Yi Mai Tong Releases First Annual Report Since IPO: Revenue and Profit Both Surge

On March 24, Medlive, which went public with the positioning of China’s largest online professional physician platform, released its first post-IPO financial report. In 2021, Medlive achieved a total revenue of RMB 284 million, representing a year-on-year increase of 33.2%; its adjusted net profit was RMB 107 million, up 25.4% year on year.

Physicians are the most critical resource in the healthcare industry, and their demand has spurred the emergence of a number of physician-focused platforms. Among these, Medlive’s registered physician base grew significantly to 3.1 million in 2021, accounting for 75% of licensed physicians in China.

Can Serving Physicians Support a Publicly Listed Company? According to data previously released by Medlive, the company has seen continuous growth in revenue and profits since 2018. Thus, its 2021 performance continued this trend, demonstrating that physician-focused platforms can sustain steady business growth. So, how has Medlive built its business model around physician services? What new breakthroughs did it achieve in 2021, and what is its future momentum? VCBeat provides an analysis.

Targeting different user segments, Medlive has developed three major categories of solutions. Its precision academic marketing and enterprise solutions primarily serve pharmaceutical and medical device companies, healthcare institutions, and research organizations. These solutions provide digital academic marketing services to pharmaceutical and medical device companies, while offering SaaS services related to clinical trials (CRO) and real-world studies (RWS) to healthcare and research institutions.

Medical Knowledge Solutions offer a matrix of products, including clinical guidelines, disease knowledge bases, medical advancements, medication references, and medical videos, to address various challenges physicians encounter in learning, research, and clinical practice, while meeting the healthcare industry’s demand for professional medical information.

Smart Patient Management Solutions include internet hospital services, as well as patient management and education services launched in collaboration with non-profit organizations and pharmaceutical and medical device companies.

Driven by the concurrent growth of its three major solution categories, Medlive achieved a “double win” in both revenue and profit in 2021.

Medlive’s Performance Growth; Data Source: Prospectus and 2021 Annual Report; Chart Compiled by VCBeat

In fact, as shown in the chart above, Medlive has maintained consistent performance growth in recent years, based on its disclosed financial results. Furthermore, Medlive’s gross profit margin has remained stable at approximately 70%. This sustained revenue growth and steady profitability not only bolster Medlive’s confidence as it seeks a listing on the secondary market, but also lay a solid foundation for even stronger future performance.

A review of the performance reports reveals that Medlive’s ability to achieve a trend of steady growth stems from its continuous upgrading and consolidation of its three core solution capabilities. In 2021, Medlive made breakthroughs in pharmaceutical and medical device enterprise services, physician services, and patient services.

Pharmaceutical reforms have compelled pharmaceutical and medical device companies to urgently seek digital academic marketing solutions. Since 2013, Medlive has introduced M3’s “precision” academic marketing system, which has achieved sustained success in overseas markets. This system leverages data on physicians’ online learning behaviors and employs AI and other technologies to construct comprehensive profiles of physicians’ foundational knowledge and clinical decision-making cognition. It provides pharmaceutical and medical device companies with an integrated solution encompassing medical strategy formulation, digital content planning and production, precise online education for target physicians, evaluation of educational outcomes, and cohort profile analysis.

Over the past eight years since introducing its “Precision” academic marketing system, Medlive has continuously collaborated with top-tier global originators of pharmaceuticals and medical devices as well as leading domestic enterprises. It has implemented full-lifecycle solutions covering new products, growth-stage products, and mature-stage products, thereby refining a “Precision” academic marketing system that aligns with the characteristics of the Chinese market and meets the academic needs of Chinese physicians.

By leveraging this system, pharmaceutical and medical device companies can formulate personalized medical strategies to meet the varying academic needs of top-tier, mid-tier, and primary-care hospitals, thereby uncovering potential opportunities in academic marketing. This system offers particular advantages for mid-tier and primary-care hospitals. These institutions are numerous, have limited individual patient potential, and are geographically dispersed, resulting in a very low return on investment for traditional face-to-face visits by field representatives. Built upon Medlive’s 26-year development and its platform matrix that has long attracted physicians, “Precision” Academic Marketing standardizes the level of academic education provided by pharmaceutical and medical device companies. Furthermore, through physician profiling engines and surveys, the “Precision” Academic Marketing system continuously captures physicians’ learning behaviors and phased cognitive outcomes, making the results of academic marketing more visible.

Because precise digital education can be targeted to specific hospitals, departments, and professional titles, pharmaceutical and medical device companies can clearly see the educational costs invested in each target hospital, enabling better assessment of the return on investment. This provides better options for mature prescription drugs under the influence of volume-based procurement to further expand into grassroots markets, as well as for innovative drug products with drastically shortened window periods due to volume-based procurement to rapidly cover the entire Chinese market.

Medlive’s Precision Digital Push Model for Medical Information Based on Physician Profiling, Image Source: Public Data

Growth in the Number of Physicians “Engaged in Precision Academic Marketing” on Medlive; Data Source: Prospectus and 2021 Data, Chart Compiled by VCBeat

In “precision” academic marketing services, a critical operational metric is the “number of physicians engaged in precision academic marketing.” This metric refers to the total number of target physicians who receive sustained online education over the long term, as precisely identified by pharmaceutical and medical device companies targeting specific hospitals, departments, and individual doctors. As shown in the chart above, from 2018 to 2021, an increasing number of physicians regularly and continuously received digital academic education from pharmaceutical companies. This data also reflects the high appeal of the Medlive platform to physicians, as well as how Medlive’s scientific and systematic approach to academic marketing has cultivated physicians’ habits of engaging in online clinical learning and accepting educational programs offered by originator pharmaceutical and medical device companies.

In 2021, Medlive integrated multiple service models to establish capabilities based on a one-stop digital clinical research platform, an internet hospital, Electronic Data Capture (EDC) solutions, and Decentralized Clinical Trial (DCT) solutions. Medlive also combined Real-World Study (RWS) delivery with digital marketing, effectively integrating RWS evidence generation with evidence-based digital marketing. This module has been successfully applied in RWS-supported solutions across fields such as oncology, hematology, and nephrology.

Thus, Medlive can provide services including project management, clinical monitoring, data management, biostatistics, study design, medical monitoring, patient recruitment, and support systems through its one-stop digital clinical research platform.

Benefiting from its continuously strengthening digital marketing capabilities, Medlive saw significant growth in both the number of clients served and product offerings in 2021. Correspondingly, its precision marketing and enterprise solutions delivered substantial returns, generating RMB 259 million in revenue, a year-on-year increase of 34.9%. Meanwhile, revenue from precision marketing and enterprise solutions accounted for 91% of the company’s total revenue, becoming the primary driver of performance growth.

Growth of Medlive’s Precision Marketing and Enterprise Solutions; Data Source: Prospectus and 2021 Annual Report; Chart Compiled by VCBeat

Physicians constitute Medlive’s primary user base and its most core asset. Attracting more physicians to use the platform, enhancing their professional recognition of the platform, and boosting their engagement directly impact the sustainability of Medlive’s business model. Medlive primarily achieves these objectives by refining its medical knowledge products, including expanding the coverage of medical knowledge, optimizing the quality of medical content, and improving the user experience for physicians.

Previously, after years of accumulation, Medlive had already developed content and tool-based products widely used by physicians, including Clinical Guidelines, Medical Literature King, Drug Reference, and the Comprehensive Medical Dictionary.

In 2021, Medlive leveraged its oncology knowledge database to expand its clinical decision support products into therapeutic areas including cardiovascular diseases, endocrinology, vestibular medicine, and neurological disorders. The company enriched the knowledge content of its offerings, such as disease knowledge bases, clinical guidelines, latest medical advancements, medical videos, and drug information. Notably, the number of clinical guidelines increased by approximately 50%, while the volume of medical videos surged by about 193.4%, reaching a total of 43,000.

In addition, Medlive launched the “MedSearch” platform in 2021 for healthcare professionals, providing valuable medical knowledge content from both China and abroad through an AI-powered search engine to meet users’ needs for comprehensive, precise, and efficient searches.

In recent years, competition among various internet platforms in the healthcare sector for physician engagement has intensified. Since the Chinese government began affirming and encouraging internet-based healthcare services, both large-scale and small-to-medium-sized platforms have made user acquisition and activation of physicians a priority. Compounding this challenge is the fact that public hospitals are also vigorously launching their own online services. Consequently, attracting more physician users and capturing a greater share of their time is no easy task. Relying solely on material incentives to encourage physicians to register and use these platforms essentially renders them “passive” users. In contrast, meeting physicians’ needs for lifelong learning and professional growth through continuously updated medical knowledge and tools can foster their transition into active platform users.

Medlive’s deeper accumulation in medical knowledge services has also yielded corresponding returns: the number of registered physician users on its platform increased from 2.4 million at the end of 2020 to 3.1 million at the end of 2021. According to the “2021 China Health and Health Statistical Yearbook,” the total number of licensed physicians in China (including assistant licensed physicians) reached 4.0857 million, indicating that approximately 75% of them have become Medlive users. Meanwhile, Medlive’s average monthly active users (MAU) in the fourth quarter of 2021 reached 1.61 million, representing a year-on-year increase of 56%.

Most of the medical knowledge content provided by Medlive is available to users free of charge, while some premium or latest content requires payment, through either a membership fee or a pay-per-download model. Benefiting from expanded content coverage and improved quality, both active users and paying physician users of Medlive continued to grow in 2021, fully reflecting physicians’ recognition of the value of Medlive’s medical knowledge.

In terms of patient services, unlike some internet hospitals that adopt a "medication-selling" model covering all disease types with low profit margins, Medlive leverages its extensive physician resources on the platform to initiate patient management from single-disease perspectives. It provides physicians with support in management, professional development, and income generation, while offering patients an integrated doctor-patient management model that enhances doctor-patient interaction, improves disease awareness, and increases treatment adherence.

Since the launch of the Internet Hospital in 2021, the Medlive Patient Management Platform has accumulated 115,000 users and attracted 35,000 physicians to practice online within less than a year, establishing six single-disease management service platforms for breast cancer, lung cancer, lymphoma, Parkinson’s disease, stroke, and diabetes.

On single-disease patient management platforms, ranging from enhancing physicians’ clinical awareness to improving patients’ treatment adherence, new sales growth strategies are emerging for pharmaceutical and medical device companies struggling amid volume-based procurement. As these solutions continue to mature, an increasing number of companies are opting for single-disease patient education solutions. Furthermore, the continuously enriched and robust patient management platforms offer more efficient and sustainable possibilities for patient recruitment in clinical trials and real-world studies.

Medlive continues to strengthen its service capabilities for physicians and pharmaceutical and medical device companies, while also enhancing patient services, thereby fostering synergy among the three. Within this synergistic ecosystem, physicians, pharmaceutical and medical device companies, and patients serve as key participants who act not only as users and payers but also as contributors of content or resources, creating value for one another. Medlive leverages its expertise in medical knowledge integration and technological capabilities to serve as the hub sustaining these relationships.

The Collaborative Model Built by Medlive, Chart by VCBeat

First, physician resources form the foundation. Leveraging these resources enables the provision of digital marketing services to pharmaceutical and medical device companies, as well as online consultation and disease management services to patients.

According to the 2021 annual report, Medlive will further enrich its medical knowledge content and continuously upgrade its technology to provide greater support for physicians’ professional practice. For instance, it will continue to build knowledge graphs and optimize the search and recommendation functionalities of “MedSearch” through semantic and contextual linking. Medlive is also developing a single-disease clinical decision support system to deliver intelligent decision-making services, including diagnosis, intelligent alerts, and treatment recommendations.

Furthermore, Medlive plans to expand its coverage among primary care physicians by providing tailored solutions for doctors at county-level hospitals and grassroots medical institutions.

These initiatives are expected to further expand the scale and activity level of Medlive’s physician user base, thereby strengthening its capabilities in digital pharmaceutical marketing and patient services.

Secondly, collaboration with pharmaceutical and medical device companies can provide physicians with timely and comprehensive medical knowledge, thereby more effectively supporting clinical decision-making.

The prospectus reveals that among Medlive’s top five customers in recent years, the majority were Chinese subsidiaries of multinational pharmaceutical companies. As planned, medical device manufacturers, domestic innovative drug enterprises, and pharmaceutical companies significantly affected by centralized procurement policies are also key targets for Medlive’s business expansion. The 2021 annual report indicated that Medlive further expanded its digital solutions, extending its service offerings to include medical devices, early screening and diagnostic products, and innovative biological drugs. It is foreseeable that as Medlive increases its coverage of specialized segments within the pharmaceutical and medical device industries, the dimensions of medical knowledge available to physicians will broaden, enabling them to access more comprehensive and cutting-edge medical information.

Finally, patient service data can provide pharmaceutical and medical device companies with more end-user and R&D data, while offering physicians a more convenient platform for clinical practice.

Although Medlive’s direct-to-patient services are still in their early stages, the long-term value potential of its patient services is substantial.

Medlive stated in its 2021 annual report that its internet hospital would subsequently launch chronic disease management services for a broader range of conditions.

In the future, as the patient population grows, clinical trial recruitment will become more efficient. Meanwhile, Medlive has established a Decentralized Clinical Trial (DCT) platform that enables remote clinical monitoring, ensuring that clinical trials are not disrupted by pandemics while also alleviating the burden on patients. Furthermore, Medlive can replicate its expertise in building physician profiles for the patient side; after accumulating a substantial user base, it can engage in digital marketing of over-the-counter (OTC) drugs to consumers, thereby generating incremental revenue.

It is evident that the aforementioned synergies are closely interlinked, forming a virtuous cycle. As Medlive’s operational scale expands, these synergistic relationships become tighter, further strengthening its competitive moat.

Any sustainable business model requires growing market demand and stable payers. Judging from Medlive’s revenue structure, pharmaceutical and medical device companies have become its primary and stable payers, driven by precision digital marketing and enterprise solutions.

Currently, China’s pharmaceutical and medical device sector is undergoing rapid transformation: innovation efforts are intensifying, with an increasing number of innovative drugs and devices approved for market entry and reaching the commercialization stage; meanwhile, traditional marketing and distribution channels are facing significant challenges. Against the backdrop of normalized national reimbursement drug list (NRDL) negotiations and centralized volume-based procurement (VBP), pharmaceutical and medical device companies must accelerate market penetration or consolidate their market positions through diverse channels. Digital marketing, offering higher efficiency and lower costs, will undoubtedly become an essential strategy for more companies in this industry. According to a report by Frost & Sullivan, the market size of digital marketing for pharmaceuticals in China was only RMB 15.2 billion in 2020 and is projected to reach RMB 363.3 billion by 2030.

However, digital marketing models are still being explored, with significant variations in effectiveness across different platforms. A deep understanding of the industry is required to make sound judgments, leading many pharmaceutical and medical device companies to remain on the sidelines. As a physician platform that has pioneered entry into the secondary market, Medlive’s performance data demonstrates the viability of its business model. Facing vast future market opportunities, Medlive’s mission extends beyond achieving its own growth; it must also showcase industry value to hesitant enterprises through exploration and innovation. In the future, driving the entire industry to successfully implement sustainable business models will be more meaningful than merely validating its own.