Meixin Shengdiya: China's First Internet-Based Aesthetic Medicine Hospital Files IPO, Emerging as the Next Hotspot for Capital
“Internet + Healthcare” has become a key national strategy. As of May 2019, 150 internet hospitals across 25 provinces and municipalities in China had commenced operations.
In the medical aesthetics sector, the industry is highly market-driven, and consumer decision-making processes are lengthy. In the past, medical aesthetics institutions relied heavily on traditional marketing channels, prioritizing customer acquisition over service quality, which resulted in poor customer experiences. The emergence of internet hospitals will provide the public with medical aesthetics services that offer better efficacy, lower costs, and greater accessibility.
From the perspective of the capital market, in addition to traditional chain medical aesthetics institutions, vertical medical aesthetics e-commerce platforms, and general industry e-commerce platforms, platforms with internet hospital attributes will undoubtedly become the next hotspot for capital investment, as they represent structural new opportunities under the transformation of new channels and new technologies.
As early as April 27 of last year, the “Guidelines for Standardizing the Internet Medical Aesthetics Industry (Draft)” issued by the Internet Medical Aesthetics Branch of the Chinese Association of Plastics and Aesthetics (hereinafter referred to as the “Draft”) was officially released. The document covers areas closely related to the internet, including the construction of information systems in medical institutions, third-party medical aesthetics platforms, verification and public disclosure of qualifications for medical institutions and physicians, medical advertising, and medical education.
Professor Du Xiaoyan (Image source: Provided by the company)
As the hospital director and President of the Internet Medical Aesthetics Branch of the Chinese Association of Plastics and Aesthetics, Professor Du Xiaoyan stated that authoritative standards and normative models for industry development must be established across four key sectors of the internet medical aesthetics value chain: institutions, physicians, products, and customers. The launch of this internet-based smart hospital has promoted greater transparency, digitalization, and technological advancement in the medical aesthetics industry, while also creating new opportunities and catalysts for explosive growth.
How will traditional medical aesthetic institutions develop in the future? What role does the implementation of online internet-based smart hospitals play in standardizing the medical aesthetics industry? With these questions in mind, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) conducted an exclusive interview with Professor Du Xiaoyan to seek her insights.
Dr. Du Xiaoyan, who holds an M.D. degree, practiced as a surgeon for two decades, successively serving as an oral and maxillofacial surgeon, reconstructive surgeon, and plastic and cosmetic surgeon, before spending five years as the president of a Grade 3A hospital. “Over the years, I have encountered too many patients seeking corrective procedures after failed cosmetic surgeries, lamenting that they ‘spent a fortune only to end up disfigured rather than beautified,’” she said. “In the current state of the medical aesthetics industry, physicians are treated like mere ‘sculpting tools.’ Overwhelmed by one surgery after another, they have no time to focus on technical advancement or scientific research, leading to a significant increase in surgical failure rates.”
As the medical aesthetics industry has evolved, pain points related to safety and technology have become increasingly evident. In recent years, the Chinese government has introduced a series of policies aimed at regulating the sector. However, due to the industry’s high profit margins and the mixed quality of market participants, the effective implementation of these regulations remains a gradual process.
In the process of implementing policy regulations, doctors and entrepreneurs are also leveraging their own efforts to standardize the industry. In recent years, a number of medical aesthetics physician groups and internet-based medical aesthetics platforms have emerged in the market, gradually educating consumers and connecting physicians with a broader customer base.
However, Professor Du Xiaoyan gradually realized that these internet platforms are more akin to social media than actual hospitals. Physicians on these platforms can only provide brief “consultations” to patients; such interactions cannot be regarded as formal “medical consultations” or “multidisciplinary consultations,” and physicians have no authority to prescribe medications.
Against this backdrop, Du Xiaoyan aimed to establish a healthcare-centric platform equipped with medical licenses. Through the team’s concerted efforts, he founded Meixin Internet Hospital, China’s first online hospital featuring both plastic surgery and dentistry departments. Physicians can issue prescriptions via the internet hospital, while aesthetic seekers can consult doctors through the platform. Leveraging offline cosmetic hospitals, the platform achieves effective online-offline integration, providing customers with one-stop comprehensive services that include online consultations, offline treatments, and post-operative rehabilitation guidance.
Professor Du Xiaoyan summarized the prerequisites for obtaining a license: First, there must be at least one secondary-level physical hospital with comprehensive hardware facilities; second, the facility must fully comply with the national construction standards for internet hospitals. Currently, apart from Hainan, the company is leveraging its internet hospital licenses in Chongqing and Chengdu to explore smart healthcare models that integrate online and offline services. In the future, it looks forward to more clinics and hospitals joining the development of smart hospitals and clinics.
Unlike vertical medical aesthetics e-commerce apps and general industry e-commerce platforms, Meixin Internet Smart Clinic, as an internet-based smart clinic built upon a physical hospital, provides a platform for medical aesthetics physicians to engage in legal and compliant online multi-site practice and lawful fee collection. It also serves as a platform offering nationwide users pre-consultation lightweight inquiries, follow-up visits, post-operative rehabilitation guidance, and online prescription services.
Through this platform, first-time aesthetic patients can consult with physicians at any time via text-and-image messaging or remote video consultations. Follow-up patients can communicate with specialists using wearable smart devices, effectively reducing communication time and costs. Meanwhile, physicians can directly access patients’ medical records, consultation histories, examination and test results, prescription records, and medication data online, facilitating subsequent prescription issuance and post-operative rehabilitation guidance. Notably, to enhance convenience for aesthetic patients, Meixin Shengdia Internet Hospital also provides services such as prescription circulation and medication delivery.
Compared with general internet hospitals, the differentiation of Meixin Internet Smart Clinic lies in postoperative rehabilitation, particularly addressing the aesthetic medicine industry’s characteristic that “30% depends on surgery and 70% on care.” Professor Du Xiaoyan stated that for a complex plastic surgery procedure, in addition to requiring the surgeon’s exceptional medical skills, the postoperative rehabilitation process is also critical. In traditional hospitals, patients seeking aesthetic treatments need to return to the hospital for one or more follow-up visits after surgery. However, some of these patients reside in different locations, making follow-up consultations and medication pickup inconvenient. Through an aesthetic medicine internet hospital, services such as medication delivery and community-based nursing care enable patients to receive necessary care without leaving their homes.
Furthermore, in Professor Du Xiaoyan’s vision, beyond creating smart clinics for physicians, the Meixin Internet Smart Clinic aims to provide customers with a secure, intelligent platform that ensures transparency in medical aesthetic information. Centered on “verified” physicians, this online “authentic” clinic precisely matches users’ medical-seeking needs and empowers both medical aesthetic practitioners and institutions.
Within this framework, internet hospitals serve as a tool to facilitate the development of medical consortia between public tertiary Grade A hospitals and private institutions. With reconstructive and salvage surgical procedures as the core focus and a differentiated entry point, Meixin Internet Smart Clinic strictly controls the admission criteria for physicians.
For onboarding physicians, Meixin Internet Smart Clinic also provides educational training; specialty programs and case showcases, new media promotion services; display of physician-produced popular science videos (the platform can provide video shooting and editing services); physician-user interactive Q&A; promotion of physicians' key projects; physician financial and tax management services, compliant wealth management, and a series of other physician service offerings.
At Meixin Internet Smart Clinic, physicians can build their personal brands. Leveraging the platform’s resources, they can then establish brick-and-mortar practices, ultimately serving aesthetic care seekers and creating a physician-led clinic model similar to those in the dental and medical aesthetics industries in countries such as the United States.
For physician clinics, leveraging a unified online internet hospital system enables the full exploitation of institutional private-domain traffic, thereby enhancing the efficiency and effectiveness of patient communication; deploying offline smart devices assists in improving service delivery efficiency; and implementing an information-based management system facilitates the monitoring and adjustment of key operational nodes.
Professor Du Xiaoyan stated that he would continue to advance within the established framework. On one hand, this involves training physicians, helping them build their professional brands, and opening clinics; on the other hand, it aims to enable more consumers to receive treatments from legitimate medical aesthetic institutions. His work will focus on practitioner qualifications, compliance in diagnostic and treatment processes, clinical pathway design, electronic medical records, data standardization, and privacy security, with the goal of establishing industry consortium standards for internet hospitals in the medical aesthetics sector and continuously strengthening the foundational infrastructure.
Looking at the development of the medical aesthetics industry, it primarily revolves around the reorganization of resources and the strengthening of connections among four key stakeholders: physicians, medical institutions, aesthetic seekers, and regulatory authorities. This integration enables physicians to realize their professional value, encourages medical institutions to return to the core essence of healthcare, allows associations to establish standardized systems, and helps consumers genuinely find qualified physicians and reputable institutions. The emergence of internet hospitals, empowered by technological and model innovations, holds the promise of achieving a win-win outcome for all four parties.
Currently, Meixin Internet Hospital is seeking financing. We hope that investors not only provide financial support but also possess a deep understanding of medical practices and the internet, share aligned values, and partner with the hospital to move forward together.
Those interested in the company, please contact the financing assistant Xiaoyun: DongMai_Investent