Yisu Medical Files IPO Prospectus: Delivering High-Value Digital Solutions to Address the Shortage of Private Dental Practitioners in China

China’s oral care market is expanding rapidly, yet it remains constrained by the limited supply of dentists, particularly in private dental clinics. According to data from the China Health Statistics Yearbook, revenues of dental hospitals in China grew steadily from 2012 to 2018, reaching RMB 23.854 billion in 2018, a year-on-year increase of 22.0%. The operating profit margin remained around 30%, standing at 30.42% in 2018. However, China has only 137 dentists per million population, far below the 500–1,000 per million seen in Europe and the United States.

The shortage of dental professionals is already acute, with a large concentration of dentists employed in public hospitals. This makes talent resources even scarcer for private dental institutions, thereby limiting their further development. It is reported that while private chain and individual dental clinics account for 78% of the total number of such facilities, they handle only 36% of patient visits.

Breaking the Development Deadlock of Private Dental Clinics: Digital Dentistry as a Viable Pathway. Currently, digital dentistry in China is predominantly dominated by imported brands. The high procurement costs are prohibitive for private dental clinics, which urgently require cost-effective digital dental solutions better tailored to real-world clinical scenarios.

In September 2018, Wang Wei, who had over a decade of experience in the research, development, and commercialization of digital dental products, founded Yisu Medical within the Science and Technology Park of the University of Shanghai for Science and Technology, initiating project incubation.

Yisu Medical aims to address the severe shortage of dental healthcare resources and the insufficient number of senior dentists in China by providing professional digital and intelligent solutions for the domestic dental industry, leveraging artificial intelligence and cloud computing technologies. By establishing a digital intelligent diagnosis and treatment platform for dentistry, Yisu Medical seeks to enhance clinical efficiency and foster technical exchange and advancement among dentists.

Established just one year ago, Yisu Medical has already begun preparations for industrialization at the Zhangjiagang Medical Device High-Tech Industrial Park, with “Suzhou Zhe’an Medical Technology Co., Ltd.” registered as the entity for the industrialization phase. This marks that multiple dental diagnosis and treatment devices and software systems from Yisu Medical are nearing mass production.

Dr. Wei Wang earned his degree in Pattern Recognition and Intelligent Systems from Shanghai Jiao Tong University. Prior to founding Yisu Medical, he accumulated over ten years of experience in the medical device industry. He previously served as Product Technology Manager at Carestream Dental, where he gained eight years of expertise in the research, development, and commercialization of digital dental products, along with three years of entrepreneurial experience in minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic devices. He has successfully led multiple products to obtain certifications from the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA), the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA), and the CE mark.

As a veteran in the dental digitalization industry, Wang Wei believes that digital and intelligent solutions are not merely icing on the cake but must address core contradictions. For the vast majority of private dental clinics, the core contradiction that dental digitalization needs to resolve is the shortage of dentists in private dental institutions.

Wang Wei stated, “Currently, there is a severe shortage of dental healthcare resources in China. Compared with public hospitals, high-quality medical resources are even scarcer in private chain dental clinics and individual dental practices, particularly among senior, highly skilled dentists. Procedures such as periodontal therapy, prosthodontics, dental implantation, and orthodontics are heavily dependent on clinicians’ experience. Furthermore, the high labor costs associated with top-tier dental professionals impose significant financial pressure on private institutions.”

The acute shortage of high-quality dentists has directly resulted in small and micro individual dental clinics accounting for a large proportion of private chain dental practices; however, these clinics have limited service scope and capabilities, contributing an insufficient share of patient visits. Moreover, it is not basic procedures such as extractions, prosthetics, and fillings that underpin the nearly RMB 100 billion dental care market, but rather high-value services like dental implants and orthodontics.

“Individual dental clinics offer a limited scope of medical services, primarily restricted to the most common procedures such as tooth extraction, prosthodontics, and restorative dentistry. The adoption of digital equipment is low, clinical treatment workflows lack sufficient digitization, a large number of patient cases are not effectively managed, and physicians struggle to continuously monitor patients’ conditions. Private chain dental clinics and individual dental clinics account for 78% of the total number of institutions but serve only 36% of the patient volume.”

To address the two major pain points in private dental institutions—namely, the shortage of dentists and the limited scope of medical services offered by individual dental clinics—Yisu Medical has developed a series of digital and intelligent dental products. These solutions aim to enhance service quality and empower private chain dental clinics and individual practices. The product portfolio primarily consists of three core offerings: intraoral digital cameras, intraoral digital scanners, and proprietary dental AI algorithms, supported by corresponding cloud computing and cloud storage platforms.

The intraoral digital viewer consists of a camera handpiece and a display, and can be used for localized oral examination and auxiliary detection of intraoral caries and dental plaque. The intraoral digital scanner is used to acquire three-dimensional digital images of the patient’s oral cavity for applications in prosthodontics, orthodontics, implantology, and oral surgery. AI algorithms are primarily employed in scenarios such as AI-assisted diagnosis (e.g., caries or periodontal diseases) and AI-assisted treatment (e.g., orthodontics and prosthodontics).

Yisu Medical chooses to provide customers with digital solutions that integrate hardware and software, enabling dentists to accurately acquire intraoral data for personalized implant customization and restorative treatment planning, thereby helping dental practitioners and technicians plan surgeries, communicate treatment protocols, and predict outcomes more efficiently and effectively.

Unlike typical clinic SaaS services, Yisu Medical’s digital solutions are dedicated to providing cost-effective chairside digital diagnostic and treatment equipment. Once these devices are widely adopted, private dental clinics can launch high-value-added, high-ticket services such as orthodontics, thereby empowering their practices.

Yisu Medical aims to leverage its proprietary dental AI technology to alleviate the shortage of high-quality medical resources in dentistry. Additionally, by providing quantitative and accurate analytical results, Yisu Medical strengthens doctor-patient communication, thereby enhancing patient acquisition and increasing conversion rates per outpatient visit.

Yisu Cloud, by enhancing the digitalization of clinics, is able to break down data silos. It manages patients’ oral health information through systems such as Electronic Medical Record (EMR) management and dental medical imaging management, thereby increasing patient stickiness. Furthermore, it drives word-of-mouth referrals through high-quality services, helping private clinics acquire new patients.

“Unlike conventional SaaS platforms, our integrated solutions—combining digital dental products, software, and cloud platforms—deliver true digital value to clinics. By leveraging digital technologies to transform the workflow and experience of oral care, we empower dentists and clinics to adopt a patient-centric approach and provide superior services.”

Over the past few decades, digital dentistry has become a prevailing trend. Traditional dentistry might have involved a practitioner setting up a roadside stall with just a few tools, whereas modern dentistry incorporates many of the world’s most advanced technologies, such as lasers, 3D printing, CAD/CAM, dental implantology, 3D design, and biomaterials.

Due to the gap between domestic and international development in the dental industry and the high barriers to entry in dental digitalization, digital equipment used by dental hospitals in China is currently dominated by imports. In such an industry characterized by high barriers and import monopoly, how can Yisu Medical establish its own competitive advantages?

Zhu Liangliang, co-founder of Yisu Medical, stated that a major competitive advantage is its high cost-performance ratio.

“Due to the high prices of imported equipment, procurement costs for clinics are extremely high, which has in fact limited the adoption of dental digitalization in China. We aim to lower the threshold for clinics to adopt digital solutions by manufacturing domestically produced digital equipment.”

Additionally, Wang Wei pointed out: The need for cost-effective solutions by private clinics does not mean they have low requirements for products.

“We once visited clinics in Japan for study. Because the Japanese diet is rich in seafood and hard-shelled shellfish, patients may develop microscopic cracked teeth. Dentists therefore require high-performance chairside digital equipment to assist with precise diagnosis. We hope to enable private dental clinics in China to access such high-quality products.”

Taking Yisu Medical’s intraoral digital imaging system as an example, the company achieves superior resolution with 1080p/30fps high-definition video—exceeding that of comparable products—along with stepless liquid lens rapid zoom, a field of view greater than 65 degrees, and distortion less than 5%. In terms of design, Yisu Medical employs wireless transmission for high-definition video. Regarding cost control, the company has overcome patent barriers by independently developing all core components, thereby ensuring manageable costs.

Leveraging Yisu Medical's robust R&D capabilities, the company can also provide private clinics with more customized features to meet their personalized needs.

From a team perspective, the founding team of Yisu Medical hails from globally leading medical device and digital dentistry companies. Professor Yang Xiaokang, Chief Scientist at Yisu Medical, is a doctoral supervisor at Shanghai Jiao Tong University and currently serves as Executive Deputy Dean of the Institute of Artificial Intelligence at Shanghai Jiao Tong University, with his primary research interests focusing on image processing and machine learning. Co-founder Zhu Liangliang graduated from Nanjing University with a major in Computer Science and Technology. He previously served as a Senior Software Development Engineer at Carestream Dental and was a core member of the R&D team for digital dentistry application software. With over ten years of experience in medical software, internet applications, and cloud computing development, he is also well-versed in the software development process for embedded systems.

Moving forward, Yisu Medical will continue to accelerate the development of its next-generation intraoral digital scanner, with registration submission planned for 2021. The company aims to complete the development and clinical validation of its proprietary dental AI algorithms, such as those applied in orthodontics and prosthodontics, and to establish in-depth collaborations with clinical research institutions.

It is reported that Yisu Medical has launched its first round of financing, which will be primarily used for R&D investment and to achieve mass production of products such as the oral digital imager.