Ping An Health (Diagnostics) Center: Overcoming Non-Public Healthcare Challenges and Emerging as a Core Public Health Force
Ping An was not born with a healthcare DNA. Since its establishment in 1988, the company has gradually expanded its footprint in the financial and insurance sectors. In this process, insurance products such as life insurance and health insurance have enabled Ping An to accumulate extensive user bases and analytical data.
The accumulation of users and data has fueled the rapid development of Ping An’s healthcare division. Leveraging the connectivity of the internet, Ping An successfully built an online medical service network that integrates domestic healthcare resources. However, within this structure, Ping An long lacked an effective physical healthcare entity to serve as the foundation. It was not until 2017, when the first Ping An Health (Testing) Center was established, that Ping An’s healthcare ecosystem began to take shape.
As a typical third-party medical service provider, how did Ping An Health (Testing) Center rapidly penetrate the market? Following the influx of capital, how will the company operate? VCBeat seeks answers from the center’s development in recent years.
Looking back at history, Ping An has long maintained deep ties with the healthcare sector. But why has it shifted toward physical assets in recent years? As a sector heavily influenced by policy, government encouragement of third-party medical services and support for privately run healthcare institutions have been among the key drivers prompting Ping An’s entry into the third-party medical services market.
Since 2016, the Chinese government has successively issued documents such as the “13th Five-Year Plan for Health and Wellness,” the “Opinions on Promoting the Sustained, Healthy, and Standardized Development of Socially Run Medical Institutions,” the “Decision on Amending the Detailed Rules for the Implementation of the Regulations on the Administration of Medical Institutions,” the “Notice on Further Reforming and Improving the Approval Processes for Medical Institutions and Physicians,” and the “Outline of Actions to Promote High-Quality Development of the Health Industry.” These policies have spurred various social forces to enter the third-party medical services market, with Ping An being one of them.
Looking back at the demand side during that period, under the broader environment of healthcare cost containment, hospitals were motivated to gradually outsource non-core medical services, such as imaging and laboratory testing, to third-party healthcare service providers capable of operating with lower costs and higher efficiency. This allowed hospitals to further focus on core medical services—including diagnosis, surgery, nursing, and treatment—thereby enhancing their technical capabilities and strengthening their core competitiveness. Such a model has already demonstrated successful development in developed countries like the United States and Japan. Consequently, third-party healthcare institutions have ushered in new opportunities for growth.
Driven by both subjective and objective factors, Ping An Health (Testing) Center stands poised on a springboard. Xing Liping, CEO of Ping An Health (Testing) Center, a subsidiary of Ping An Medical and Healthcare Management Co., Ltd. (“Ping An HealthTech”), once stated, “Ping An has consistently leveraged technology to empower the entire healthcare sector from both social health insurance and commercial insurance ends. This technological capability is now extending into more specific areas, with Ping An Health (Testing) Center representing the integration of technology and business model.”
Although the United States and Japan offer valuable historical precedents, third-party medical service providers in China still face numerous obstacles. Due to challenges such as shortages of medical talent and undefined profitability models, these capital-intensive healthcare entities often struggle to survive. To gain market acceptance, these issues must be addressed one by one.
The primary issue to address is the quality of medical services. Brick-and-mortar healthcare is not a sector suited for price wars; for patients, service quality is the key determinant in choosing a medical institution. To establish viable third-party medical institutions, it is imperative to prioritize quality control. The second challenge is patient flow. As “new entrants” in the market, third-party medical service providers rarely attract patients who are willing to try their services proactively. “Customer acquisition difficulty” is a more challenging yet more promising issue to resolve.
Therefore, to ensure medical quality, Ping An Health (Testing) Center has acquired state-of-the-art PET/CT, MR, and CT equipment, engaged leading experts in the fields of imaging and laboratory medicine, recruited a majority of its medical, technical, and nursing staff from top-tier tertiary hospitals, adheres to internationally leading quality control standards, and provides high-quality healthcare services.
According to VCBeat, Ping An Health (Testing) Center has procured cutting-edge imaging equipment, including the Siemens Prisma 3.0T MRI, GE Revolution 256-slice CT, and Philips Vereos PET/CT, thereby enabling a wide range of imaging-based scientific research.
As for the issue of patient flow, Ping An leverages its robust insurance capabilities to achieve bidirectional traffic generation and mutual value enhancement through its "Healthcare + Insurance" model.
Specifically, Ping An Good Doctor serves as an online traffic entry point, providing consultation and triage services, and then directs a portion of its customers to the Ping An Health (Testing) Center. The Testing Center integrates with both social medical insurance and commercial insurance to enable diversified payment options, while also reducing the overall insurance burden in the long term through the provision of value-based healthcare.
During its development, Ping An Health (Diagnostic) Center has continuously established partnerships with hospitals, enabling patient referrals and traffic diversion from hospitals to the center. Meanwhile, Ping An’s commercial insurance business can leverage the diagnostic centers to provide routine check-ups for high-net-worth individuals, thereby helping to control insurance risks.
Furthermore, Ping An Health (Testing) Center has formed a joint venture with Japan’s SRL Corporation, the fourth-largest medical laboratory service provider globally and the largest in Asia, to establish offline medical testing laboratories and introduce Japan’s advanced concepts and technologies to China.
Meanwhile, Ping An’s mobile testing vehicles and mobile CT imaging units are also key components of this initiative. These flexible tools provide testing services to residents in remote areas and transport corresponding samples back to laboratories for analysis, thereby extending coverage and support to more primary healthcare institutions.
Cutting-edge medical equipment, top-tier medical talent in the industry, and a trinity of service capabilities have built an insurmountable barrier for Ping An Health (Testing) Center. When COVID-19 struck, the advantages of these high-investment barriers began to gradually take effect.
On January 27, 2020, Wuhan Ping An Haoyi Medical Laboratory (hereinafter referred to as “Wuhan Testing Center”), as a provincial-level medical laboratory, became one of the first designated institutions in Hubei Province for nucleic acid testing of the novel coronavirus. The specific testing method employed by the laboratory involved collecting respiratory samples from patients via throat swabs and detecting SARS-CoV-2 nucleic acid using the RT-PCR method.
Due to the stringent qualification requirements for COVID-19 nucleic acid testing, which must be conducted in Biosafety Level 2 (BSL-2) facilities, only 13 local third-party medical institutions were selected as designated testing centers.
“Nucleic acid testing for the novel coronavirus hinges on three key factors: efficiency, quality, and safety,” said Xing Liping. The Wuhan Testing Center has fully committed itself to the protracted battle against COVID-19 through nucleic acid testing, significantly alleviating the city’s testing burden. Since officially commencing sample acceptance on February 2, it has completed hundreds of thousands of nucleic acid and antibody tests to date.
By April, as the epidemic came under control, work and production resumption was underway across China. At this stage, normalized prevention and control became the central theme of the current public health defense system. During this period, the workload for nucleic acid testing and antibody testing surged dramatically, making it difficult for hospitals alone to rapidly meet the demand for “large-scale testing.” In May of this year, Ping An Health (Testing) Center officially launched a nationwide integrated service combining “nucleic acid testing, antibody testing, and lung CT scanning.” This approach not only reduces the risk of false negatives associated with single-modality testing but also alleviates the pressure on hospitals conducting large-scale tests, enabling the screening of latent and asymptomatic infections to prevent further spread at an early stage.
In the post-pandemic era, the government will further increase investment in public health. Leveraging its existing public health information systems and population health information platforms, along with internet and Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, Ping An will provide mobile basic public health service solutions tailored to the needs of grassroots public health. By harnessing the convenience of mobile units, this initiative aims to activate medical equipment and mobilize high-quality medical resources, flexibly delivering one-stop public health services—including comprehensive health screenings for all populations, chronic disease management, and health education—to grassroots communities with relatively scarce medical resources or limited transportation access. Furthermore, real-time connections with leading domestic experts will enable timely remote multidisciplinary consultations for complex and refractory cases, truly facilitating the upgrading of public health services.
However, as society gradually returns to order, the real test may just be beginning. The economic impact of the first half of 2020 is likely to become increasingly apparent in the second half. In the face of adversity, Ping An Health (Testing) Center is formulating new strategies to adapt to market transformations.
Looking ahead, Ping An has much work to do, with a key priority being the construction of a new ecosystem for third-party medical institutions to provide patients with more service options. Building this ecosystem requires joint participation from all sectors of society, while Ping An must assume the role of “promoter,” enabling third-party medical institutions to realize their full potential and drive the development of public health capabilities.