Trillion-Dollar Health Management Market: How Innovative Enterprises Can Seize the Opportunity

From ancient times to the present, how to maintain long-term health has always been a perplexing problem for people.

In ancient China, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) proposed the theory of “preventive treatment,” emphasizing the importance of taking precautions to safeguard health. The story of “Bian Que Meets Duke Huan of Cai” is widely circulated as a testament to this concept. In contemporary society, the vigorous promotion of “health management” serves as an extension of this philosophy, aiming to facilitate a shift from a lifestyle characterized by overexertion and a focus on treatment to a new paradigm centered on health preservation and prevention.

In recent years, there has been a steady stream of policies related to health management.In 2016, health across the entire life cycle was elevated to the level of national strategy for the first time. By 2020, the state reaffirmed that the concept of whole-life-cycle health management should be integrated into all stages of urban planning, construction, and governance.The concept of shifting from “seeking medical treatment for illness” to “preventive healthcare” is entering households across the country with socioeconomic development.

It is important to recognize that encouraging people to change unhealthy lifestyles and behavioral habits is inherently “counter-intuitive,” requiring sustained long-term commitment. This is particularly challenging for proactive prevention in daily life. Whether it involves adopting healthy lifestyle practices, acquiring basic health literacy skills, or enhancing self-awareness of one’s health status, these tasks are extremely difficult and often require external support or intervention.

Since the dawn of the 21st century, the rapid advancement of information technology and biotechnology has made point-to-point digital health management models a reality, driving them toward increasing maturity under the impetus of industrialization.The widespread adoption of wearable devices and home monitoring equipment has democratized access to continuous, dynamic health data anytime and anywhere, while health management models continue to innovate and be effectively implemented.

Riding this wave, the health management market has entered its golden age. Relevant data show that the scale of the health management industry reached RMB 6 trillion in 2020. Keeping pace with the times, a world where “health self-reliance” can be achieved through technology is unfolding, becoming a new opportunity that innovative enterprises in the healthcare sector are eager to seize.

China’s health management sector first gained momentum in 2001, when the country registered its first health management company, subsequently giving rise to a wave of health management institutions primarily focused on health checkups.

However, in actual operation, the domestic health management market has not expanded rapidly. According to the "Big Data Report on Chinese Family Health," among China's 1.4 billion people, less than one-quarter understand and grasp basic health knowledge and concepts, and fewer than one-fifth maintain a healthy lifestyle or possess basic health skills. This indicates that residents' health literacy remains at a low level, with significant room for improvement.

The underlying reason is that,Traditional health management services primarily rely on periodic check-ups conducted by hospitals or other medical and healthcare institutions. This manual, labor-intensive approach is characterized by low efficiency and poor patient compliance. Furthermore, patient data sharing remains challenging, as confidential information held by professional medical institutions—including electronic medical records, medical imaging, and diagnostic reports—is not accessible to third-party health management platforms.

Fortunately, the emergence of a new set of technical approaches is addressing the aforementioned issues.

First, with the advent of the AIoT era of the Internet of Everything, mobile health devices are capable of monitoring most vital signs and performing medical scans, making the acquisition of human health data increasingly simple and convenient.

For example, Apple’s Apple Watch can measure heart rate, track menstrual cycles, and manage workouts, enabling users to monitor their health status anytime and anywhere; unfortunately, however, it currently lacks integration with follow-up medical service resources.

Chinese startups are also actively expanding into this sector. Huami Technology (NYSE: ZEPP), leveraging its smart wearable devices such as fitness bands and smartwatches, has deeply invested in developing an AI-powered healthcare engine. This technology enables automatic detection of arrhythmias, sleep patterns, and exercise metrics. The company aims to open up these capabilities to health authorities and research institutions in the future, thereby contributing to the establishment of a robust public health system.

Furthermore, the acquisition of data provides crucial support for users to achieve proactive health management by enabling subsequent extended medical and health services to be quantifiable and visualized, with timely feedback.

For example, Miao Health’s IoT-based big data health platform, “Miao+,” breaks down data silos by connecting to more than 90% of the wearable and smart devices available on the market, including over 300 monitoring devices such as smart bands, blood pressure monitors, and glucose meters.

Leveraging the “Miao+” platform, Miao Health extracts value from the high-frequency, multi-dimensional out-of-hospital data collected from users, enabling accurate prediction of disease risks. It helps individuals improve their lifestyles and correct unhealthy habits by providing continuous tracking across multiple dimensions, including exercise, nutrition, mental health, and sleep. Additionally, it offers a range of medical and health services, such as physical examinations, expedited appointment registration, online consultations, and precision medicine arrangements.

Miao Health’s data interface capabilities can also be embedded into other smart hardware devices. For example, in collaboration with Baidu, it has built data collection capabilities around the Xiaodu Smart Speaker, integrating Baidu Lingyi Zhihui’s chronic disease management solution to provide interactive management services for patients with chronic conditions.

Most importantly, digital technologies can facilitate the shift in focus from physician-led treatment to health management by emphasizing the three-dimensional interaction among hospitals, communities, and households and prioritizing patients’ self-management, while also helping insurance and pharmaceutical companies accumulate user data.

The integration of in-hospital and out-of-hospital data will further enable personalized precision treatment plans, drive upgrades across the industry chain, reduce marketing and customer acquisition challenges for pharmaceutical and insurance companies, and provide timely feedback on efficacy validation to improve the research and development of new products.

The Curtain Rises on a Golden Age: How Should Innovative Enterprises Respond to the Trillion-Dollar Trend in Health Management?

Drawing on global experience, building a closed-loop ecosystem for “medical care, pharmaceuticals, and insurance” empowered by digital technology offers a valuable model to emulate.

Taking UnitedHealth as an example, as the largest managed care company in the United States, it leverages big data, health information, and clinical expertise as its core competencies. By continuously extending its industrial chain on the foundation of its primary insurance business, it has created a one-stop integrated service model. The two focal points are health insurance and health services, which generate strong synergies.

The environment abroad is, after all, quite different from that in China.Health management requires deep collaboration among all stakeholders in the broader health industry chain; however, certain domestic participants—primarily public hospitals—lack strong incentives, and the traditional integrated “medical care–pharmaceuticals–insurance” value chain has not been fully interconnected.

How to Solve?By observing the development of leading digital health enterprises in China, the key to breaking through lies in building an internet healthcare ecosystem.

As a key member of Ping An’s healthcare ecosystem, Ping An Health, leveraging its inherent insurance advantages, continues to bet on health services through digital technologies. It is committed to integrating online and offline medical and healthcare services, with online medical services at its core. By utilizing online traffic entry points, it seeks innovative collaboration models for the integration of healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and insurance, thereby addressing users’ three major challenges: diagnosis and treatment, medication purchase, and payment.

Another trend worth noting is the use of “open” digital health management platforms to connect multiple stakeholders, linking individuals with service providers and helping insurers, pharmaceutical companies, and public hospitals build new communities of shared interest.A typical example is Miao Health.

At the Strategic Summit of the 5th Future Healthcare Top 100 Conference, Kong Fei, CEO of Miao Health, stated that Miao Health uses health management as a link to connect healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and insurance, strengthening cooperation with upstream and downstream players in the industry chain. By providing one-stop health management solutions, it offers users full-scenario services ranging from early screening, risk warning, health assessment, and health intervention to medical consultation and insurance coverage.

For instance, in insurance-focused collaborations, Miao Health primarily assists insurers in building a digital middle platform for “Insurance + Health Management,” aiming to enhance insurers’ risk control capabilities and agents’ health management service proficiency. By providing services such as innovative insurance product design, product marketing, intelligent underwriting and claims adjudication, personalized health plans, and the deployment of offline health management stores, it empowers the entire insurance value chain.

It is evident that, starting from health management and achieving deep integration based on data, algorithms, and insurance, building a digital middle platform for “Insurance + Health Management” is also a high-quality pathway. For users, accessing a single platform allows them to independently select different health plans according to their dynamic health needs, thereby receiving precisely recommended medical, insurance, and pharmaceutical services, which significantly enhances user experience.

In summary, differing conditions abroad and in China have given rise to distinct business models, with companies pursuing varied specific pathways. Nevertheless, the core logic remains unchanged: leveraging digital tools to make health management more accessible and convenient.

Faced with the historic opportunity in health management, countless medical innovation enterprises and capital investors are poised to seize the market.

Data from the VCBeat database shows that from 2018 to the first quarter of 2021, there were over 160 financing and investment events in the primary market for health management, with capital inflows exceeding RMB 7.5 billion, making the sector exceptionally hot.

In light of this trend, medical innovation enterprises should take note of two key points.

First, prioritizing the evolution of the industry's underlying logic is a mandatory course for every medical innovation enterprise.Big data serves as the digital healthcare infrastructure, emphasizing technological and digital innovation. The technical mining and analysis of big data in healthcare are playing an increasingly vital role in clinical applications, medical research, and public life. Unlocking the potential of data is key to guiding the future development of the broader health industry.

Second, from the perspective of future development, the deep integration of diverse business models is a prevailing trend.Whether for established players or new entrants, the key to building a competitive moat lies in centering on the closed-loop ecosystem of “Internet + Healthcare, Medical Services, Pharmaceuticals, and Insurance,” leveraging their own strengths, amplifying core competencies, and deeply cultivating the industry.

The future is already here. We believe that as more enterprises enter the health management sector, the vision of a Healthy China will continue to advance.