DXY Unveils Upgraded Enterprise Strategy to Build a B2D2C Digital Healthcare Ecosystem

On July 30, the DXY Healthcare Convention (hereinafter referred to as “DHC”) was held in Shanghai. As an annual flagship event organized by DXY, a leading professional digital healthcare platform, for the pharmaceutical industry, it brought together key opinion leaders, corporate executives, and industry experts from the pharmaceutical sector. Through keynote speeches and roundtable discussions, participants jointly explored new models of digital marketing in the pharmaceutical industry under the “new normal” and strategies to address industry challenges.

Li Tiantian, Founder and Chairman of DXY, and Chen Baiping, Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group, delivered speeches on the digitalization trends and insights in the pharmaceutical industry during and after the pandemic. Chu Yang, Vice President of DXY, officially unveiled the company’s newly upgraded enterprise business strategy. Xu Jing, Vice President of AstraZeneca China and Head of Digital and Commercial Innovation; Zhang Maosong, Vice President of Novartis Pharmaceuticals (China) and Head of the Eye Care Division; and Zhou Qin, Director of Abbott’s Digestive and Infectious Disease Business Unit, jointly participated in a roundtable discussion to explore the opportunities and challenges in digital marketing within the pharmaceutical sector.

In addition, the DXY Data Research Institute released the “2020 China Physician Insights Report (Hi Doctor),” which provides a comprehensive analysis of online medical practices among Chinese physicians during the pandemic and in the post-pandemic era, based on survey data from 10,065 doctors.

The COVID-19 pandemic swept across the globe, with the healthcare industry bearing the brunt and subsequently triggering a series of ecological changes.

According to data from the “2020 China Physician Insights Report (Hi Doctor),” 62% of physicians’ online time this year has been spent on medicine-related activities, with a cumulative weekly total of 15.2 hours dedicated to online medical practices. An increasing number of physicians are participating in academic exchanges and engaging in doctor–patient interactions through online platforms, making the digitalization of physicians’ out-of-hospital medical activities the new normal in the post-pandemic era.

However, changes in physician behavior represent only one aspect. Li Tiantian, Founder and Chairman of DXY, stated that the inconvenience of offline interactions caused by the pandemic has catalyzed a series of new online norms, specifically including the digitalization of physician education, patient management, clinical research, and marketing activities.

Li Tiantian, Founder and Chairman of DXY

In his speech, Chen Baiping, Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group (BCG), further affirmed this viewpoint, arguing that the pandemic has served as a catalyst for digital transformation across the entire healthcare industry. A BCG research report revealed that during the pandemic, 78% of physicians accessed medical information online, with an average frequency of eight times per week. On the patient side, the number of users of digital health services reached 620 million during the pandemic, accounting for nearly 70% of all mobile internet users in China. Meanwhile, public attention to digital health topics surged during the pandemic: in the initial outbreak phase, average attention levels were 11 times higher than pre-pandemic levels, while during the stabilization phase, they remained three times higher than pre-pandemic levels.

Chen Baiping, Director and Partner at Boston Consulting Group

In addition, China has introduced a series of new healthcare reform policies in recent years. With the gradual implementation of measures such as the separation of prescribing and dispensing, generic drug consistency evaluation, volume-based procurement, and Diagnosis-Related Groups (DRGs), the outflow of prescriptions from hospitals has accelerated, squeezing profit margins for traditional pharmaceutical distribution channels. Meanwhile, various regions have successively implemented registration and filing systems for medical representatives, explicitly prohibiting them from undertaking drug sales tasks. The era when traditional pharmaceutical companies relied on medical representatives to drive sales volumes has come to an end, creating an urgent need for these companies to identify new sources of market growth.

Data presented by Chen Baiping in his speech showed that major pharmaceutical companies significantly increased their investments in digitalization during the pandemic. The proportion of pharmaceutical companies whose digitalization-related expenses accounted for more than 10% of their total product investment rose from an average of 23% in 2019 to 40% by March 2020, and is projected to remain at around 38% after the pandemic ends.

Driven by the dual forces of policy and the pandemic, the digitalization of the pharmaceutical industry has accelerated dramatically. Pharmaceutical companies must adopt new perspectives and models for digital marketing, as the industry urgently needs to break through the current impasse.

The growing challenges facing traditional marketing channels, coupled with the digital transformation driven by the rise of internet hospitals, indicate that the future growth potential for pharmaceutical companies’ marketing strategies lies increasingly in “out-of-hospital” settings. Consequently, the core imperative for pharmaceutical marketing and promotion in this new market landscape is to influence physicians more effectively and to identify and reach patients among the general public with greater precision and breadth.

Chu Yang, Vice President of DXY

Dingxiangyuan originated from the “Dingxiangyuan Forum,” a community for physicians, and has since become China’s largest physician community, with 2.1 million registered physician users, covering 71% of China’s licensed physicians. In 2007, Dingxiang Talent was established, gradually forging partnerships with public and private hospitals in the healthcare sector as well as leading enterprises in the pharmaceutical and biotechnology industries. In 2010, the company began leveraging its core physician resources to provide pharmaceutical companies with a range of solutions. In 2014, Dingxiang Doctor was launched, ushering in a new era of building a consumer-facing health services brand centered on out-of-hospital health scenarios.

After two decades of accumulation, DXY’s entire platform now boasts 5.5 million professional users and 50 million general users, gradually emerging as China’s leading digital healthcare platform for professionals. Its dual influence among both physicians and the general public has made DXY the first and only professional internet medical health platform in the industry capable of seamlessly connecting both patients and providers. This creates new possibilities for digital pharmaceutical marketing.

At the event, Chu Yang, Vice President of DXY, unveiled the company’s newly upgraded enterprise business strategy. Moving forward, DXY will closely align with its core competencies, leveraging its extensive accumulation of resources ranging from physicians to the general public, to help pharmaceutical companies establish a commercialization chain that spans from medical professionals to the broader population, thereby creating a new “B (Pharmaceutical Companies) – D (Doctors) – C (Patients/Public)” digital ecosystem.

Dingxiangyuan's B2D2C Strategic Chain

The new strategic model will operate along the path of Awareness (user cognition) – Interest (user interest) – Engagement (user interaction), while delivering value to pharmaceutical companies, physicians, and users alike.

First, pharmaceutical companies can leverage DXY Forum, DXY Talent, and Drug Assistant as channels to precisely reach physicians. DXY Forum is China’s largest physician community. DXY Talent is an influential and targeted recruitment platform for healthcare professionals within the industry, having posted over 60,000 clinical and pharmaceutical-related job openings and accumulating more than 2.2 million professional resumes. Drug Assistant, a specialized application under the DXY brand tailored for physicians, currently includes over 10,000 drug package inserts and more than 1,000 clinical medication guidelines.

Building A-I-E to Deliver Value for Pharmaceutical Companies

Furthermore, DXY Open Courses and the series of new media platforms under DXY can serve as important platforms for physician education. DXY BoKa effectively integrates DXY’s extensive resources in terms of physicians, medical expertise, channels, and data, offering a one-stop video solution tailored for medical professionals that facilitates physician education and peer-to-peer interaction. These services and tools wield significant influence among the physician community.

For patients and the general public, we leverage the integrated capabilities of DXY’s digital marketing agency to help pharmaceutical companies reach their audiences more efficiently and enhance their impact on both the general population and targeted patient groups. Ultimately, while delivering diversified service value to users, we assist healthcare enterprises in expanding brand penetration among doctors and patients, strengthening medication awareness among both physicians and the public, and cultivating habitual use of branded products.

It is reported that the DHC Summit, which has been held consecutively for seven years, underwent an upgrade this year, evolving from “Digital Healthcare China” to the “DXY Healthcare Convention.” In recent years, “digital marketing” has remained a highly discussed topic in the healthcare industry. However, solutions for “pharmaceutical digital marketing” should not focus narrowly on “digitization” alone; rather, they should be explored within the broader ecosystem of the entire pharmaceutical industry chain. As a leading connector in China’s healthcare sector and a professional internet-based medical health platform, DXY initiated this upgrade to underscore the importance of collaborative solution development among ecosystem partners across the industry.