Yibai Tech Empowers Pharma Digital Transformation Through Asset Digitization and Precision Marketing

In 2016, under the new round of healthcare reform, controlling medical expenses became a key policy focus. With pharmaceutical companies’ profit margins squeezed, their most pressing need was to determine how to more effectively compete for limited marketing channels amid reduced investment.

Gao Jianfei has nearly 20 years of experience in the advertising and fast-moving consumer goods (FMCG) marketing industries. His prior experience enabled him to keenly identify entrepreneurial opportunities in digital pharmaceutical marketing. “Driven by factors such as policy and market dynamics, digital pharmaceutical marketing—characterized by lower costs and higher efficiency—is poised to enter a phase of rapid growth.”

Therefore, in 2016, Gao Jianfei embarked on a new entrepreneurial journey at the age of 48 by founding Beijing Medical Technology. “Healthcare is an industry driven by passion and purpose. Thus, as I approach the age of fifty, I am committed to undertaking meaningful work in this field, contributing energy and warmth to the industry through our efforts.”

Relying onAll-Scenario One-Stop SaaS Cloud Service Platform, Beijing Medical Technology currently assists numerous pharmaceutical companies, medical device manufacturers, academic societies, and associations in their digital transformation, with a total client base exceeding 500. In the capital markets, Beijing Medical Technology has also garnered significant favor; in 2019, it completed a Series A financing round worth tens of millions of RMB, invested by Huimei Capital. Just recently, the company completed another Series A+ financing round amounting to tens of millions of US dollars.

How Does Beijing Medical Technology, a Leading Provider of Digital Marketing Services for the Pharmaceutical Industry in China, Build Brand Influence? What Positive Impacts Did the Pandemic Bring to the Company? How Will the Company Maintain Rapid Growth During This Period of Industry Opportunity? VCBeat Conducted an Exclusive Interview with Gao Jianfei, Founder of Beijing Medical Technology.

Gao Jianfei, Founder of Beijing Medical Technology

The emergence of digital marketing tools in the pharmaceutical industry can be traced back to 2010 or even earlier. The market offers a wide array of such tools, ranging from email campaigns, website development and operation, and official account management to live streaming, interactive engagement, and online conferences. Although pharmaceutical companies have long employed digital tools to support their marketing efforts, the results have been less than significant due to the lack of a systematic, holistic digital marketing solution.

In fact, the market has never lacked digital marketing tools. However, Beijing Medical Technology has been contemplating: while relying solely on tools can only save time and costs, how can we deliver more sustainable value to enterprise marketing?

Gao Jianfei believes: “The pharmaceutical industry is not in the business of selling drugs; at its core, it sells academic concepts., helping physicians learn and embrace new therapeutic concepts through academic promotion, thereby delivering better treatment options to patients.”

So, how can academic concepts be more effectively communicated to physicians? In the past, pharmaceutical companies lacked their own proprietary platforms. Physicians would choose one platform for live streaming, another for publishing academic content, and yet another for expert lectures, resulting in large amounts of data scattered across various third-party platforms and rendering it unusable. With the rise of SaaS services, Beijing Medical Technology determined that helping pharmaceutical companies establish their own proprietary platforms is key to enhancing the effectiveness of digital marketing in the pharmaceutical industry and achieving precision marketing.Only by continuously consolidating data from various channels, academic content, and proprietary physician resources onto in-house platforms to form digital assets can pharmaceutical companies unlock the maximum value of digital marketing.

Consequently, Beijing Medical Technology began dedicating itself to providing pharmaceutical companies with exclusive marketing platforms and developing corresponding online tools tailored to offline marketing scenarios in the pharmaceutical industry. Currently,The company covers more than 30 traditional pharmaceutical marketing scenarios, including multi-channel interaction, online classrooms, live surgical broadcasts, case collection, questionnaire surveys, knowledge competitions, and other interactive formats.

In January 2018, Beijing Medical Technology officially launched its all-scenario, one-stop SaaS cloud service platform. “At that time, the industry lacked strong motivation to adopt SaaS platforms, with insufficient understanding of compliance, dedicated platforms, and efficient marketing. Pharmaceutical companies remained heavily reliant on traditional marketing and showed limited willingness to explore digital marketing.”

The turning point emerged in the second half of 2018 with the release of the “Document on Centralized Drug Procurement in ‘4+7’ Cities.” As the consistency evaluation of generic drugs continued to advance, pharmaceutical companies experienced declining profits, leading to the collapse of the traditional high-cost, low-efficiency marketing model. Consequently, many pharmaceutical enterprises began seeking low-cost, high-efficiency digital marketing solutions to maintain their marketing capabilities amid compressed gross margins.

“While other industries place greater emphasis on the ‘invisible hand’ of the market, the pharmaceutical industry must pay close attention to the ‘visible hand’ of policy. In many cases, transformations in the pharmaceutical sector are driven by policy.” Propelled by policy drivers, Beijing Medical Technology experienced its first minor surge in business volume in the second half of 2018, successfully signing contracts with 60 clients.

Over the past three years, Beijing Medical Technology has achieved a breakthrough from zero to one, validating the feasibility of its business model.“Beijing Medical Technology’sCustomerStrong stickiness, high renewal rate.” All 60 clients signed in 2018 chose to renew their contracts the following year. In 2019, the number of clients grew to 200, all of whom renewed their contracts. Through a snowballing effect, the company’s total client base has now exceeded 500.

2020 was hailed as the inaugural year of digital marketing in the pharmaceutical industry, with a wave of digital transformation sweeping through pharmaceutical companies driven by policy changes and the impact of the pandemic.

In 2020, policies continued to deepen toward stricter regulation and enhanced compliance. The large-scale implementation of volume-based procurement and monitoring of medical insurance cost-control measures persisted, while the registration system for pharmaceutical sales representatives was introduced, further encouraging drug innovation and adjusting the industrial structure. These developments indicate thatCost control, compliance, and rationality have become the prevailing trends in pharmaceutical marketing.

The advent of the pandemic rapidly completed market education, further accelerating the digital transformation of pharmaceutical marketing.Amid the pandemic, internal information exchange within pharmaceutical companies was restricted, offline academic activities were suspended, and routine face-to-face visits were impeded, creating an urgent need for enterprises to leverage digital platforms.

On the physician side, the channels for acquiring academic information have shifted online, with significantly improved acceptance and utilization rates of digital platforms.The report released by Tencent & BCG shows that during the pandemic, over 1 million doctors registered on various digital platforms. Attending physicians and those with associate senior titles constituted the primary medical resources on online channels. Nearly 80% of doctors used online platforms to access medical information during the pandemic, with an average frequency of eight times per week.

Driven by the dual catalysts of policy and the pandemic, Beijing Medical Technology has delivered outstanding performance this year. With sales representatives unable to conduct in-person client visits, the company leveraged its brand trust and market influence,Maintained a pace of acquiring one new medium-to-large pharmaceutical and medical device enterprise client per day during the pandemic.From January to March, over 100 enterprises activated exclusive platforms, more than 200 case collection campaigns were conducted, and the total number of live stream views exceeded 10 million.The company’s business maintained a rapid growth rate of 500% in 2020. “It is projected that the total number of customers will exceed 1,200 in 2021.”

Gao Jianfei believes that the positive impact of the pandemic on the industry is sustained. A set of data supports his judgment: previously, digital marketing mostly served as a supplementary tool; during the pandemic, offline activities came to a complete halt, the coverage rate of digital platforms increased by approximately 30%, and platforms for physician education, online pharmacy services, and patient education saw significant growth compared to pre-pandemic levels; as of today, offline activities have still not recovered to their pre-pandemic levels. The window of opportunity has arrived. Beijing Medical Technology will closely follow industry developments, continuously iterate and upgrade its products, and help pharmaceutical companies usher in a new era of digital marketing.

Gao Jianfei believes that digital pharmaceutical marketing in China is still in its infancy.“If the digital marketing transformation of the pharmaceutical industry is a 100-meter dash, domestic companies have now run less than 10 meters.”

According to the statistical results released by the National Bureau of Statistics in February 2020, pharmaceutical manufacturing enterprises above designated size in China generated total revenue of RMB 2.39086 trillion in 2019. “However, at present, most domestic pharmaceutical companies still adopt traditional sales models, resulting in very high expenses that account for 34% of the revenue of listed companies. If small and medium-sized unlisted pharmaceutical enterprises are included, this proportion rises to 40%–50%. In contrast, marketing expenses for U.S. pharmaceutical companies account for only 20% of their revenue.”

“Digital transformation of pharmaceutical marketing is imperative. As national medical insurance negotiations and volume-based procurement continue to expand their coverage, the demand for digital marketing among domestic pharmaceutical companies will sustain its growth. We believe”China will align with the mature U.S. market within 5–10 years., at which time digital marketing expenses are expected to account for 50% of total marketing expenses.”

Gao Jianfei also noted that, against the backdrop of an overall favorable landscape, rising industry enthusiasm has attracted numerous enterprises to enter the market. “The emergence of more players means that industry competition will become increasingly intense, compelling participants to proactively embrace change and develop products with greater value. Beijing Medical Technology will continue to launch innovative solutions to create greater value for pharmaceutical companies.”

Next, Beijing Medical Technology will continuously optimize and develop its digital platform, shifting more offline scenarios online to help pharmaceutical companies achieve asset digitization and facilitate precision marketing. Meanwhile, the company will alsoAchieve Quantifiable ROI Assessment and Launch the Pharmaceutical Representative Workbench, integrating online and offline channels to facilitate the efficient execution of marketing campaigns.

Meanwhile, in addition to pharmaceutical companies, digitalization needs are emerging among associations, hospitals, and departments. As a technology company, Beijing Medical Technology isEmpowering More Industry Stakeholders with Digital Transformation Needs, aiming to achieve internet-based transformation of the entire industry. The company has now provided digital services to more than 100 associations.