Awei Pediatrics: Building an Integrated One-Stop Pediatric Clinic Brand Through Deepened Health Management Services

On an ordinary day, a parent, acting on a friend’s recommendation, brought their two-year-old child, who had been diagnosed with mild autism spectrum disorder (ASD), to Aiwei Pediatrics, a private pediatric outpatient clinic. After thoroughly understanding the situation and conducting a systematic assessment, the physician determined that the child had significant potential for rehabilitation and provided corresponding professional recommendations and training strategies. A follow-up evaluation three months later showed marked improvement in the child’s overall condition, including increased eye contact with others.

This is just one of the many treatment cases at Aiwei Pediatrics since its establishment in Wuhan in 2018, demonstrating the clinic’s strong local reputation. However, it also raises a question: as an offline pediatric outpatient clinic, how has Aiwei Pediatrics managed to rapidly gain the trust of parents? To explore this, VCBeat spoke with Zhang Lei, founder of Aiwei Pediatrics, to gain insights into its operational strategy.

Before founding Aiwei Pediatrics, Zhang Lei was already a practitioner in the healthcare industry. His focus on pediatrics stemmed from his personal experience of trying to secure medical appointments for his young daughter.

For parents, registering their children for medical appointments is no easy task. Seeking medical care feels like waging a war, and securing an appointment resembles the chaos of China’s Spring Festival travel rush—these are vivid reflections of the realities faced when children seek medical treatment. A significant factor contributing to these phenomena is the scarcity of pediatric resources in public hospitals. In such overcrowded clinical environments, the healthcare needs of patients and their families cannot be adequately met, and this supply-demand imbalance has created favorable conditions for the emergence and development of private pediatric clinics.

When first entering the field of pediatric outpatient care, Zhang Lei decided to establish his own pediatric clinic featuring a high-quality clinical environment and streamlined workflows that ensure ample communication between doctors and patients, addressing issues such as long waiting times and brief consultation periods commonly seen in public hospital pediatric outpatient departments.

Judging by the interior decor, first-time visitors to Aiwei Pediatrics might hesitate for a moment: Is this a children’s playground or a clinic?

Aiwei Pediatrics: The Real-Life Environment, from Colors to Decor, Aligns with Children’s Natural Instincts

Warm, spacious, and bright—this is the first impression most parents and children have when entering Aiwei Pediatrics. Inside the outpatient clinic, you won’t find rows of infusion beds and chairs; instead, your attention is drawn to a brightly colored children’s play area and cartoon illustrations on the walls. Many subtle details also stand out: small footprints on the wooden stairs, rocket-shaped doors, white clouds hanging from the ceiling of the play area, height measurement devices specially customized for children, and eye-friendly TVs with cute designs. These features transform the traditional perception of clinics held by both parents and children.

The doctor is consulting with a child, and an eye-care mini TV is placed on the desk.

A pleasant clinical environment is one factor that has earned Aiwei the favor of parents. However, for Aiwei Pediatrics, it is its comprehensive system encompassing appointment scheduling, consultations, follow-ups, and membership services that has been key to building a strong reputation among parents. Regarding the medical team, most of Aiwei Pediatrics’ physicians currently come from Wuhan Children’s Hospital and Wuhan Tongji Hospital, bringing extensive experience in pediatric care and helping to alleviate parental distrust toward the institution.

As a pediatric outpatient clinic providing high-quality, one-stop services to children aged 0–18, Aiwei Pediatrics not only offers diagnosis and treatment for common illnesses but also provides premium, specialized services such as child healthcare, pediatric tuina (therapeutic massage), and growth and development management. It is reported that Aiwei Pediatrics features key departments including General Pediatric Medicine, Child Healthcare, Pediatric Endocrinology, Pediatric Otolaryngology, Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) for Children, and Vaccination Services, supplemented by ancillary departments such as Clinical Laboratory and Radiology. While ensuring service quality, Aiwei Pediatrics maintains highly competitive pricing, enabling more families to access cost-effective, high-value care.

To provide patients with more reassuring and convenient services, Aiwei Pediatrics has adopted a membership-based operational system and optimized and upgraded its services across multiple stages—including pre-consultation, during consultation, and post-consultation—to create a positive healthcare experience.

For the diagnosis and treatment of common pediatric diseases, Aiwei Pediatrics adopts an appointment-based consultation model. Parents can schedule appointments via the WeChat official account or by phone. By limiting the number of daily consultations, this approach ensures that physicians have ample time to communicate with patients and their families during follow-up visits. Furthermore, the advance appointment system significantly reduces the likelihood of waiting in lines, thereby lowering the risk of cross-infection associated with queuing.

During the consultation, physicians appropriately extend the duration of the visit, typically lasting around 15–20 minutes. The physician’s questioning techniques and content adhere to detailed requirements and standards. In addition to assessing the progression of the patient’s condition and current physical status, the physician thoroughly obtains information on the patient’s medical history and recent dietary and lifestyle habits, thereby fully demonstrating the value of the clinical consultation.

To address parents’ questions about their child’s condition, Aiwei has implemented a proactive explanation initiative. Attending physicians patiently clarify each of the parents’ concerns, helping them develop an accurate understanding of the illness, build trust in the medical team, and thereby adhere to the prescribed medical instructions.

Furthermore, Aiwei Pediatrics’ clinical care system offers greater continuity compared to that of public hospitals. Leveraging its proprietary medical record management system, Aiwei Pediatrics establishes a dedicated growth profile for each member, meticulously documenting every illness and health examination. This ensures that patients’ future medical conditions can be traced back to their historical records.

Throughout the entire diagnosis and treatment process, Aiwei Pediatrics strictly adheres to evidence-based medical inquiry, avoiding excessive testing and interventions, while integrating child healthcare services to optimize disease management. Zhang Lei told VCBeat, “We aim to keep as many children out of hospitals as possible within our capabilities. By combining clinical care with preventive child healthcare services, we proactively mitigate potential risks, shifting the focus from treatment alone to prevention-first.”

Therefore, on the basis of providing routine diagnosis and treatment of diseases and child healthcare services, Aiwei Pediatrics has launched infant and toddler massage services integrated with Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) syndrome differentiation theory, aiming to address suboptimal health conditions in children, reduce the frequency of illness, and prevent common diseases.

As private clinics operating outside the public hospital system, community-based pediatric clinics can serve as a robust complement to public hospitals. To address this, Aiwei Pediatrics has established referral pathways with specialized hospitals to meet the treatment needs of children with serious illnesses. Furthermore, Aiwei Pediatrics is deeply exploring opportunities in health maintenance and post-illness management beyond acute disease treatment, committing to provide one-stop health management services for children. This approach achieves a complementary relationship between the medical services offered by public hospitals and the personalized care provided by private clinics.

After two years of development, Aiwei Pediatrics has established a reputation and image for high-quality pediatric diagnosis and treatment services among the local population in Wuhan. By leveraging online community management and offline collaborations with institutions such as schools and communities, the clinic has achieved a stable daily patient flow. Currently, Aiwei Pediatrics’ revenue streams primarily consist of consultation fees, pharmaceutical sales, membership fees, and health management services. In the future, Aiwei plans to gradually expand into more specialized health services, including vision care and dental care.

Moving forward, building on the clinic’s robust growth, Aiwei Pediatrics will further refine its service offerings, secure additional high-quality medical resources, and collaborate with a large pool of distinguished physicians. Leveraging capital support, the company aims to drive service innovation and project expansion, ultimately achieving chain-scale growth.