Mijian: Evolving from a Patient Community to a Comprehensive Cancer Care Management Platform That Extends Patient Lifespan Multiple-Fold

According to data from the National Bureau of Statistics, the crude mortality rate for malignant neoplasms in urban areas was 163.18 per 100,000 population in 2018, ranking first among all causes of death in cities. In rural areas, the crude mortality rate for malignant neoplasms was 158.61 per 100,000 population in 2018, ranking third; the top two causes of death in rural areas were heart disease (162.12) and cerebrovascular diseases (160.19). Overall, deaths from malignant neoplasms accounted for 25.98% of total urban deaths and 22.96% of total rural deaths in 2018. Malignant neoplasms are not a distant threat.

Adopting a professional medical science education approach while providing patients with precise connections to medical resources, thereby establishing a comprehensive disease management and rehabilitation system.While helping patients time and again, I also found solace for myself, having once been a patient’s family member.

Liu Wengui candidly stated, “Industry peers may place greater emphasis on whether founders have a medical background,” but “patients do not gauge their experience based on the founder’s medical credentials.” This is not to say that a medical background is unimportant; “for a team, having a medical background is essential.” Currently,More than half of Meet Health's team members have a medical background.Moreover, Meet Health has a dedicated medical department responsible for planning medical science popularization content. Externally,Meet Health also engages experts from Grade 3A hospitals as consultants., providing professional guidance.

Had Liu Wengui not experienced the illness of a close family member, his life might have taken a different path. As early as 2007, Liu earned a Master of Business Administration degree from the Faculty of Business at Macau University of Science and Technology, plunging headfirst into the management consulting industry, where he provided strategic and human resources consulting services to large enterprises. He worked in this field for four years, only gaining close exposure to and observation of the healthcare industry when a close family member fell ill. After their passing, repeated reflections on the past allowed him to deeply perceive the entrenched problems within the healthcare sector and realize that much of what had occurred could have been avoided.

This experience of seeking medical care and consultation has given Liu Wengui a perspective on the healthcare industry from that of a patient:

1、Insufficient patient medical science education and lack of a whole-course management system.Patients lack effective channels for accessing information: they are completely unaware of medication precautions and side effects. Due to time constraints or negligence, some physicians often fail to adequately inform patients or provide post-discharge follow-up care.
2、Patients and their families are unable to participate in treatment decision-making.This is attributable to patients’ limited foundational medical knowledge, as well as their lack of access to treatment approaches for similar cases. Consequently, patients are left with no choice but to passively accept even highly unreasonable treatment plans proposed by physicians.

3、Unequal Distribution of Medical Resources.Treatment protocols vary significantly across different regions. The process of transferring from areas with limited medical resources to those with relatively abundant resources may result in patients missing the optimal window for treatment.

For the aforementioned reasons, when Liu Wengui prepared to launch his startup in 2013, he chose to enter the market through a patient social platform. “I do not have the ingrained mindset typical of traditional healthcare professionals, which allows me to naturally consider issues from the patient’s perspective.” This approach has made this patient social platform somewhat distinctive.

In 2013, Liu Wengui single-handedly created the patient social platform “Patients Like Me.” His key reference was the widely popular foreign patient social platform, PatientsLikeMe. At the time, Liu hoped to emulate this platform by enabling patients to contribute data, which would then be matched and fed back to the patients themselves.

"Patients Like Me," which began its project in 2013, was launched in April 2014. However, until 2015, the development of the Patients Like Me platform was less than ideal, with user growth being quite slow. "We made a serious mistake. Compared to patients in the United States,"Chinese patients generally have a limited grasp of medical knowledge; they are largely unfamiliar with and insensitive to medical data, making it difficult to motivate them to contribute their data.“From the outset, ‘the starting point is patient-contributed data, but the starting point is wrong.’”

After recognizing the issue, Liu Wengui conducted a review and exploration in 2015. Embarking on a second entrepreneurial venture within the same sector, he built Meet Health, a patient communication platform. For Liu Wengui, this amounted to starting from scratch. Meet Health was officially launched in September 2015, with significant differences becoming readily apparent. The shift in the underlying logic of the Meet Health app is reflected in its content-driven approach.“Our underlying logic has shifted to empowering users first, rather than demanding data from them.”“Data naturally accumulates during the course of service delivery and operations.” This process has enabled Meet Health to become more closely aligned with patients.

Meet Health initially managed a substantial number of disease-specific sections, totaling as many as 20 to 30, including oncology.Currently, 12 conditions have been selected for inclusion, including lung cancer, breast cancer, gastric cancer, liver cancer, colorectal cancer, ovarian cancer, prostate cancer, pancreatic cancer, lymphoma, and cervical cancer, as well as two non-oncological conditions: autism spectrum disorder and systemic lupus erythematosus.Relatively speaking, patient engagement is higher in these disease-specific sections. Going forward, Meet Health will prioritize the selection of key operational segments based on factors such as the vitality of the upstream and downstream ecosystem, the availability of new drugs and emerging therapies, and patient population characteristics.

Meet Health not only operates its standalone app but has also built a robust new media matrix across multiple new media platforms. Across all platforms,Meet Health has a total user base of over 1.5 million, with more than 300,000 monthly active users.“Patient communication communities may appear to have no barriers to entry, but they involve considerable complexity.” Meet Health’s competitive advantage lies primarily in its media matrix, which provides comprehensive coverage of precisely targeted user groups.By establishing more than 20 new media accounts named after specific diseases, they achieved vertical empowerment for patients and enhanced user stickiness. One-on-one engagement enabled Meet Health to implement in-depth operations, while a warm and harmonious atmosphere—rather than the cold experience of online consultations—helped them earn user trust.Meanwhile, Meet Health is also building its own data team to enhance service efficiency and precision.

Following the logic of traffic monetization, once a sufficient user base is accumulated, advertising becomes an inevitable revenue stream. However, for Liu Wengui, patient social platforms must impose restrictions on advertisements, particularly because ads negatively impact the user experience for patients. Therefore, Meet Health currently does not engage in direct advertising. On another note, charging membership fees is also impractical for patient social platforms, as patients in China have not yet developed the habit of paying for knowledge-based content.

Meet Health adheres to the core philosophy of “patient-centeredness,”Some commercialization explorations were conducted.The "Services" section on the Meet Health app showcases some of Meet Health’s explorations, including breast cancer medical insurance under the brand Ruguo Ai, genetic testing services, overseas medical care services, and adjunctive therapy services (such as rehabilitation management featuring interpretation of diagnostic and treatment reports, and an online bookstore). For Meet Health,"More focus on resource integration with third-party institutions, with potential systematic operational trials in the later stages."Meet Health provides precise one-on-one services tailored to patient needs.

Meet Health initially entered the industry to address the severe asymmetry in medical information and healthcare resource availability. Thanks to the continuous science popularization efforts on the Meet Health patient social platform, this situation has improved. PatPatients continuously learn through the platform and engage in ongoing communication with fellow patients, thereby acquiring extensive medical knowledge and even playing a role in mitigating doctor-patient conflicts. The platform also provides an overview of the distribution of medical resources across China.

1. Precise medical consultation and treatment referral services.Meet Health aims to streamline the process of connecting patients with medical resources to prevent delays in treatment and avoid missing the optimal window for care. It will provide precise and standardized diagnosis and treatment, thereby improving access to medications and novel therapeutic regimens.
2. Alleviate the financial burden and psychological stress on patients.By collaborating with insurance companies to design insurance solutions for patients with existing conditions, we help address post-relapse payment challenges.

3. Address the need for cross-regional medical care.Due to the impact of the pandemic, the urgent need for cross-regional medical care has become even more pronounced, and Meet Health aims to enhance its services for patients seeking treatment outside their home regions.

Meet Health maintains close collaborations with multinational pharmaceutical companies such as AstraZeneca and Roche Pharmaceuticals,Collaborate with national-level foundations to conduct online and offline patient education, while also assisting pharmaceutical companies in recruiting volunteers for clinical trials.operations. Meet Health has also collaborated with organizations such as the China Anti-Cancer Association and the National Cancer Center on event planning.

Meet Health is currently undergoing a new round of financing, which will be used to iterate and upgrade its products, while also helping the company better achieve operational goals and further improve consumer-facing services.In the short term, Meet Health will continue to accelerate business growth, refine its service system, and enhance the user experience.and will establish a comprehensive service ecosystem for cancer patients, encompassing all aspects of treatment, nutritional diet, exercise and wellness, and psychological counseling.

With the improvement of the healthcare security system, increased accessibility of information, and accelerated pace of new drug development, user choices have become more complex, leading to a surge in personalized demands.

For Meet Health, patients are the most important.Liu Wengui has always adhered to the philosophy of “Companionship, Mutual Assistance, and Health” to create a systematic rehabilitation management platform for patients.Medical decisions that avoid detours and inspire greater confidence can help patients achieve longer survival and a better quality of life.In the past, patients with advanced lung cancer who did not receive active treatment had a survival period of only 3–5 months. However, with the increasing availability of treatment options and greater patient access to disease-related information, knowledge-based empowerment can guide patients in making precise decisions, effectively extending their survival. Through personalized interventions, patients with advanced lung cancer can even achieve a survival period of 3–5 years. More importantly, during the course of treatment, having a professional, compassionate, and trustworthy platform to provide medical guidance and services helps patients return to a better quality of life. This is precisely what Meet Health aims to accomplish.