WeDoctor Selected as One of China's Top 50 Digital Economy Industry Demonstration Cases for Advancing Healthcare Reform Through Digital Innovation

“Many things happening in China appear neither in textbooks nor in academic papers; they are found in the vivid reality of China,” said He Fan, an economist and professor at the Antai College of Economics and Management, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, in his remarks for the “Top 50 Demonstration Cases of China’s Digital Economy Industry” selection.

2021 marked the 30th anniversary of China’s accession to APEC. Seizing this opportunity, the APEC China Business Council and its Digital Economy Committee jointly launched the “China Digital Economy Industry Demonstration Model Initiative.” Aligned with the “Digital China” strategy under the 14th Five-Year Plan, the initiative invited authoritative domestic and international experts and research institutions to conduct comprehensive assessments of enterprises in terms of development quality, technological innovation, compliance and governance, and influence, thereby curating an annual selection of demonstration models that showcase the unique advantages of China’s digital economy.

On December 25, at the APEC Business Community Thematic Event Celebrating the 30th Anniversary of China’s Accession to APEC and the 2021 APEC CEO Summit China Forum, the “Top 50 Demonstration Models of China’s Digital Economy Industry” was officially released.WeDoctor’s Digital Healthcare Reform Innovation Practice: Building a Chinese-Style Health Management and Care System Through Digitalization

Currently, China is vigorously promoting the healthcare reform experience of Sanming to drive the transformation of the medical service system from being “disease-centered” to “health-centered.” In October 2021, the Leading Group for Healthcare Reform of the State Council issued the Implementation Opinions on Deepening the Promotion of the Experience of Sanming City, Fujian Province, and Furthering Healthcare System Reform, which emphasized “advancing the development of medical consortia” and proposed reform measures such as exploring global budget payment for medical insurance and encouraging centralized volume-based procurement.

Building a digital health maintenance system centered on people’s health to achieve more efficient health management and care for the entire population has become a key objective of healthcare reform. It is reported that WeDoctor is currently assisting Sanming in building a hospital internet platform that is “horizontally comprehensive, vertically integrated, and fully interconnected,” connecting, supplementing, serving, and empowering the 12 general hospitals in Sanming City to jointly create a “Digital Health Community,” thereby forming a digital health management and care organization.

WeDoctor Since2015Since the establishment of China's first internet hospital in [year], we have continuously strengthened“Medical Care + Pharmaceuticals + Insurance + Data” Multidimensional Capabilities: Leveraging internet hospitals as the platform, driven by reforms in medical insurance payment methods, and through the establishment of internet-based medical consortia, this approach aims to alleviate pressure on large hospitals, enhance the capabilities of primary care institutions, improve the efficiency of basic and commercial insurance payments, optimize supply chain efficiency, and explore the development of Chinese-style Health Maintenance Organizations (HMOs).

Taking WeDoctor’s implemented practices in Tianjin as an example, in January 2020, the Tianjin Municipal People’s Government and WeDoctor Group signed the “Strategic Cooperation Agreement on ‘Digital Health’,” reaching agreements on collaborative initiatives such as co-establishing a Digital Health Community. Under the leadership of the Tianjin Municipal Health Commission, WeDoctor Internet General Hospital of Tianjin took the lead in coordinating with 267 primary healthcare institutions across Tianjin to establish a tightly integrated internet-based medical consortium—the Tianjin Primary Care Digital Health Community. By leveraging a digital platform to coordinate primary healthcare institutions, it created a citywide closed-loop service system encompassing medical care, pharmaceuticals, insurance, and diagnostics, and initiated the construction of a health management and care system with chronic disease health management as the entry point.

Supported by four major cloud platforms—“Cloud Management,” “Cloud Services,” “Cloud Pharmacy,” and “Cloud Diagnostics”—the Healthcare Consortium has facilitated information interoperability between primary healthcare institutions and large hospitals, enhanced service capacity and efficiency at the grassroots level, and attracted a significant number of patients with common and chronic diseases to seek care at primary facilities. As of November 2021, digital upgrades had been implemented in more than 230 primary healthcare institutions across the city, cumulatively serving over 210,000 patients, issuing nearly 500,000 “cloud prescriptions,” and providing free medication delivery to patients’ homes on 30,000 occasions, leading to steadily increasing patient satisfaction.

Tianjin’s Grassroots Digital Health Community has explored and deployed digital chronic disease management services, providing standardized and intelligent care to nearly 400,000 diabetic patients across the city. It has also piloted new payment models such as diagnosis-related group (DRG) bundling and capitation. Based on assessments of healthcare quality and management outcomes, an incentive and constraint mechanism of “retaining surpluses and covering no deficits” has been implemented to effectively promote a shift toward “health-centered” care. Statistical data show that after more than a year of development, the rate of standardized management for diabetic patients in pilot grassroots medical institutions within the Health Community reached 76.68%. Analysis of patient samples under management revealed a 21.58 percentage point increase in blood glucose control rates. Furthermore, grassroots medical institutions that have implemented capitation-based payments achieved medical insurance surplus rates ranging from 16% to 31%.

Practice has proven that over the past 30 years, China’s digital economy has achieved substantial development and has become a key force leading global innovation and growth in the digital economy. The exploration of empowering the new healthcare reform with digitalization and building a digital health management and care system is a microcosm of how China’s digital economy drives the development of the medical and health industry. It will also serve as an important lever for China’s healthcare sector to enter a new stage and achieve inclusive access to digital healthcare.