Giant Star Technology: A 20-Year Medical Veteran Powering Real-World Research with Partnerships with Roche and Pfizer

Twenty-one years ago, Liang Dingshi could never have imagined that his connection with the healthcare industry, sparked by an “epidemic prevention and control system,” would last for over two decades and continue into the future.

2002 is a year that is familiar to anyone with even a slight understanding of the history of public health development in China. In that year, SARS began to wreak havoc in Guangdong and Hong Kong; in 2003, the SARS epidemic began to spread across China.

In fact, well before SARS swept across China, Liang Dingshi’s team had already developed a public health emergency prevention and control system. The SARS outbreak served as a rigorous test of the system’s operational stability and reliability—a test that it successfully passed. In the aftermath, Liang Dingshi not only gained greater confidence in his professional capabilities but also recognized that a specific niche segment within China’s healthcare industry was on the verge of rapid growth.

This is where the dream of Hainan Giant-Star Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Giant-Star”) began. Twenty-one years ago, the then “Giant-Star” was an informatics company dedicated to serving public health initiatives; twenty-one years later, Giant-Star has grown into an Internet hospital SaaS service platform, maintaining collaborative relationships with more than 10,000 medical institutions and partnering with over 100 leading domestic and international pharmaceutical and medical device manufacturers, including Roche, Pfizer, and Jiangsu Hengrui Medicine.

From the informatization of public health initiatives to SaaS platforms for internet hospitals, and from information systems to digital healthcare—and even to real-world studies, CRO, CSO, and other services for pharmaceuticals and medical devices—Hainan Giant-Star Technology has navigated 21 years of challenges, achieved listing on the New Third Board, and paved a broader path forward.

Is this a company that operates an internet hospital? If one looks solely at the corporate positioning of Hainan Giant-Star Technology, it is easy to form such an impression.

This understanding is both “right” and “wrong.”

“The correct” aspect is that Hainan Giant-Star Technology’s internet hospital indeed offers nearly all the mainstream services provided by current internet hospitals—online consultations and medication purchases. Moreover, the platform boasts a vast pool of physicians, numbering over 130,000.

However, the “misconception” lies in the fact that the primary purpose of establishing Giant-Star Internet Hospital is not online consultation and medication purchase, but to serve its largest core business—real-world studies of pharmaceuticals and medical devices.

Real-world study refers to a research process that addresses pre-specified clinical questions by collecting health-related data on study subjects or derived summary data from such data in real-world settings, and obtaining clinical evidence on drug utilization and potential benefit-risk profiles through analysis. (Definition sourced from the NMPA’s “Guiding Principles for Real-World Evidence to Support Drug Development and Review (Trial)”) In other words, the core objective of real-world studies is to collect and analyze data generated in real-world practice to generate real-world evidence as conclusions, thereby supporting clinical decision-making or demonstrating the clinical value of drugs or medical devices.

In short, for pharmaceutical and medical device companies, conducting real-world studies not only helps them discover and confirm the therapeutic value of their products in more disease areas—i.e., identifying and confirming new indications for these products—but also aids in the timely detection of adverse reaction signals during early post-marketing safety monitoring. More importantly, for pharmaceutical and medical device products already approved and marketed overseas, conducting real-world studies in China holds significant importance.

The reason is that, in the past, such pharmaceutical and medical device products had to undergo clinical trials step by step and submit marketing registration applications if they wanted to enter the domestic market. At present, however, real-world studies can also serve as an “entry ticket” for foreign pharmaceutical and medical device companies to enter the Chinese market, and the time required to obtain this “entry ticket” will be significantly shortened compared with the traditional marketing registration application process.

However, this “entry ticket” comes with a condition—it can only be utilized within the Hainan Boao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone.

Hainan Giant-Star Technology has accumulated abundant medical resources in Boao Lecheng. For instance, it has established partnerships with Boao Super Hospital, Hainan Xinshengquan International Cell Therapy Hospital, Ciming Boao International Hospital, Boao Lecheng Clinical Medical Center for Rare Diseases, and Ruijin Hospital Hainan Branch.

Moreover, in addition to covering the medical resources in Boao Lecheng, Hainan Giant-Star Technology has also accumulated extensive hospital and physician resources across China. This is primarily attributable to the company’s business expansion in the previous phase.

VCBeat has learned that before entering the internet healthcare sector, Hainan Giant-Star Technology targeted the medical informatics track, providing hospitals with software and services such as Hospital Information Systems (HIS), SaaS platforms, and case management systems. After more than a decade of market expansion, Hainan Giant-Star Technology has leveraged its informatics systems as a conduit to reach a vast number of hospitals and a large community of physicians.

The accumulation of extensive medical institutions and physician resources constitutes one of the foundational elements and competitive advantages for conducting real-world studies. Subsequently, data accumulation and the level of data governance capability have become another critical threshold testing enterprises.

However, as previously mentioned, the earlier phase of Hainan Giant-Star Technology’s business was fundamentally that of an health IT enterprise. Even today, hospital informatization remains one of its core businesses. During this period, Hainan Giant-Star Technology not only accumulated over 14.6 million electronic medical records and 12 million resident health records, but also developed robust data governance capabilities—a inherent advantage of IT-focused enterprises.

Thus, Hainan Giant-Star Technology has mastered the two core elements for conducting real-world studies—medical resources and data governance—and has accordingly carried out more than 300 real-world studies.

As for why an internet hospital platform was specifically built to conduct real-world studies, Liang Dingshi stated that the main reasons are—

First, the internet hospital platform not only enables physicians to promptly understand and monitor the progress of real-world studies on drugs and medical devices, but also provides them with a convenient communication platform that ensures data security while facilitating information sharing;

Secondly, under the premise of ensuring data security, internet hospital platforms can also facilitate the collection, statistical analysis, and governance of patient treatment information, thereby enabling the generation of academic outputs based on real-world data and establishing a leading hub for academic research on innovative drugs both domestically and internationally;

Meanwhile, the internet hospital platform can also continuously track patients' medication adherence. This aligns well with the tendency of real-world studies to conduct long-term evaluations.

Ultimately, internet hospitals can indeed serve as a bridge for doctor-patient communication, laying a solid foundation for patient recruitment.

“The use of pharmaceuticals and medical devices requires not only communication among physicians but also dialogue between doctors and patients. Even for new drugs from overseas, patients have the right to be informed. Patient education and science popularization are themselves a key component of internet hospitals,” stated Liang Dingshi.

Therefore, in addition to conducting real-world studies and providing CRO services, Hainan Giant-Star Technology also offers CSO and digital marketing services to pharmaceutical and medical device companies.

Hainan Giant-Star Technology’s digital marketing services can be viewed as a derivative of its real-world study services.

Therefore, unlike most conventional digital marketing services, Hainan Giant-Star Technology’s digital marketing services are primarily delivered on a specialty-specific basis.

For instance, when a real-world study (RWS) project falls within the scope of oncology, Hainan Giant-Star Technology’s digital marketing strategy primarily involves indirect physician education through RWS, which in turn enables physicians to conduct market education for patients. Within this framework, Hainan Giant-Star Technology “plays” the role of leveraging its medical resources and data processing capabilities to generate scientifically grounded product education materials or patient-friendly reports. This approach assists physicians in delivering more efficient and effective patient education, thereby facilitating rapid conversion for pharmaceutical companies.

Furthermore, to better serve physicians and patients across various specialties, Hainan Giant-Star Technology has established multiple internet hospital platforms. For instance, the company has launched an internet platform for sports medicine and a national digital diagnosis and treatment center specializing in sports rehabilitation. It has formed specialized departments including an Assessment Center, Diagnosis and Treatment Center, Psychological Support Center, Pain Management Center, Nutrition Center, and Rehabilitation Center. These resources enable the provision of comprehensive “five-specialist collaborative management” services throughout the entire patient journey—from pre-consultation and clinical care to rehabilitation—within the field of sports medicine.

“In recent years, the rapid development of the sports medicine sector has been evident to all. Relevant authorities have also successively introduced policies to strongly support the growth of the sports rehabilitation industry, encouraging the creation of an integrated rehabilitation service chain encompassing ‘treatment-rehabilitation-long-term care,’” said Liang Dingshi. However, consumables for sports rehabilitation are currently monopolized by overseas manufacturers such as Smith & Nephew, Johnson & Johnson, Stryker, and Arthrex. As China’s only “medical pilot zone” for overseas-listed drugs, Boao Lecheng allows the latest overseas medical technologies, devices, and pharmaceuticals to be trialed on a pilot basis, provided relevant conditions are met. Meanwhile, Hainan Giant-Star Technology not only possesses resources in the discipline of sports medicine, but its Chief Medical Officer has also accumulated extensive experience over many years in fields such as exercise and brain science, exercise and immunology, exercise and traditional Chinese medicine wellness, and exercise and nutrition.

Therefore, Hainan Giant-Star Technology’s decision to establish its sports medicine platform in Lecheng represents a powerful alliance between industry leaders.

In addition to its sports medicine internet hospital platform, and aligning with Boao Lecheng’s strong push to develop the high-end medical aesthetics industry, Hainan Giant-Star Technology has also launched a medical aesthetics-focused internet platform. This platform provides real-world study, CRO, and CSO services to overseas enterprises, while also offering patient referral services to offline medical aesthetics institutions in Lecheng.

“In general, by building specialized platforms to provide more professional and targeted services, Hainan Giant-Star Technology can not only conduct real-world studies but also undertake CRO and digital marketing services derived from these studies,” summarized Liang Dingshi.

It is equally evident that real-world studies represent a core business area into which Hainan Giant-Star Technology has invested substantial effort. Its other business lines—whether in health informatics, CRO services, or digital marketing—serve either to lay the groundwork and build capabilities for this core focus, or as derivatives and extensions of it.

In Hainan Giant-Star Technology’s future plans, its determination to conduct real-world studies is evident: “In the future, we will certainly continue to deepen our engagement in real-world studies!” This is because, on one hand, the demand for real-world studies among pharmaceutical and medical device companies is becoming increasingly apparent; on the other hand, the data accumulated through such studies can support digital marketing of pharmaceuticals and medical devices, and may even serve as a supporting condition for their inclusion in national medical insurance coverage.

As Jia Ning, Director of the Boao Lecheng International Medical Tourism Pilot Zone Administration, recently stated: “The application of real-world studies in medical insurance primarily serves three purposes: supervision of medical insurance funds, quantitative support for centralized drug procurement negotiations, and clinical quality evaluation for medical insurance coverage. We are striving to make real-world data on specially approved drugs and medical devices from Lecheng a supporting criterion for their inclusion in the national medical insurance scheme.”

The Future Development of Real-World Studies Is Highly Imaginative.