Digital Intelligence Empowers Grassroots Chronic Disease Management: WeDoctor Accelerates Transformation with AI-Driven Solutions
With the accelerating aging of China’s population and changes in lifestyle, the prevalence of chronic diseases has been rising year by year, posing significant challenges to chronic disease prevention and control. In 2022, the General Office of the State Council issued the “14th Five-Year Plan” for National Health, proposing the implementation of comprehensive strategies for chronic disease prevention and control, thereby elevating “chronic disease prevention and control” to a national strategy for the first time. As a major global public health issue, chronic disease prevention and management encompasses multiple stages, including pre-diagnosis, during diagnosis, and post-diagnosis. It has become a consensus within both the medical and industrial communities to strengthen and enhance whole-course management for patients with chronic diseases through digital and intelligent technologies.
On August 31, the 2024 Digital Therapeutics Conference was held in Haikou City. Hundreds of distinguished guests from government departments, academicians and scientists, clinical experts, and corporate leaders both domestically and internationally gathered to discuss and share insights on top-level design, cutting-edge technologies, and future trends in the fields of digital health and AI-driven healthcare. Yan Jinhong, Senior Vice President of WeDoctor Holdings and President of WeDoctor Internet General Hospital, was invited to attend the conference and deliver a keynote speech. In his presentation, he highlighted WeDoctor’s developmental journey from its 1.0 Internet Hospital model to the 2.0 Digital Health Community, and further to the 3.0 AI Hospital. He also provided an accessible yet in-depth explanation of WeDoctor’s experiences and practices in leveraging digital and intelligent technologies, such as artificial intelligence, to enhance the efficiency of chronic disease management in provinces and cities including Tianjin and Dongfang, Hainan, sparking significant attention and discussion among attendees.
Figure Note: Yan Jinhong from WeDoctor attended the conference and delivered a keynote speech.
Dongfang City, Hainan Province, is one of the national pilot zones for comprehensive primary healthcare and public health services, and the only such pilot zone in Hainan. It bears the significant mission and responsibility of exploring the deepening of primary healthcare reform for the entire province and even the whole country. Last August, WeDoctor won the bid for the Innovative Application Project of Digital Therapeutics for Diabetes in Hainan Province. With strong support from the Hainan Provincial Health Commission, the Dongfang Municipal Health Commission, and the Dongfang Medical Group, WeDoctor launched a pilot program in Dongfang City, taking diabetes and hypertension as the initial focus areas to implement comprehensive chronic disease management services in phases.
Figure Caption: WeDoctor’s Hainan Dongfang Digital Therapeutics Project Selected as an Innovative Development Case Study
At the conference, the “2024 Case Studies of Innovative Development in New Quality Productive Forces for Digital Health” were officially announced. Due to its outstanding innovation achievements and results, WeDoctor’s Hainan Dongfang Digital Therapeutics Innovation Project was successfully selected.
Yan Jinhong introduced that the most distinctive feature of the Hainan Dongfang Digital Therapeutics Project lies in its high level of system integration and data-driven management strategy. Empowered by artificial intelligence, chronic disease management has achieved comprehensive improvements in quality and efficiency, along with personalized care. Leveraging WeDoctor’s intelligent data platform, the project rapidly realized interoperability and seamless integration of medical data. Furthermore, by establishing digital and intelligent chronic disease management centers and standardized chronic disease management clinics, and organizing a “3+1+N” management team—centered on specialist physicians, township doctors, family doctor teams, and health managers—it has formed grid-based management groups. This approach enables integrated services covering “screening, health promotion, diagnosis, treatment, and management,” as well as coordinated medical and health management. It provides residents of Dongfang City with full-cycle services ranging from prevention and diagnosis to treatment and follow-up care, significantly enhancing patient satisfaction and health management outcomes.
As of July 2024, WeDoctor has completed the deployment of its digital therapeutics system across public medical institutions at the city, town, and village levels in Dongfang City. It has trained more than 300 township and village clinic physicians. The WeDoctor health management team, working in conjunction with local physicians, has provided coordinated care for over 8,900 patients, developed 1,751 individualized management plans, and conducted complication screening for 1,126 individuals. Health indicators among patients with chronic diseases have shown improvement across the board, effectively enhancing the service capacity of primary healthcare institutions. This initiative has received affirmation and recognition from leaders of competent authorities, including the National Health Commission, as well as from industry experts.
“We will continue to increase our investment and support for the project, helping Dongfang City establish a model for digital therapeutics in chronic disease prevention and control, not only in Hainan but across China,” said Yan Jinhong. He added that as the digital and intelligent transformation of the healthcare system deepens, WeDoctor will accelerate the city-by-city rollout of its digital-intelligent chronic disease management system nationwide. In provinces and municipalities where it has already been implemented, such as Hainan, Tianjin, and Shandong, WeDoctor will further expand the scope of multi-disease co-management services, enabling more patients to access optimal treatment and management plans through WeDoctor, thereby achieving early screening, diagnosis, prevention, and treatment of chronic diseases.
Since establishing China’s first internet hospital in 2015, WeDoctor has achieved remarkable success in leveraging digital intelligence to drive the upgrading of the healthcare industry. To date, WeDoctor has launched and operates 26 internet hospitals across China, 15 of which have enabled online medical insurance payments. Since 2019, WeDoctor has collaborated with provinces and municipalities such as Tianjin and Shandong to jointly explore an “upgraded” version of medical consortia—the Digital Health Consortium. This initiative aims to address the issue of “connected but not integrated” within existing medical alliances through digital means, utilizing big data, AI, and other digital-intelligent technologies to enhance the quality and efficiency of medical services, while promoting the coordinated development of medical insurance, healthcare delivery, and pharmaceuticals.
In recent years, WeDoctor has continuously and actively explored innovative applications of AI technology in medical services and health management scenarios. On August 24, WeDoctor launched China’s first artificial intelligence hospital in Shanghai, drawing widespread attention from the industry. During his keynote address, Yan Jinhong highlighted WeDoctor’s “1143” digital-intelligent chronic disease management system, built upon the AI hospital framework. This system comprises one large medical language model, one full-lifecycle digital health profile, four standardized intelligent products, and three standardized systems.
Leveraging the WeDoctor Medical Large Language Model and integrating data across healthcare, pharmaceuticals, health insurance, and resident health records, we are progressively building comprehensive digital health profiles covering residents’ entire life cycles. Through our independently developed suite of four standardized intelligent products—“AI Physician,” “AI Pharmacist,” “AI Health Manager,” and “AI Intelligent Control”—we have implemented three standardized service systems in practical care settings: an integrated chronic disease management outpatient clinic, a standardized converged service system, and a standardized operational management system. This approach comprehensively reshapes the patient journey from pre-consultation through consultation to post-consultation phases, significantly enhancing the capability and efficiency of medical and health management services.
According to reports, as a key academic pillar of WeDoctor’s AI Hospital, WeDoctor has engaged in in-depth collaboration with the Expert Committee on Digital and Intelligent Co-management of Major Chronic Diseases at the Primary Care Level, the Shanghai Digital Medicine Innovation Center, and Shanghai Ruijin Hospital. Focusing on the prevention and control of major chronic diseases at the primary care level and the “co-management of six diseases,” these partnerships have pooled top-tier expert resources across China. Together, they aim to explore and establish an academic framework and capability system for comprehensive digital and intelligent chronic disease management, thereby developing digital and intelligent specialty standards and management guidelines.
It is worth noting that in February this year, WeDoctor partnered with Shanghai Ruijin Hospital to establish a full-lifecycle “Six-Disease Co-Management” Center in Sanming, pioneering the digital and intelligent “Six-Disease Co-Management” model in China and advancing Sanming’s healthcare reform into its 3.0 phase. At a press conference themed “Promoting the Sanming Healthcare Reform Experience,” held by the National Health Commission on August 30, it was proposed that upgrading “Medical Consortia” to “Health Consortia” and establishing a “Six-Disease Co-Management” system should become key directions for deepening healthcare reform in Sanming. The Commission also required other provinces to select 2–3 regions each year for focused implementation, aiming to achieve nationwide coverage within five years.
Yan Jinhong stated that from the top-level design and formulation of the "Medium- and Long-Term Plan for the Prevention and Control of Chronic Diseases in China (2017–2025)" to the establishment of national demonstration zones for comprehensive prevention and control of chronic diseases, the public’s demand for efficient chronic disease management models has become increasingly urgent. WeDoctor will continue to leverage digital and intelligent technologies to optimize the allocation of diagnostic and therapeutic resources, maximizing the benefits of medical and health services. While providing patients with lifecycle medical and health management services, it will also deliver standardized, replicable digital medicine products and service systems, offering tailored, comprehensive solutions to deepen healthcare reform across China.