How ZoeSoft Became an Evergreen Leader in China's HIT Industry: Covering 28 Provinces and Powering Four EMR Stage-6 Hospitals

HIT (Healthcare Information Technology) refers to business model innovation empowered by data processing and information technologies, aimed at addressing challenges in the traditional healthcare industry.

The origins of China’s Health Information Technology (HIT) development can be traced back to the period of Reform and Opening-up. In the late 1970s, this policy facilitated the entry of numerous small computers into China, with some being introduced into hospitals. Entering the 1980s, affordable and user-friendly microcomputers flooded the Chinese market, while domestically produced microcomputers gradually emerged and were successively adopted by certain hospitals.

By 1992, the Hospital Management Institute of the Ministry of Health had mobilized IT elites from numerous hospitals across China to undertake system research and development. This was followed by the successful implementation of two key national scientific and technological projects under the Eighth Five-Year Plan: the “Research on Hospital Integrated Information Systems” and the “Military Project No. 1.” Driven vigorously by the Ministry of Health, China’s healthcare informatization witnessed its first wave of rapid development. Founded in 1997, Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. emerged as a leading pioneer in this trend.

Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Zoe Soft”), founded in 1997, is a high-tech enterprise dedicated to providing comprehensive informatics solutions for the medical, healthcare, and health sectors. Zoe Soft has established its headquarters and R&D base in Xiamen, with 29 branches and subsidiaries across 28 provinces, municipalities, and autonomous regions throughout China. The company serves over 16,000 health administrative authorities and medical and health institutions at all levels.

After more than two decades in the industry, how has Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. maintained its robust vitality? How will the company adapt to the evolving demands of the times and solidify its leading position? To address these questions, VCBeat conducted an interview with Mr. Gao Shan, Senior Vice President of Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd.

Since joining Zoe Soft in 1999, Gao Shan has become one of the company’s founding veterans, witnessing its entire journey from nascent beginnings to maturity. “Compared with some long-established health IT companies, we are relatively latecomers,” Gao Shan told VCBeat. Founded in 1997, Zoe Soft spent a year in hesitation before deciding to enter the healthcare informatics sector.

Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. describes itself as a latecomer to the industry. Yet this newcomer, which started from scratch in developing hospital information systems, stood out among more than 400 IT enterprises across China in just two years, becoming one of the eight companies approved by the Ministry of Health.

In 1998, Xiamen was a talent deficit area. Without top-tier talent, how did Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. become one of the “Big Eight”? “Innovation!” offered Gao Shan as the answer. Since entering the field of medical informatization, Zoe Soft has centered its efforts on product innovation.

In 2003, the healthcare industry was still in its early stages, with Hospital Information Systems (HIS) focused on “financial management” serving as the cornerstone of hospital informatization in China. However, as Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. explored this domain, it recognized that traditional care delivery models and shortages of medical resources were exacerbating the “three longs and one short” problem prevalent in major hospitals—namely, long waits for registration, consultation, and payment, contrasted with brief consultation times. This inefficiency forced patients to exhaust themselves shuttling between various clinical departments and billing counters during their treatment journeys.

During the design of the Hospital Information System (HIS), Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. adhered to the service philosophy of "patient-centered care" and "efficient diagnosis and treatment." It pioneered a model combining prepayment deposits with all-in-one cards across China, introducing new service models such as full self-service, comprehensive appointment scheduling, and pre-payment. This approach creatively achieved "functional reorganization, resource sharing, and process reengineering."

Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. selected the First Affiliated Hospital of Xiamen University, where patient access challenges were particularly pronounced, as a pilot site for exploration and implementation. By continuously eliminating bottlenecks, reducing procedural steps, and optimizing workflows, the company helped the hospital increase its daily patient volume from 4,000 to over 10,000 visits, while reducing the average waiting time per step from 40 minutes to under 10 minutes. These innovative measures significantly improved the patient care experience, made substantial contributions to substantively addressing longstanding issues such as difficulty in accessing medical care, disorderly service processes, and high costs, and greatly enhanced the hospital’s operational efficiency and performance.

Meanwhile, Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. introduced the concept of hospital information construction centered on electronic medical records (EMR), aiming to improve the work efficiency of medical staff and promote the rational use of medical resources. The company embarked on the development of an EMR system that not only achieved the digital storage of paper-based medical records but also enabled rapid, intelligent, and fully structured data entry. This initiative is dedicated to assisting hospitals in refining their management models and achieving modernization goals.

Due to top-level design and historical factors, as hospital business systems have become more sophisticated and data volumes have continued to grow, information silos, data chimneys, and fragmented applications have proliferated. Business systems, mobile apps, and hundreds of PC-based applications are ubiquitous within healthcare institutions, as well as across different medical and administrative entities. Cross-institutional and cross-industry data sharing has long been difficult to implement.

Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. keenly identified this pain point and initiated research on data integration and sharing. In 2006, leveraging the opportunity presented by the launch of the national “11th Five-Year” Science and Technology Support Program project, “Military-Civilian Collaborative Demonstration Project for Medical Services · Xiamen Demonstration Zone,” it established the Xiamen Citizen Health Information System. This system became China’s first successfully operational regional health information platform based on personal health records, hailed as “the most successful practical model for regional health informatization in China and even worldwide to date.” The industry refers to it as the “Xiamen Model.”

Zoe Soft has pioneered innovation and broken through barriers in the field of healthcare informatization. In 2013, it participated in building China’s first “Healthcare Cloud” project in Xiamen, providing cloud services to over 300 healthcare institutions across the city. This initiative achieved centralized hardware resources, migration of software applications, and data center colocation, cumulatively saving RMB 59 million in construction costs.

Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. is actively exploring new models of “Internet + Healthcare” services, promoting the deep integration of emerging technologies—such as cloud computing, big data, the Internet of Things, mobile internet, and artificial intelligence—with healthcare services. The company has established “Internet +” healthcare information platforms in multiple cities across China, enabling features such as AI-powered triage, unified payment systems, electronic health cards, and mobile-based family doctor contracting.

This innovative model also supported Xiamen City in pioneering the “Three-Physician Co-Management” approach for tiered diagnosis and treatment of chronic diseases and family doctor contracted services, truly realizing convenient and beneficial information access for the public. Leveraging this model, Xiamen City received the China Local Government Innovation Award and, in 2018, passed the Level 5 Grade B assessment of the National Health and Medical Information Interconnectivity Standardization Maturity, becoming the first prefecture-level city in China to achieve this certification.

Since 2012, Zoe Soft Corp.,Ltd. has leveraged its accumulated strengths to enter a period of rapid development. Currently, the company has reversed its previous disadvantage in talent acquisition and now boasts a high-caliber, highly skilled professional team. With over 1,500 employees stationed across China, the workforce includes more than 100 technical experts with over a decade of industry experience, while personnel engaged in product R&D and project implementation account for more than 70% of the total staff.

Since 2013, Electronic Medical Record (EMR) grading has become a key focus of hospital informatization in China. Zoe Soft Corp.,Ltd. quickly made strategic moves in the area of EMR grading.

In 2012, the basic information system for Karamay Central Hospital in Xinjiang, developed by Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd., went live, including the hospital information integration platform, HIS, and EMR. In early 2013, Karamay Central Hospital launched its EMR project and initially completed it by December of that year, with an internal self-assessment reaching Level 6 medical record standards. In June 2014, Karamay Central Hospital was awarded the title of a Level 6 hospital in the electronic medical record system functional application grading evaluation, becoming the second hospital in China to achieve this recognition.

Over a period of two and a half years, Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. helped Karamay Central Hospital, which had zero prior foundation in health informatics, pass the EMR assessment. As of June 10, 2019, there were 15 hospitals nationwide rated at Level 6 for electronic medical records, with Zoe Soft accounting for four of them.

Currently, Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. has established a comprehensive suite of healthcare IT software products and service systems, offering holistic solutions across three major categories: Smart Hospitals, Smart Healthcare, and Smart Health. Its product portfolio covers areas such as hospital informationization, national population health informationization, Internet+ Healthcare, and the application of health and medical big data.

Gao Shan stated that product innovation is the key to sustaining the strong vitality of Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. Currently, Zoe Soft has established 10 provincial-level informatization platforms across China. Additionally, the company operates more than 60 prefecture- and city-level informatization platforms and has implemented smart hospital solutions in over 400 large and medium-sized hospitals.

Throughout the company’s development history, every key milestone of Zoe Soft Corp., Ltd. has closely aligned with China’s healthcare informatization policies. The evolution of Zoe Soft can be regarded as a microcosm of the development of healthcare informatization in China. Gao Shan told VCBeat that in the second half of the year, Zoe Soft will continue to center its efforts on national policies and strategic directions, continuously refine its products, and further pioneer innovative pathways in healthcare informatization.