Huiyi Tianxia Builds a Trusted Digital Healthcare Platform through the 'Established Doctor-Patient Relationship' Model

In 2014, the internet healthcare industry experienced vigorous growth, with various entry points emerging and multiple business models appearing, creating a landscape of “contention among a hundred schools.” Dr. Yang Yushuang, an Associate Chief Physician in the Department of Cardiovascular Medicine at the China-Japan Union Hospital of Jilin University, learned about and embraced internet healthcare during this phase, becoming one of the pioneering physicians who dared to be the first to try it.

“Years ago, when pilot programs for urban medical consortiums were being rolled out across China, I was in charge of several hospitals under the jurisdiction of Jilin Province. I found it quite taxing to deliver lectures and conduct consultations for them, so I began practicing medicine online.” During this process, Yang Yushuang discovered that he could help more patients just by using his fragmented spare time, and thus became deeply engaged. To date, he has used seven or eight different online consultation apps.

Yang Yushuang has experienced the evolution of internet healthcare, from text-and-image consultations to video and telephone consultations, as well as team-based services, continuously adapting to the physician-side app operations across various platforms. Currently, Yang Yushuang is a licensed physician at Huiyi Tianxia.

“When selecting a multi-site practice platform, I have one habit: I only choose it on my medical career path if I truly trust it. I believe the strength of Huiyi Tianxia lies in its ‘patient-service-first’ approach, such as its innovative doctor-patient relationship model and the establishment of a ‘5+N’ warehousing and distribution system to ensure convenient medication access for patients. On this platform, I can genuinely fulfill my role as a physician,” said Yang Yushuang.

As the saying goes, “Belief is medicine.” When both doctors and patients maintain mutual trust, physicians can focus on devising the optimal treatment plan without distraction, while patients will actively adhere to the prescribed regimen, thereby maximizing the likelihood of the best possible outcome.

Given that online consultations demand a higher level of trust in the doctor-patient relationship, the lack of prior acquaintance between doctors and patients has long been a major obstacle to the development of internet healthcare. For instance, when follow-up patients consult with unfamiliar physicians or encounter information barriers, internet-based doctors can only offer conservative recommendations based solely on the examination reports and other data provided by the patients, resulting in a suboptimal patient experience.

In this regard,Huiyi Tianxia established the “familiar doctor-patient” consultation model from its inception.“Internet-based healthcare has improved consultation efficiency, but treatment outcomes have remained a shared concern for both patients and physicians. Therefore, we have launched online consultations that prioritize both convenience and peace of mind, adhering to a model based on established patient–physician relationships,” said Chen Hua, CEO of Huiyi Tianxia. “Huiyi Tianxia ensures that all patient–physician interactions on the platform are preceded by in-person consultations, and only patients who are registered with the platform can access online consultation services.”

This model is characterized by the establishment of trust through offline consultations between doctors and patients, which facilitates easier online interactions. Furthermore, the familiar doctor-patient model helps increase both individual physicians’ offline outpatient volumes and departmental outpatient volumes at hospitals. Driven by word-of-mouth effects, doctors and patients will increasingly converge on the platform, enabling it to provide continuous attention and support to patients in out-of-hospital settings.

Real-world data demonstrates the medical community’s recognition of the Huiyi Tianxia platform. In January 2021, Huiyi Tianxia officially opened physician registration. By October of the same year, the number had risen to over 58,000, accounting for 86.5% of all registered physicians in Hainan Province. As of February 2022, nearly 100,000 physicians had registered on the platform, with an activity rate reaching 40%.It is worth noting that Huiyi Tianxia’s network of over 50,000 physicians is concentrated in the specialties of cardiology, pulmonology, nephrology, oncology, and selected metabolic disorders.

Leveraging its deep expertise in the internet healthcare sector, Huiyi Tianxia has effectively secured high-quality medical resources and industry connections within these specialized fields. Currently, cardiologists account for over 20% of the registered physicians on the platform, while respiratory specialists and endocrinologists each represent more than 10%.

Additionally,Focusing on Specialties Enables Refined Patient Management.Chen Hua stated, “For instance, in the field of diabetes, not all patients are suitable for or require out-of-hospital management. What we can do is to differentiate among patients based on their specific conditions and provide targeted treatment.” In the future, Huiyi Tianxia may further subdivide its existing specialty areas to better meet patients’ diverse diagnostic and therapeutic needs.

Getting doctors and patients to become users of the platform is only the first step; more importantly, it is crucial to ensure that both parties truly “stay engaged.”

As physicians constitute a core resource, Huiyi Tianxia has consistently prioritized empowering them and identifying their needs, while continuously refining its physician training system.First, Huiyi Tianxia stratifies physicians based on information such as their department, professional rank, and city of practice. Second, it collaborates with professional academic institutions and associations. On one hand, leading industry societies and similar organizations are best positioned to perceive emerging trends and new directions; on the other hand, Huiyi Tianxia’s advanced technological operational capabilities enable complementary advantages with these institutions.

In December 2021, Huiyi Tianxia and the Yangtze River Academic Belt Breast Cancer Alliance (YBCSG) jointly launched the “Medical Accompaniment Team” project. Centered on specific cases, team members engaged in online discussions through internet-based consultations and treatment plan evaluations, providing their respective diagnostic and therapeutic recommendations along with supporting rationale. These were then reviewed and commented on by leading experts. Physicians in the Medical Accompaniment Team cast real-time votes and comments, while concurrently accessing medical evidence from the Medical Toolkit to offer insights and recommendations for formulating optimal diagnosis and treatment plans.

Furthermore, Huiyi Tianxia empowers physicians by offering services such as live streams with medical experts, online medical conferences, Smart e-Academy, online multidisciplinary team (MDT) consultations, and online case discussion voting.

For Patients with Specific Diseases, Huiyi Tianxia provides patients with one-on-one exclusive health services, including the establishment of personal health records, medication guidance and follow-up, health education, live-streamed expert lectures, and reminders for follow-up visits. In addition, Huiyi Tianxia is exploring new directions, such as conducting offline consultation activities with physicians, integrating with hospital Information Systems (HIS), and developing collaborative models with insurance companies to alleviate the financial burden of medical care for patients.

In 2021, Huiyi Tianxia launched an “Internet+”-enabled comprehensive disease management solution for chronic conditions, introducing a bundled service model of “medications + devices + services” tailored to specific patient populations to facilitate out-of-hospital self-monitoring of health status. Currently, this solution has been applied in the post-PCI (Percutaneous Coronary Intervention) management setting and is poised for future expansion into special disease areas characterized by prolonged clinical courses, such as oncology, breast cancer, and prostate cancer.

Internet healthcare has expanded the geographic and temporal scope of services, enhancing the continuity of medical care, maximizing physicians’ service capacity, and making it more convenient for patients to seek medical attention. Moreover, internet-based diagnosis and treatment offer significant advantages in medication purchasing and delivery, providing substantial convenience and support to patients. According to Dr. Yang Yushuang, the greatest advantage of Huiyi Tianxia is that its pharmaceutical products are trustworthy, and medication purchasing is highly convenient for patients.

“I had a patient with extremely high blood pressure, with systolic pressure exceeding 200 mmHg and diastolic pressure above 130 mmHg. It took me a month to stabilize his blood pressure,” shared Yang Yushuang. “One of the medications was difficult to obtain; it was not available at our hospital, nor could it be purchased at major hospitals or pharmacies in the patient’s vicinity. Ultimately, we were able to secure it through Huiyi Tianxia.”

The patient’s smooth access to medication was made possible by the support of Huiyi Tianxia’s “5+N” warehousing and distribution system.

Huiyi Tianxia has established five major warehousing and distribution centers in East, South, West, North, and Northeast China. Based on business volume demands, it adopts the “front-store, back-warehouse” and “pharmacy cloud warehouse” models., delivering medications locally and getting them into patients' hands within 30 to 40 hours.

Drawing on over two decades of experience in the internet industry, Chen Hua has pioneered a new retail model for pharmaceutical e-commerce and successfully implemented it in the development of Huiyi Tianxia’s supply chain system.

Chen Hua stated that the e-commerce industry in China has developed over many years, with leading e-commerce companies establishing extensive and comprehensive supply chain networks. Traditionally, these networks are distributed across five key regions: East, West, South, North, and Central China. However, Huiyi Tianxia did not establish a hub in Central China; instead, it set up operations in Changchun, located in Northeast China. This strategic decision aligns with the high concentration of patients with specialized chronic diseases on its platform in the Northeast region. This outcome reflects Huiyi Tianxia’s refinement of industry best practices, tailored to its specific operational realities.

Meanwhile, Huiyi Tianxia is also collaborating with outstanding chain enterprises across China to develop a pharmaceutical O2O model, which complements its B2C operations. This initiative encompasses N self-operated urban pharmacies and O2O alliance pharmacies, enabling patients to purchase medications with local delivery, achieving an average delivery time of 28.5 hours.During Shanghai’s epidemic prevention and control efforts, Huiyi Tianxia urgently launched the “Hui Medicine Express Delivery” feature, partnering with multiple offline O2O pharmacies to provide delivery services. The platform offered medications for chronic diseases across various specialties, including cardiovascular, endocrine, respiratory and gastrointestinal, and nephrology, striving to overcome the “last mile” challenge in medication delivery.

Founded in 2020, Huiyi Tianxia is a latecomer to the internet healthcare sector, yet it has successfully carved out a niche by differentiating itself through its focus on specialized disciplines and its deep understanding of doctor-patient dynamics. Chen Hua candidly remarked, “As a new company, it is premature to claim competitive advantages; we can only say that we have some distinct features. We aspire to achieve utmost professionalism in specialized fields, ensuring that both doctors and patients receive services that are as comprehensive, professional, and valuable as possible.”

In the future, Huiyi Tianxia will build upon its “familiar doctor-patient” care model and adhere to the principle of “deep specialization.” It will strengthen its presence in key strategic disease areas, including cardiovascular diseases, respiratory and gastrointestinal disorders, nephrology, oncology, and metabolic diseases. The goal is to establish Huiyi Tianxia as the internet hospital of choice for patients with these specialized conditions, and as the online platform most preferred by specialists for registration and practice.