Octopus Healthcare Files IPO Prospectus: Leveraging DingTalk Platform to Expand Internet Healthcare Solutions After Over a Decade in Medical Informatics
After eleven years of establishing a foothold in Guangxi through medical information integration, Zhang Yu’an began to consider potential pathways for the rapid replication of Baoxindi.
After engaging with DingTalk Healthcare in 2018, Zhang Yu’an established a strategy for rapid, asset-light expansion based on the internet. In April 2019, Baoxindi’s DingTalk Business Division was upgraded into an independent subsidiary, Zhangyu Medical, and settled into the DingTalk Ecosystem Base in Hangzhou, Zhejiang. This marked Baoxindi’s first formal expansion outside Guangxi since its founding.
Moving forward, Octopus Medical will leverage the DingTalk platform to provide hospitals with in-depth digital solutions, making them more efficient, intelligent, and better equipped. In collaboration with Baoxin Di, it will deploy integrated healthcare IT hardware and software solutions to hospitals connected to the DingTalk platform, jointly empowering hospitals with comprehensive digital transformation capabilities.
This time, Baoxindi’s business map will span Guangxi, Guangdong, Chongqing, and Guizhou, with plans to expand into more markets in the future.
Founded in 2008 and headquartered in Nanning, Guangxi, Baoxindi is a company dedicated to the intelligent and informatization development of healthcare, providing hospitals with comprehensive solutions and one-stop services. To date, it has delivered informatization-related services to nearly 100 hospitals across the entire Guangxi region.
At its inception, Baoxindi focused on healthcare informatization as its core business, engaging in the development of healthcare information systems and bank-hospital all-in-one card systems.
Medical Information System. Patient-centered, with diagnosis and treatment activities as the main thread, and supported by information technology, it achieves automation of diagnosis and treatment and integration of management information, ultimately creating smart healthcare that features comprehensive advanced diagnostic and therapeutic methods, scientific management, integrated information systems, and high efficiency with energy conservation. It constructs core business information management systems for normal hospital operations, including HIS, LIS, PACS, and EMR, covering all hospital businesses and the entire business process.
Silver-Medical All-in-One Card System. This system establishes a localized hospital external integration platform that combines medical insurance settlement, hospital resource management, mobile payment, and terminal control. By leveraging medical treatment cards, social security cards, and bank cards, it enables an all-in-one card experience throughout the entire patient journey. This facilitates convenient medical services—including appointment registration, intelligent triage, queue management, mobile payment, medical insurance settlement and inquiries, and report printing—via smartphones and hospital terminal devices at hospitals ranging from the municipal to the regional level.
One of the key benefits of Baoxindi’s deep roots in the local market is the establishment of long-term, stable partnerships with suppliers and hospital clients. Zhang Yu’an told VCBeat that Baoxindi has maintained an 11-year partnership with a Grade 3A hospital in Guangxi. In 2017, Baoxindi integrated resources from hardware manufacturers and began entering the healthcare IT sector, transitioning its industry role from a product distributor to a healthcare IT integrator. This expansion added business segments such as Hospital Resource Planning (HRP), private cloud data center architecture, “two locations, three centers” infrastructure construction, classified protection of information security and security hardening, as well as intelligent and informatization planning and construction.
Hospital Resource Planning (HRP). By introducing management concepts and technologies, integrating modern management philosophies and processes, and consolidating existing hospital information resources, we aim to establish a unified, efficient, interconnected, and information-sharing systematic hospital resource management platform that supports the overall operational management of the hospital. This platform will achieve scientific, standardized, and refined management of “human, financial, and material resources,” “medical care, teaching, and research,” and “nursing, pharmacy, and technical services.”
Private Cloud Architecture Data Center. Traditional cloud architectures involve multiple layers and require various devices with different functions to build a private cloud data center, resulting in high investment costs, significant energy consumption, and difficult operations and maintenance. Baoxin Di employs a hyper-converged cloud architecture that integrates network, security, server, and storage virtualization technologies into a “server + switch” configuration, offering simple operations and maintenance, low cost, stability, and high efficiency.
Based on its accumulated business expertise, Baoxindi is able to collaborate with various stakeholders to provide comprehensive solutions for system construction and migration, delivering holistic technical services to ensure reliable and stable business operations. Its solutions have been successfully implemented at hospitals including the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangxi University of Chinese Medicine, the Wuming Hospital Affiliated to Guangxi Medical University, and Shangsi County People’s Hospital.
Two-Location, Three-Data-Center Architecture. This approach addresses challenges in business continuity, reliability, and recoverability, achieving near-zero Recovery Time Objective (RTO) and Recovery Point Objective (RPO) for business systems. It implements disaster recovery across the business, computing, network, and storage layers, demanding extensive practical experience in data recoverability and robust architectural design capabilities. Baoxin Di leverages its diverse practical expertise to provide hospitals with optimal top-level architectural design, functional design, and implementation services, ensuring a smooth and successful deployment of the solution.
Information Security Classified Protection and Security Hardening. The implementation of Classified Protection serves as the foundation for information security infrastructure, ensuring regulatory compliance and establishing a critical defense line for network and information security. In alignment with the advancement of hospital operations, tailored security protection solutions are provided based on the specific operational environment of hospitals to safeguard the security of future business systems and data. Baoxin Di assists users in passing the Classified Protection assessment with the most cost-effective solutions, facilitating strategic planning and design for future information security, and optimizing investment strategies to achieve optimal protective outcomes.
Intelligent and Informatization Planning and Construction. Based on wired and wireless networks, a multi-system integrated cabling approach is adopted to provide comprehensive server room construction services, including basic renovation, server room cabling, and lightning protection grounding. The system integrates paperless office systems, remote conferencing systems, multimedia systems, recording and broadcasting systems, and public address systems. Public safety is ensured through video surveillance, access control systems, perimeter intrusion detection, wireless patrol management, and one-touch alarm systems.
However, starting in 2018, Zhang Yu’an recognized that the asset-heavy model resulted in slow business expansion, while market penetration became increasingly difficult amid intensified flat-competition dynamics. “It took us nearly ten years to accumulate a client base of 80 hospitals.”
After thorough analysis, Zhang Yu’an discovered that Baoxindi’s past operations had consistently adopted a project-based approach rather than a productized model. The drawbacks of this business model were not immediately apparent in collaborations with standardized hardware vendors. However, as the company’s business activities delved deeper into vertical sectors, Baoxindi’s supplier structure became increasingly diverse, giving rise to a series of issues stemming from its case-by-case, project-based methodology.
The emergence of DingTalk prompted Zhang Yu’an to consider leveraging a unified underlying digital ecosystem to address unmet healthcare informatization needs through an asset-light, productized approach, thereby rapidly establishing collaborative partnerships with hospitals.
In June 2018, Baoxindi established a DingTalk business division and officially entered the DingTalk healthcare sector. In November of the same year, after recognizing DingTalk’s strong appeal to the demand side, Zhang Yu’an upgraded the DingTalk business division into a relatively independent DingTalk Business Unit.
In April 2019, Zhangyu Medical was registered in Hangzhou, with Zhang Yu’an setting up its office within the DingTalk Space. Leveraging Baoxindi’s foundation in intelligent and information-based operations and built upon the DingTalk platform, Zhangyu Medical has engaged in extensive collaboration with service providers in the DingTalk ecosystem to deliver rapid and efficient healthcare IT solutions. In an interview with VCBeat, Zhang Yu’an stated that while Baoxindi had traditionally excelled in hardware integration, it faced weaknesses in software capabilities; service providers with strong software expertise within the DingTalk ecosystem thus offered a complementary advantage to Baoxindi.
As of press time, the Octopus Medical team has spent several months deploying DingTalk Healthcare to nearly 50 partner hospitals in Guangxi, including many top-tier tertiary (Grade 3A) hospitals.
“As the interview drew to a close, Zhang Yu’an told VCBeat that Octopus Medical is building business teams in Chongqing and other regions, and will soon be able to replicate Baoxindi’s successful experience beyond Guangxi.”