YiCong Health Launches Three Digital Health Products for Pharma Enterprises, Led by Founding Team of Xingren Doctor

Yicong Health, founded by the original team behind Xingren Doctor, officially launched three digital products tailored for pharmaceutical companies today, including the YiLink Private-Domain Doctor-Patient Service Platform, the YiCare Private-Domain Doctor-Patient Co-Management Platform, and the YiCure Digital Therapeutics Co-Creation Platform, aiming to provide pharmaceutical enterprises with multi-dimensional digital marketing tools.

Why has this company, which was quietly established in late 2021 and garnered widespread industry attention this March, set its sights on the pharmaceutical digitalization sector? We spoke with Xu Lin, Founder and Chairman of Yicong Health, and Zhang Yeming, Founder and CEO of Yicong Health.

From 2013 to 2021, over the course of eight years, Xingren Doctor focused on building a post-consultation service platform. Leveraging this platform, it served more than 20 million patients with post-diagnosis conditions and managed 450,000 real-name verified physicians. With eight years of accumulation in the healthcare industry and deepening insights, the original team behind Xingren Doctor has chosen to focus its efforts on the field of “digital disease-specific management.”

Xu Lin, formerly the founder and COO of Xingren Doctor and Penguin Xingren (formed through a 2018 merger with Enterprise Doctor and now known as “Future Doctor”), pointed out in an interview that there are significant industry development opportunities in the digitalization trends of the healthcare sector and the digital transformation of pharmaceutical companies.

First, the healthcare industry is ushering in a new wave of digital transformation.

According to calculations by Huatai Securities’ research report, the core consumer demographic of the internet (those born between the 1970s and before 1990) numbers approximately 445 million. This group is more inclined to access medical products and services through convenient online channels. User demand itself is driving the provision of digital healthcare products and services. It is estimated that as the online penetration rate of medical services increases (projected to reach 24.0% by 2030), the market size of China’s digital health industry will grow from RMB 314 billion in 2020 to RMB 4,223 billion in 2030, representing a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 29.7% during this period.

“We are now facing a more complex landscape,” said Xu Lin. “All industries are being impacted by various uncertainties and intense competition, compounded by the global effects of the COVID-19 pandemic. Digital technology, corporate digital transformation, and intelligent upgrading are no longer trivial experiments; an increasing number of companies recognize them as the foundation for survival in the future world.”

Secondly, the healthcare industry, currently in a period of growing pains, is facing the challenge of exploring its direction for transformation.

As the pharmaceutical industry’s value chain undergoes restructuring, traditional marketing approaches, fragmented product portfolios, and crude market tactics are encountering increasing obstacles amid a complex and volatile landscape of policies, market dynamics, and competition. Many healthcare companies are attempting digital transformation; however, conventional mindsets continue to dominate corporate development. Even when adopting digital marketing tools, numerous firms remain entrenched in traditional marketing models.

Early pioneering pharmaceutical companies have come to realize that to stand out from their peers, they must return to the essence of healthcare—being patient-centric and further improving disease management. Consequently, they are placing greater emphasis on the digitalization of specialty disease management. With the advancement of digital therapeutics (DTx), large multinational pharmaceutical companies abroad are increasingly betting on DTx and making early strategic investments. However, the related field in China is still in a stage of slow development, requiring continued commitment from the industry.

For Yicong Health, the digital transformation of the healthcare industry and the resulting demand from pharmaceutical companies for the establishment of digital disease-specific management systems represent key areas where Yicong Health can leverage its team’s capabilities and experience.

The core backbone of Yicong Health originates from Xingren Doctor. Over the past eight years, Xingren Doctor has not only accumulated extensive experience in physician-patient operations management but also garnered management expertise from over one hundred self-operated clinics, supported more than hundreds of thousands of surgical cases, and provided operational services to numerous pharmaceutical companies. The leaders of Yicong Health’s product technology, operations, and medical teams boast an average industry experience of over 12 years. These strengths constitute the competitive advantage of Yicong Health today.

In the digital healthcare sector, a large number of enterprises of various types have already emerged. Based on the types of services provided, they can be broadly categorized into technology-and-tool providers and patient-physician operational service providers. Yicong Health holds a somewhat unique positioning; according to Zhang Yeming, founder and CEO of Yicong Health, it is positioned as“A Doctor-Patient Private Domain Platform Centered on System + Professional Services”。

He added, “Technology-driven and service-oriented approaches are, in fact, aspects of digital marketing. This classification emerged from the developmental trajectory of pharmaceutical marketing. Differences in corporate culture, initiating departments, and project positioning lead to varying project characteristics; however, these factors alone are insufficient to support a comprehensive marketing model.”

Returning to a patient-centric approach,Achieving “Digital Disease-Specific Management” requires a multitude of capabilities.Xu Lin stated, “In their journey toward digitizing disease-specific management, pharmaceutical companies no longer seek partners that are merely software development outsourcers or solution providers. Instead, they require partners who possess the following capabilities: a team that has genuinely built and operated digital disease-specific management systems; developed and managed end-to-end real-time channel products connecting healthcare providers to patients; conducted large-scale data integration and analysis; and served a substantial number of physicians and patients in frontline clinical settings. This team should have honed its expertise through years of iterative successes and failures in optimizing key metrics such as physician and patient acquisition, engagement, retention, and conversion.”

These are precisely the strengths of YiCong Health. In fact, after its low-key establishment and six months of refinement and consolidation, YiCong Health has officially unveiled its latest product lineup, which includes the YiLink private-domain doctor-patient service platform, the YiCare private-domain collaborative doctor-patient management platform, and the YiCure co-developed digital therapeutics platform.

Overall, the core advantage of the three digital products lies in their innovative creation of a new “one patient, one group” model for private-domain healthcare services based on WeCom, addressing patients’ disease-related issues through a simple and efficient service approach.Meanwhile, leveraging the historical strengths of “Xingren Doctor” in medical services, Yicong Health has established a single-disease medical service team integrating multiple roles—including general practitioners, specialists, physicians from auxiliary departments, medical assistants, and customer service representatives—to address the core issue of physician time management.

On a per-product basis, the YiLink Private-Domain Doctor-Patient Service Platform, the YiCare Private-Domain Doctor-Patient Co-Management Platform, and the YiCure Digital Therapeutics Co-Creation Platform aim to provide pharmaceutical companies with digital marketing tools from different dimensions—namely, system development, service operations, and digital therapeutics, respectively.

YiLink Private Domain Doctor-Patient Service Platform, is an integrated private-domain doctor-patient management platform. Built on the WeCom ecosystem, it enables comprehensive tracking of user behaviors and data within the WeChat environment, serving as a systematic, intelligent patient management platform for pharmaceutical companies. As a lightweight SaaS product, it facilitates rapid deployment, provides pharmaceutical enterprises with swift solution pathways, and assists physicians in accumulating and managing patient relationships.

YiCare Private-Domain Doctor-Patient Co-Management Platform, is a SaaS-based operational solution for specialized disease management. According to Zhang Yeming, “YiLink is a lightweight version of YiCare, while YiCare is a service-intensive version of YiLink; they are essentially tailored to meet the distinct needs of different enterprises.” It is reported that the product can currently be launched within as little as 2–4 weeks, with customized interfaces developed for single-disease-specific functionalities. By adopting a model integrating family physicians, medical assistants, ancillary department staff, and customer service representatives, an online medical service team with multi-role collaborative management can address patients’ cross-departmental issues involving multiple comorbidities. “The treatment of a single disease often requires collaboration among physicians from multiple departments. This is also why disease treatment outcomes are better in first- and second-tier cities—not due to differences in medical devices or pharmaceuticals, but rather because of more effective prognostic interventions. Therefore, multi-role services constitute a crucial component of professional single-disease management,” emphasized Zhang Yeming.

YiCure Digital Therapeutics Co-Creation Platform,Primarily building on the first two platforms, by integrating smart devices, accumulating data, and optimizing algorithms, we can co-develop digital therapeutics with pharmaceutical companies. According to Xu Lin, the decision to focus on the upstream segment of digital therapeutics stems from the belief that “the golden age of digital treatment and digital therapeutics will arrive in a few years. Before that happens, the pharmaceutical industry needs to calmly focus on building and refining a standardized digital disease management system. The infrastructure required for digital therapeutics—namely, long-term connectivity between healthcare providers and patients, data collection, real-time feedback, and patient adherence management—is precisely what YiCong can provide.”

In the view of Zhang Yeming, Founder and CEO of Yicong Health, 2022 marked the inaugural year of private-domain operations in the pharmaceutical industry. As an early participant and witness to the rise of internet healthcare, he believes that the development of digital healthcare has evolved from the App-centric 2.0 era into the private-domain 3.0 era. Currently, this presents a strategic opportunity for pharmaceutical companies to overtake competitors on the bend. Yicong Health aims to serve as a catalyst enabling pharmaceutical enterprises to achieve this competitive leap.

It is reported that,Prior to the launch of its three blockbuster products, Yi Cong Health had already acquired a significant number of new customers and prospective clients through word-of-mouth referrals from existing clients and within the industry.“Several major digitalization collaboration projects have been successfully delivered and have entered the renewal phase for Phase II and Phase III. New collaborations continue to be signed,” Xu Lin pointed out happily.

Following the product launch, YiCong Health will reach a broader customer base through innovative marketing strategies, such as leveraging the trusted recommendations of our physician network, which has partnered with us for nearly nine years, and applying our methodology spanning “public domain acquisition,” “private domain engagement,” “viral growth,” and “long-term management” to establish long-term, real-time, and comprehensive service connections with our customers.

For the future,In the short term, YiCong Health will continue to invest in the ongoing iterative research and development of its YiLink, YiCare, and YiCure products, helping existing and future customers achieve better product services and competitiveness within the industry, thereby enhancing YiCong Health’s own competitiveness."As a team with years of deep expertise in the healthcare sector, Xu Lin also emphasized that 'we will aim for high-quality earnings by concentrating on long-term, mutually beneficial partnerships with cumulative effects,' rather than pursuing scale-driven benefits at the expense of other considerations."

As the helm of the enterprise, Xu Lin is undoubtedly well aware that a truly good company must not only stay grounded and excel at today’s tasks but also cast part of its vision three years into the future,Allocate resources and incur costs to lay the groundwork and prepare for future markets and new business models.She cited a saying to illustrate the point: “Never deliberately chase after a horse; instead, use the time you would spend chasing it to plant grass. When spring arrives and flowers bloom, a herd of fine horses will come.” While diligently cultivating its core business, Yicong Health is also considering introducing capital partners who share its values, mindset, and beliefs, working together to “sow the seeds across this grassland.”

“We hope to become a deep partner for pharmaceutical companies and jointly explore the future of digital health in China,” added Zhang Yeming.