood collection, medical accompaniment, pressure ulcer care, and maternal and infant care. This service currently covers 45 large and medium-sized cities in China, including Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Shenzhen, and has cumulatively served hundreds of thousands of households.

Through services such as at-home rapid testing and nurse home visits, JD Health has pioneered the establishment of a closed-loop service ecosystem encompassing “medical consultation + testing + diagnosis + medication” within the industry. From online physician consultations and in-home sample collection to medical diagnosis, prescription issuance, and home delivery of medications, the entire patient journey for seeking medical care and purchasing drugs can be efficiently completed in a one-stop manner within the service model centered on the JD Internet Hospital.

By achieving differentiated coverage of offline retail and further building a closed-loop service integrating “medical consultation, testing, diagnosis, and pharmacy,” JD Health’s instant retail business enables patients to access healthcare and pharmaceutical services that are “fulfilled around the clock, covering all scenarios, and accessible through all channels.” Meanwhile, pharmaceutical companies can leverage JD Health’s role as an industry connector to further enhance efficiency, improve user reach, and achieve mutual value creation.

This capability is also attributable to JD Health’s technology-driven foundation.

In 2023, JD Health launched the “Jingyi Qianxun” medical large language model, which has been widely applied in various aspects of general practice consultations within its internet hospital. In early 2025, JD Health subsequently unveiled its comprehensive suite of large language model products, “AI Jingyi,” designed for its online omnichannel scenarios, as well as “JD Zhuoyi,” the industry’s first large language model product tailored for full-scenario hospital applications. The release of these model-based products has significantly enhanced service efficiency and improved user experience.

As JD Health continues to explore and implement AI technologies to drive corporate growth, it also plans to further empower merchants, industrial brands, and partners with large language model capabilities, thereby enabling innovative growth for enterprises.

Behind the growth, Wang Yiting emphasized, “Channels are constantly evolving, and user needs are changing, but the fundamental principle remains unchanged: delivering excellent user service.”

Today, as instant retail health services continue to expand, the long-standing “last mile” challenge in healthcare access is being resolved. Leveraging its own capabilities and driven by technology, JD Health is not only providing pharmaceutical companies with innovative solutions but also propelling China’s healthcare industry into a new era of “on-demand services.”