Digital Medical Consortium Emerges as New Frontier for Integrated Healthcare amid Strategic Shift to Grassroots
Seizing the “Digital Medical Consortium” has become a new strategic direction for healthcare informatization and pharmaceutical and medical device enterprises.
Recently, the General Office of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of China and the General Office of the State Council issued the “Opinions on Further Improving the Healthcare Service System” (hereinafter referred to as the “Opinions”), which set a mid-term goal of building a “resilient, integrated healthcare service system” by 2035, and emphasized that “information technology should play an important supporting role in ensuring the efficient operation of the healthcare service system.”
The “Opinions” provide a series of policy safeguards to break down “information silos” and promote the integrated development of regional healthcare informatization, including advancing the construction of smart hospitals, promoting the development of medical consortia and the integration of medical care with disease prevention, strengthening the foundational level of urban and rural primary healthcare services, and building industrial internet platforms in the medical field. Among these measures, the most noteworthy is the establishment of medical consortia as the primary model for advancing the construction of an integrated healthcare service system in China.
This marks a transition in the development of healthcare informatization in China, moving from hospital-based systems and isolated smart hospital initiatives into an era of digital medical consortia that integrate clinical care and public health, achieving comprehensive regional data connectivity. In this new phase, the healthcare informatization industry will enjoy broader development opportunities and advance toward a stage of diversified integration.
From the informatization of hospitals to the construction of smart hospitals, and further to the development of digital medical consortia, the deepening of China’s healthcare system reform has continuously imposed new requirements on the supply capacity of medical and health services. The digital medical consortium is characterized not only by technological evolution but also by innovative transformation in service models, representing an inevitable requirement for achieving the goal of providing comprehensive, full-lifecycle health services.
China’s healthcare informatization initiative began in the 1990s, evolving from early computer-assisted medical management systems to comprehensive healthcare informatization platforms. This progression has continuously driven digital transformation within the healthcare sector, marking a developmental shift from basic hospital informatization to the construction of “smart hospitals.” The initial phase primarily focused on the implementation and adoption of Hospital Information Systems (HIS), whereas the later stage of smart hospital development emphasizes the informational integration and reengineering of hospital business processes, thereby steadily enhancing hospitals’ informatization capabilities and service delivery.
However, the development of “Smart Hospitals” remains confined within individual hospital premises. According to forecasts by iResearch, regional healthcare informatization, centered on achieving public health data sharing and integrating medical service systems, boasts promising growth prospects, with its market size expected to reach RMB 124.5 billion by 2025. In contrast, the market size for hospital informatization—the primary battleground for IT vendors—was RMB 19.5 billion in 2021 and is projected to reach RMB 29.9 billion by 2023.
For healthcare IT companies, this represents both a new market and a new challenge.
On one hand, rapidly entering the regional healthcare informatics market has become the primary strategic focus for healthcare IT companies. On the other hand, aiming to eliminate “information silos” within regions and build fully interconnected healthcare informatics platforms, regional healthcare informatics serves multiple stakeholders—including hospitals at all levels, public health institutions, healthcare payers, pharmaceutical and medical device suppliers, and patients—thereby necessitating the integration of various healthcare information systems, including those of competitors.
Meanwhile, with the release of the “Opinions” by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council, medical consortia, as the primary form of an integrated healthcare service system, have become the key model to be promoted and a major industrial development opportunity for the next decade or more. Consequently, the development of the healthcare informatics industry is bound to shift from the construction of standalone smart hospitals to the development of regional digital medical consortia.
In terms of the overall planning of the "Opinions," it is also clear that the medical informatization industry needs to move towards a development stage of medical integration and diversified consolidation.
The “Opinions” summarize the profound impact of the three-year pandemic on China’s healthcare service system and draw upon practical experience in systematically addressing systemic weaknesses. They outline a comprehensive strategy for integrating medical care with public health prevention, as well as combining prevention and treatment, by vigorously developing community hospitals, family doctor contract services, disease prevention and control networks, management of key diseases, and integrated medical and elderly care services. This indicates that future efforts will focus on comprehensively advancing the construction of an integrated medical-prevention system at the primary care level, thereby creating accessible, integrated healthcare services “at residents’ doorsteps.”
Evidently, in the face of new objectives, traditional healthcare informatization can no longer meet the future development needs of the medical and health system, making digital healthcare a natural and indispensable ally. Unlike the incremental progress of healthcare informatization, the digital healthcare industry is experiencing “breakthrough” growth, with its market size expanding by leaps and bounds.
In the development of the digital healthcare industry, policies related to “Internet + Hospitals,” “Internet + Pharmaceuticals,” and “Internet + Medical Insurance” have achieved successive breakthroughs, giving rise to distinct business models: pharmaceutical e-commerce represented by Ali Health and JD Health; new Direct-to-Patient (DTP) pharmacy models represented by Yuanxin and Sipei; and digital hospital and digital medical consortium models represented by WeDoctor.
According to the “2022 China Digital Health Market Data Report” recently released by NetEconomy Society, the digital health market size reached RMB 562.2 billion in 2022 (the report’s definition of digital health market size includes only internet healthcare and pharmaceutical e-commerce). Of this, the internet healthcare market size amounted to RMB 310.2 billion, representing a year-on-year increase of 39.1%.
Now, as the “Opinions” issued by the General Office of the CPC Central Committee and the General Office of the State Council explicitly state that “socially funded medical institutions may take the lead in forming or participate in medical consortia,” the digital healthcare industry is once again presenting significant opportunities for scaled development, with digital hospitals and digital medical consortiums emerging as vibrant and rapidly growing business models.
In the digital healthcare industry,Digital healthcare enterprises that operate their own digital hospitals—namely, “Internet hospitals + offline physical hospitals”—are actively deploying regional digital medical consortiums and seeking in-depth collaborations with health IT firms and pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Their goal is to build an integrated, fully connected, high-quality, and efficient healthcare service system within their respective regions.
For example, Tianjin Municipality, under the guidance of the Tianjin Municipal Health Commission and the Tianjin Municipal Healthcare Security Administration, introduced WeDoctor’s localized digital hospital—the Tianjin WeDoctor Internet Hospital—to build a unified “Four Clouds” platform encompassing cloud management, cloud services, cloud pharmacy, and cloud diagnostics. It also took the lead in coordinating 266 primary healthcare institutions across the city to jointly establish a citywide close-knit digital medical consortium, known as the Tianjin Primary Digital Health Community.
Public data shows that, as of the end of December 2022, leveraging the “Four Clouds” platform, Tianjin’s grassroots digital health consortium had partnered with 204 primary healthcare institutions and seven secondary hospitals to establish chronic disease management centers, creating health records and providing managed care for over 1.68 million patients with chronic diseases. Meanwhile, Tianjin is progressively incorporating community health service stations and village clinics into the health consortium’s “cloud platform,” continuously strengthening the foundation of urban and rural grassroots medical and healthcare services.
As can be seen, the development of digital medical consortia involves not only the integration of information systems between hospitals, but also the integration of in-hospital information systems with out-of-hospital digital healthcare services. Therefore, community-run digital hospitals taking the lead in establishing digital medical consortia represents both a significant development opportunity for the digital healthcare industry and has becomeHealthcare Informatics, Pharmaceutical and Medical Device CompaniesDevelopment opportunities for medical alliances and diversified integration.