Kuaiyi Deepens Its Smart Healthcare Ecosystem with Comprehensive Digital Solutions

Difficulties in registering appointments, challenges in booking specialists, and mismatches in medical resources are common problems frequently encountered by ordinary patients seeking medical care in China. Currently, appointment registration platforms across different regions remain fragmented and operate independently, with significant regional disparities, and have not yet formed a unified, aggregated platform.

Against the backdrop of government advocacy for major hospitals to reduce offline registration windows and increase online appointment availability, Kuaiyi has seized the opportunity to build an “ecosystem for smart healthcare,” striving to become China’s most valuable “new-type medical and health service operator” and aiming to provide patients with high-quality medical services.

Currently, Kuaiyi primarily offers the following three major services:

【Appointment Registration】Access to appointment slots at over 1,300 hospitals in Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, and other core cities across China, supporting registration and appointment booking via “Hospital Search,” “Department Search,” and “Common Diseases.”

【Precision Medical Guidance】Driven by the dual objectives of unlocking Kuaiyi’s medical resources and addressing users’ healthcare needs, intelligent services are leveraged to reduce the cost for users to access high-quality resources, thereby efficiently resolving both medical and health-related issues.

[Quick Med Talk]The section includes sub-features such as Ask a Doctor, Kuaiyi Lecture Hall, and Medical News, addressing users’ health-related queries through text, voice, video, and real-time online communication, while enhancing health awareness and expanding health knowledge.

Kuaiyi, leveraging seven years of accumulated experience in medical services and core healthcare resources, has carved out an internet healthcare pathway tailored to the unique characteristics of China’s healthcare system by aligning user needs with market opportunities. To this end, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) conducted an exclusive interview with Bie Jia, General Manager of Kuaiyi’s Business Division, to explore how Kuaiyi expanded from appointment registration to precise patient guidance and end-to-end medical care services, and to examine the type of digital ecosystem it aims to build.

Seeking medical care in China involves numerous pain points, such as the difficulty of securing appointments, particularly with specialists at public hospitals in first-tier cities. Additionally, challenges persist, including asymmetry in matching patient needs with appropriate services and uneven distribution of cross-regional diagnostic and treatment resources.

As early as April 28, 2018, the General Office of the State Council officially issued the “Opinions on Promoting the Development of ‘Internet + Healthcare’” (hereinafter referred to as the “Opinions”), which highlighted the need to establish and improve the service and support systems for “Internet + Healthcare,” integrate high-quality physician resources from various departments, and provide users with efficient solutions to health-related issues. The migration of medical services online is a key direction aimed at alleviating patients’ difficulties in registering appointments and accessing medical care.

Since launching its appointment registration platform services and development operations in 2009, the company has accumulated a decade of experience. Bie Jia, General Manager of the Kuaiyi Business Division, summarized: “Against the current backdrop of national advocacy for the development of the medical informatization industry, appointment registration represents a rigid demand. Many hospitals in Beijing, for instance, are gradually reducing their outpatient registration windows. This sends a clear signal encouraging the public to register via online appointments, which helps curb ticket scalping and alleviates inequities in resource allocation. From an industrial development perspective, the participation of enterprises like Kuaiyi has established an indispensable component within the healthcare system promoted by the government.”

For Kuaiyi, appointment and medical consultation services currently cover core hospitals in first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou, and Tianjin, with a coverage rate of over 85% for Grade A tertiary hospitals, providing medical services to more than 20 million users nationwide.

“Although appointment scheduling platforms are available across China, Kuaiyi has focused its efforts on first-tier cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou, aggregating abundant expert resources and securing a core pool of appointment slots. In contrast, regional platforms face greater challenges in their operations, whether in terms of traffic volume or technological capabilities,” said Bie Jia.

In Bie Jia’s view, the healthcare sector in China also needs a comprehensive platform akin to Ctrip to standardize and unify appointment registration services. Kuaiyi aims to collaborate with other regional platforms to form a strategic alliance, thereby providing a complete set of standardized solutions that offer patients a unified appointment registration process and a high-quality medical experience. “Once we integrate the information flows from major appointment registration platforms nationwide, we can enable precise medical care for patients by matching specific diseases with the appropriate departments and physicians,” said Bie Jia. He believes there is only one ultimate goal: to help patients seek medical attention more precisely, timely, and effectively.

"Think big, start small." Driven by the rigid demands of the government, hospitals, and patients, "what Kuaiyi needs to do now is to accelerate its pace and closely follow the direction of national policies, such as tiered diagnosis and treatment. The most fundamental capability is to enable community hospitals to refer patients to higher-level hospitals within the medical consortium. The policies in this regard are very clear," revealed Bie Jia. In the future, Kuaiyi will continue to increase its human and material resources, drive development through technology, strengthen infrastructure construction, and enhance its medical service capabilities.

In summarizing Kuaiyi’s development journey, Bie Jia revealed to reporters that it is essential to focus on integrating three key capabilities: technological R&D, operational excellence, and the ability to uncover user needs.

First, in terms of technological R&D capabilities: “Since taking over the appointment registration platform for the Beijing region, Kuaiyi has been continuously strengthening its technological R&D capabilities. The platform serves tens of millions of users, resulting in substantial instantaneous traffic volumes. It integrates with a large number of hospitals, which impose stringent requirements on appointment volumes, slot availability, and the quality and stability of service operations. To consistently ensure worry-free registration, rapid appointment booking, and stable, secure user experiences, Kuaiyi has made significant investments in cutting-edge technologies and R&D capabilities.”

In short, compared with other regional platforms, Kuaiyi possesses the underlying technical foundation to build a nationwide unified platform in China, with sufficient support capabilities.

“Furthermore, in terms of operational capabilities, the regionalization of medical resources across China is highly pronounced, with Beijing’s expert medical resources accounting for approximately 60%–70% of the nation’s total. Following our establishment in Beijing, Kuaiyi has integrated platform resources—particularly government-related resources—in Shanghai, Tianjin, and Guangzhou. This enables us to exercise greater control over service delivery and quality, achieving true strategic alliances and coordinated development. These efforts lay a solid foundation for our next step: providing precise patient navigation services, rather than merely completing appointment bookings. This constitutes our operational advantage.”

Of particular concern is the mining of user-side demand. While the state is vigorously promoting tiered diagnosis and treatment, big data reveals that in the Beijing market alone, 2.5 out of every 3.5 appointment registrations are made with the wrong department or specialist. Even when patients successfully secure an appointment, it often does not match their actual medical needs. This undermines patient experience, easily triggering doctor-patient conflicts, and represents a waste of specialists’ consultation time. To address this, Kuaiyi is currently leveraging big data and AI to build comprehensive databases and has assembled a 400-member customer service team comprising both general practitioners and specialists. This initiative aims to strengthen risk control and provide effective triage and patient guidance services.

In Bie Jia’s view, Kuai Yi’s strategy begins with integrating information across a nationwide multi-source appointment platform. Next, it focuses on implementing precise patient guidance capabilities to effectively match patients with healthcare resources across different regions. Only by helping public hospitals attract a larger volume of precisely matched patients will these hospitals be willing to open up more cooperation and services. The ultimate goal of precise patient guidance is to achieve cross-regional referral systems. “Therefore, Kuai Yi has been diligently strengthening its core competencies and steadily executing its plans. Although fully implementing tiered diagnosis and treatment in any given region remains a challenging task, the trend is irreversible.”

From appointment registration to precise patient navigation, Kuaiyi’s business and services are reaching deeper. “Our ultimate vision is for Kuaiyi to more accurately connect patients with specialists, encouraging specialists to embrace tiered diagnosis and treatment and online referrals. By integrating nationwide appointment data, we aim to gradually enable cross-regional referrals and cover the entire healthcare journey. This is Kuaiyi’s ultimate ideal, and we believe it constitutes a crucial component in the implementation of China’s tiered diagnosis and treatment system.”

After outlining Kuaiyi’s business logic, Bie Jia also revealed details on the crackdown on scalpers during the interview. This effort is expected to alleviate, to some extent, the imbalance in medical resources, the concentration of patient demand at large hospitals, and the absence of a tiered diagnosis and treatment system.

Notably, after establishing strategic partnerships with JD.com and Ali Health to provide appointment scheduling services for users of the “JD Internet Hospital” and Ali Health, Kuaiyi has expanded access points for medical care. While maintaining an open platform, Kuaiyi combats ticket scalping by leveraging years of big data tagging and behavioral analysis to identify scalpers and provide primary evidence to public security authorities. Additionally, by introducing slow queues and voiceprint recognition technologies, Kuaiyi raises the technical barriers and costs for scalpers, thereby eliminating their profit margins.

Bie Jia revealed, “Kuaiyi intercepts hundreds of thousands of scalper-driven appointment booking attempts every day. We are continuously optimizing our prevention strategies and expanding the dimensions of our defenses. When scalpers realize that competing with us on technical costs is no longer worthwhile, they will cease their online activities. This is a challenge currently faced by all appointment registration platforms in first-tier cities. Following recent technological upgrades to our platform, the number of scalpers has declined, leaving them with fewer opportunities and making their operations increasingly difficult. This progress would not have been possible without the corresponding technical support provided by Alipay and WeChat. We should adopt an open mindset and collaborate with these cutting-edge enterprises to address challenges faced by patients, healthcare providers, and the government.”

Other appointment registration and online consultation platforms have already entered the popular internet hospital sector. Regarding this issue, Bie Jia stated: “Most internet hospital models in China still adhere to traditional business models, providing online consultations through general practitioners or specialists and then capturing drug price differentials via prescription circulation. In contrast, Kuaiyi aims to build an internet hospital that integrates resources and operational capabilities. By offering precise patient triage and cross-regional referral services, we integrate resources, patients, and services with major hospitals across China, generating long-term and sustainable service revenue rather than simply facilitating prescription circulation. Of course, we are also navigating uncharted waters, and everything remains in the exploratory phase.”

Additionally, Kuaiyi has established strategic partnerships with PICC, Bingbao, and UnionPay QuickPass to provide medical appointment services to users of different platforms. In particular, its collaboration with Bingbao enables convenient medical access and preferential treatment for military families.

In terms of its business model, in addition to collaborations with telecom operators, Kuaiyi is exploring payment-related initiatives based on resource aggregation. “In China, Kuaiyi achieves precise patient matching and triage guidance for public and community hospitals in first-tier cities and even nationwide. From a capital perspective, this model is also viewed favorably. At the hospital and policy levels, there is a growing need for digital hospitals and online payment capabilities, which represents an industry trend. By integrating various payment channels, we aim to enable end-to-end payment processes at select hospitals, with pilot programs gradually launching in the second half of the year.”

Looking ahead, within the broader context of tiered diagnosis and treatment, Kuaiyi has remained committed to serving hospitals and patients by aggregating resources. The company continues to deepen its expertise in its core competencies—starting from appointment registration, expanding to precise patient navigation, and integrating payment processes, thereby covering the entire healthcare journey.