Yilian Healthcare Files IPO Prospectus: Building a Platform for Hierarchical Management of Chronic Critical Diseases
In May 2020, Feng Ye embarked on his second entrepreneurial venture, establishingYilian Medical, a tiered diagnosis and treatment service platform for chronic and critical diseases.
At that time, the COVID-19 pandemic remained severe, making it an inopportune moment to launch a startup. However, Feng Ye, who brought ten years of experience from IBM Global Business Services, possessed a keen instinct for identifying market needs. He believed that beneath the surface of the pandemic lay the intertwined joys and sorrows of countless individual lives, noting that “patients’ needs do not pause due to the pandemic; rather, they become even more urgent.”
For instance, the pandemic has made population mobility more difficult, preventing patients at prefecture and county levels from traveling to first-tier cities for initial consultations or follow-up visits. “At its root, this remains an issue of uneven distribution of medical resources in China.”
Regardless of the severity of their conditions, a large number of primary-care patients prefer to seek initial treatment at major hospitals within their own provinces or cities, with some even traveling long distances to tertiary Grade A hospitals in medical resource hubs such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou. It has become commonplace for tertiary Grade A hospitals in these first-tier cities to be overcrowded with patients, while local hospitals remain nearly empty. This is precisely the issue that China’s tiered diagnosis and treatment policy aims to address.
According to Feng Ye’s research, the comprehensive cost for patients seeking medical care at the provincial level is 2.5 times that at the prefecture-level city, placing significant pressure on the medical insurance system. For instance, for the same condition, a single hospitalization at top-tier hospitals in Beijing or Shanghai results in approximately RMB 9,000 more in payments by local medical insurance compared to tertiary Grade A hospitals in local prefecture-level cities. When factoring in expenses such as transportation, accommodation, and caregiving, patients incur an additional cost of around RMB 12,000.
To address this issue, the state has implemented a tiered diagnosis and treatment policy, encouraging the establishment of medical consortia and other models to enhance primary healthcare capabilities. This aligns with the national directive that “common illnesses should be treated at the township level, while serious diseases should be managed within the county.” The goal is to ensure that 90% of common conditions, critical and severe cases, and certain complex diseases are diagnosed, treated, and rehabilitated primarily within the county, thereby alleviating the burden on large hospitals.
In this context,Yilian Medical Establishes a Chronic and Critical Care Medical Service Platform, committed to advancing tiered diagnosis and treatment by building a bridge of communication between primary care physicians and specialists at top-tier tertiary hospitals, thereby strengthening collaboration between primary healthcare institutions and higher-level medical facilities to leverage their respective strengths and jointly serve patients.
Several years ago, Feng Ye was a senior executive within the Sinopharm Group system. After recognizing the burgeoning trends in internet healthcare and medical informatization, he relinquished his rank and attractive compensation package at Sinopharm to pursue a more fulfilling path: entrepreneurship.
In 2020, Feng Ye successfully exited his previous startup venture. His first entrepreneurial experience shaped a demand-driven mindset, leading him to adopt a more prudent approach when selecting the direction for his second startup. “At this stage,We focus on chronic and critical care as our core business, helping hospitals, patients, health insurers, and other stakeholders in the healthcare system find a balance among their conflicting needs.。”
Drawing on years of market experience, Feng Ye has identified the multifaceted demands within the healthcare sector. On the hospital side, tertiary hospitals lack sufficient complex and challenging cases, while expecting faster progress in scientific research; meanwhile, primary care institutions suffer from inadequate diagnostic and treatment capabilities and lagging discipline development. From the health insurance perspective, there is a contradiction between overall cost containment and the significant disparity in clinical capabilities across different tiers of hospitals. For patients, the key concern is how to obtain more accurate diagnoses and better treatment plans at a lower economic cost. “Our ultimate goal is to help patients find the optimal care pathway that balances medical services and costs, thereby minimizing and alleviating the risk of poverty caused or exacerbated by illness.”
So,Yilian MedicalWhy focus on chronic critical illnesses? According to Feng Ye, chronic critical illnesses are defined as conditions that pose significant threats to public health, involve frequent medical visits and high care demands, require prolonged life support and nursing care, and make it difficult for patients to return to normal life. Examples include solid tumors, hematologic malignancies, and neurological disorders.
In less than two years,Yilian MedicalSince its inception, it has collaborated with over 500 public hospitals across China in areas including clinical diagnosis and treatment, clinical research, diagnostic and therapeutic guidelines, and patient management, directly serving more than 1,000 patients with chronic and critical conditions in a single month.
“Taking blood disorders as an example, they exhibit typical characteristics of chronic and severe diseases. They have a broad impact on society and the public, with significant disparities in diagnostic and treatment capabilities across hospitals at different levels. For patients, the substantial medical costs also impose a considerable financial burden,” said Feng Ye.
In the second half of 2021, Yilian Medical partnered with the Shanghai Ruijin Blood Medical Consortium to launch the “Joint Ward” service model., with physicians from primary care hospitals and specialists from frontline hospitals jointly serving patients.
At a prefecture-level Grade A tertiary hospital in Jiangxi Province, a fixed weekly time slot has been established for hematology experts from Ruijin Hospital to collaborate with local hematologists. They conduct regular “joint cloud clinics” in outpatient rooms and perform bedside “online ward rounds” in inpatient wards, jointly serving local patients. During these consultations and rounds, the experts work with local physicians to formulate diagnosis and treatment plans, which are then implemented by the local doctors based on the specific conditions of the hospital and the patients. After six months of operation, a significant number of local patients with hematologic diseases, who had previously planned to seek medical care at provincial hospitals or in Beijing and Shanghai, have chosen to receive outpatient and inpatient treatment at this Grade A tertiary hospital. Through this model, the hospital has increased its monthly patient volume by nearly 50 visits.
At a municipal-level Grade A tertiary hospital in Henan Province, a patient with hematologic malignancy received their first cycle of chemotherapy at Ruijin Hospital and chose to return to their local hospital for consolidation therapy. Upon admitting the patient, the attending specialist from Ruijin Hospital conducted detailed remote consultations with the managing physician at the local hospital to align on the patient’s treatment status and develop a comprehensive plan for the consolidation phase. This collaboration ensured that the local physician gained a thorough understanding of the patient’s condition and finalized the subsequent treatment regimen. During the consolidation period, specialists from Ruijin Hospital and physicians at the local facility regularly monitored the patient’s progress through “Remote Multidisciplinary Team (MDT) Integrated Clinics,” preparing accordingly for the patient’s return to Ruijin Hospital for the next stage of treatment. After completing the initial consolidation phase locally, the patient reported that the therapeutic outcomes were comparable to those at Ruijin Hospital, while overall costs were significantly reduced, thereby strengthening their confidence in proceeding with the next phase of treatment.
To further achieve homogenization of diagnosis and treatment between tertiary hospitals and primary care institutions,Yilian Medical has developed an auxiliary system for hematologic disease diagnostic pathways, leveraging the “clinical treatment protocols + specialized disciplinary expertise” of hematology departments at top-tier hospitals such as Shanghai Ruijin Hospital, and integrating digital technologies., building on the routine implementation of “Joint Cloud Clinics” and “Online Ward Rounds,” an integrated approach combining “joint research and patient follow-up” is employed to continuously accumulate disease data in real time, thereby driving the iterative updates of the diagnostic pathway decision-support system.
“Joint Wards” not only resolve the difficulty of retaining patients for treatment at primary-care hospitals, but also achieve a win–win outcome for patients, primary-care hospitals, specialists, and the government. Specifically, patients, as the direct beneficiaries, can access high-quality medical care close to home, substantially reducing time and financial costs; primary-care hospitals improve their clinical capabilities, retain more patients, and increase revenue, creating a virtuous cycle; specialists gain more precise identification of cases that support their clinical research; and the government’s tiered diagnosis and treatment policy is effectively implemented, better serving patients at the grassroots level while alleviating pressure on the medical insurance fund.
Currently, Yilian Medical has gradually expanded into more than 20 disease areas, including malignant tumors, hematological disorders, neurological diseases, and rehabilitation. It has signed normalized cooperation agreements with nearly 50 public general hospitals across China and established close collaborative relationships with departments and experts at dozens of public Grade-A tertiary hospitals in Beijing and Shanghai.
In less than two years, Yilian Medical has grown into a startup team composed of professionals with diverse backgrounds in clinical medicine, hospital management, pharmaceuticals, and internet healthcare. The company has secured tens of millions in investment and is currently planning a new round of financing. Looking ahead, Feng Ye hopes that Yilian Medical’s services will be implemented in every prefecture-level city across China, working alongside local hospitals to better serve patients with chronic and critical conditions.