Shangying Internet Healthcare Files IPO Prospectus: A Profit-KPI-Free Innovator Reconstructing Medical Service Flows with End-to-End Care Management
Recently, the core departments—including product, technology, and operations—at the Operation Center of Shangying Internet Hospital on Xuhong Middle Road in Xuhui District, Shanghai, have been exceptionally busy. Through numerous meetings and discussions of varying scales, these departments have been continuously reviewing and refining usage details for patients, physicians, and partners. As the first internet hospital approved in Shanghai, they are optimizing workflows in preparation for the trial launch of their platform, striving for greater perfection.
The operator of Shangying Internet Hospital is Shangying Internet Healthcare (Shanghai) Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Shangying Internet Healthcare”), which was established in November 2018. At that time, the three major regulatory policies on internet healthcare, including the Administrative Measures for Internet Hospitals (Trial), had just been issued. If this is regarded as the beginning of standardized development in the industry, Shangying Internet Healthcare entered the market very rapidly. However, in the few years prior, a large number of enterprises had already competed in this field, with some unfortunately exiting. From this perspective, Shangying Internet Healthcare’s entry into the industry was not particularly early. So, what new approaches can this emerging internet healthcare company bring? As the first approved internet hospital in Shanghai, what are its core products and concepts? In response, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) conducted an exclusive interview with the head of Shangying Internet Healthcare and the head of full-course management.
The head of Shangying Internet Healthcare believes that the industry is poised for an explosive growth phase, primarily manifested in two aspects. On one hand, a broad industry ecosystem is taking shape, with companies leveraging their respective strengths to expand the market. On the other hand, this assessment is based on the three stages of internet healthcare development: the first stage focused primarily on building informational infrastructure; the second stage established various connections between medical institutions, between doctors and medical institutions, and among doctors themselves, forming distinct service modules; the third stage, which is the current focus, involves reconstructing product logic through a service-flow mindset, carrying out process reengineering and adjusting modules as needed.
Against this backdrop, Shangying Internet Healthcare entered the market, marking a key strategic move for Shangying Group’s health sector to penetrate the “Internet + Healthcare” industry.
At its inception, Shangying Internet Healthcare established teams covering product development, operations, medical partnerships, pharmaceutical affairs, commercialization, and full-course care management. Its core management team primarily comprises veterans from pioneering internet healthcare companies such as WeDoctor, DXY, and JD Internet Hospital, along with senior advisors who previously served in medical regulatory authorities. The team possesses dual expertise in both internet technology and healthcare; more importantly, most of its members have already gained substantial hands-on experience in the internet healthcare sector.
“Shangying is still in its infancy, or rather, the industry itself remains nascent. We have accompanied this industry through two developmental stages, witnessing various attempts, challenges, and formidable obstacles. Nevertheless, we remain passionate about this sector and are willing to make additional efforts to move closer to core improvements,” said the head of Shangying Internet Healthcare. The team has come together with the aim of focusing on identifying the industry’s core value chain. “In this regard, we have received substantial support from our parent company, including financial backing and industrial ecosystem resources, without any immediate profitability requirements. While a company’s overarching goal is naturally to generate profit, we exercise considerable restraint in this area. We respect the seriousness of healthcare, which helps us maintain greater focus. By addressing the issues we have identified, we are leveraging service workflows to reconstruct the product portfolio structure of internet healthcare.”
How to Reengineer the Service Workflow? The head of Shangying Internet Healthcare believes that the number of high-caliber physicians is limited, and their energy is finite. Utilizing physicians’ spare time for online consultations still leaves room for improvement in matching medical resources. Based on this, Shangying Internet Healthcare has proposed a full-course management system. This system draws references from case management in the United States, the long-term care system in Taiwan, China, and the “Three-Physician Joint Management” model in Xiamen, Fujian Province, China. By integrating the current landscape of internet healthcare with the national DRG-based healthcare reform objectives, it gradually builds a DGCP (Diagnosis-Related Group Clinical Pathway) disease classification management chain deeply embedded in clinical practice. Through this system, Shangying’s internet healthcare services can provide comprehensive and sustainable care to patients, while also empowering core medical teams by freeing up their energy and enabling them to deliver greater value in medical services at lower labor costs.
The rationale for establishing a comprehensive, end-to-end healthcare service model lies in the fact that patient engagement in medical care is a long-term and continuous process. The execution and efficiency at any stage can impact the final outcome. However, medical teams often lack sustained visibility into patients’ pre-consultation and post-consultation needs, forcing patients to incur various uncertain costs to access fragmented resources for problem-solving. Therefore, an effective internet-based healthcare system and tools are needed to help medical teams and Medical Consortiums extend their service coverage across all stages. The whole-course management system is precisely designed to address these challenges.
The industry pain points that the full-course management system aims to address. Image courtesy of Shangying Internet Healthcare.
Within whole-course management, disease-specific classification management is the core component. Grounded in the diagnostic and treatment protocols and management services provided by the core medical team, it incorporates consensus-driven content and procedural rules for multi-role collaborative execution under specified conditions, featuring extensive modules for human-computer and system-to-system interactions. Furthermore, it integrates assessments of factors such as patient geography, local medical consortium capabilities, patient adherence, family circumstances, health literacy, and accessibility of smart tools to generate personalized case management plans.
Taking a simple chronic disease as an example, at a certain stage, the management chain can not only specify the tasks to be performed by each role throughout the entire care continuum, highlight key precautions, and outline intervention logic for responding to changes in the patient’s condition; it can also influence the selection of subsequent actions based on execution outcomes at various nodes, thereby affecting the allocation of resources provided by the medical team.
On the patient side, from the moment of enrollment, whole-course management services encompass nearly all medical aspects relevant to the patient. Patients are no longer constrained by traditional challenges such as difficulty and long distances in accessing medical care. Meanwhile, as the system’s intervention and management deepen, information regarding the patient’s health changes, dynamics, medication adherence, exercise habits, chronic disease correlation indices, and interventions by the medical consortium is synchronized with the management team.
“We believe that the three pillars for realizing our medical vision—comprehensive health management—are the precision medical consortium-based tiered diagnosis and treatment system, clinical pathways, and the management chain,” said the head of full-course care at Shangying Internet Healthcare. “Tiered diagnosis and treatment is currently being implemented, and clinical pathways are already well-defined. The DGCP management chain is a systemic tool under development and application by Shangying Internet Healthcare. It continuously introduces or refines specific nodes based on patients’ health status and quality-of-life outcomes, thereby achieving greater completeness.”
Full-course management can, to a certain extent, improve the current doctor-patient relationship, transforming doctors and nurses from mere service providers into master coordinators. Patients, who traditionally played a passive role in executing medical instructions, can also shift to an active role.
The impact of this management system on traditional healthcare may also include: reducing the workload of medical and nursing teams while increasing the volume of precisely targeted patient admissions, thereby boosting the direct income of these teams; integrating with medical consortia to enhance operational efficiency; improving long-term patient outcomes and reducing the incidence of complications; lowering patients’ total healthcare expenditures; decreasing patient attrition rates, and enhancing patient satisfaction and positive ratings.
Shangying Internet Hospital is one of the projects implementing a full-course management system. After obtaining Shanghai’s first internet hospital license, it launched its trial operations on August 15. During the initial trial period, Shangying Internet Hospital introduced basic services including appointment registration, intelligent triage, online text-and-image and video consultations, prescription refills with medication delivery, and health education.
Shangying Internet Hospital, built in collaboration with the Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital of Fudan University, plans to undergo three product iterations during its trial operation phase. However, the head of Shangying Internet Healthcare stated that they would not clutter the platform with features lacking user demand; instead, they will focus on addressing genuine user health and medical needs. “Implementing precise, mutually beneficial reductions is far more challenging than simply adding features.”
“Upcoming launches include the ‘Internet Medical Consortium’ and regional cooperation centers for full-course care management. In the future, leveraging the resources of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital of Fudan University, we will connect more than 100 medical institutions,” introduced the head of Shangying Internet Healthcare. The full-course care management system enables case-by-case patient tracking, followed by the provision of tangible services and resources. It also addresses the diverse needs of medical consortium members, creating a practical new model for medical consortia. Once the full-course care management system is integrated into the medical consortium via the internet hospital, patients—particularly those with severe or complex conditions—can promptly access effective and feasible treatment plans and resources. Patients no longer need to navigate the complexities of seeking cross-regional medical care or relying on personal connections; instead, they develop trust and reliance on the medical consortium. Therefore, the full-course care system can truly realize its potential only after the medical consortium is fully operational online.
Driven by the concept of whole-course management, Shangying Internet Healthcare can develop management products tailored to specific departments as well as those designed for particular diseases. Initially, the services implemented at Shangying Internet Hospital mainly include a “whole perinatal period” management product, along with whole-course management products for complex gynecological conditions and gynecologic oncology treatment.
The head of Shangying Internet Healthcare candidly stated that the establishment and implementation of its full-course management system are still in the 1.0 stage. The human, material, and financial resources invested will not yield direct returns in the short term. Currently, Shangying Internet Healthcare is not in a hurry to extensively expand its market presence. “We will remain committed and are not rushing to expand across China. Instead, we hope that every partner we engage with is satisfied and seeks a long-term, mutually supportive relationship.”