Who Will Become the First Unicorn in the Internet-Plus Family Doctor Sector? The 'Smart Family Doctor Services Report' Reveals the Future!

Improving healthcare quality, expanding access to services, and curbing the growth rate of medical costs constitute the “impossible trinity” in the healthcare sector. As a key component of innovations in the tiered diagnosis and treatment system, the family physician system aims to enhance residents’ health and well-being by maximizing access to medical services and reducing medical costs, all without compromising healthcare quality.

Compared with traditional family doctors, smart family doctors have redefined the service model of family medicine. Smart family doctors refer to a new model supported by “Internet Plus” and artificial intelligence technologies, integrating medical Internet of Things, data fusion, transmission and exchange, cloud computing, and metropolitan area networks. This model merges medical infrastructure with IT infrastructure to enable the binding of family doctor teams and foster collaborative practice between general practitioners and specialists.

VCBeat·VBInsight recently analyzed the financing data of 30 mainstream smart family doctor companies that publicly disclosed funding information in the market. The analysis revealed that investment institutions are generally optimistic about the development prospects of the smart family doctor niche. However, the industry as a whole is still in the early to intermediate stages of business model exploration and remains in a growth phase, with no unicorn companies having emerged yet.

What is the current state of China’s primary healthcare industry? Let’s first look at two data points:

The figure of 930,000 represents the current aggregate total of all primary healthcare institutions in China, encompassing township health centers, village clinics, community health service stations, other types of medical facilities, and private primary care clinics. While this number has remained unchanged over the past two to three years, service capacity has been consistently declining. Despite substantial fiscal subsidies provided by the state to the primary care sector, the effective coverage of primary healthcare services often extends only as far as county-level hospitals.

The total number of primary healthcare workers stands at 3.7 million, encompassing administrative staff, health aides, health technicians, assistant physicians, physicians, nurses, and personnel in diagnostic roles, among others. However, the number of physicians has been declining year by year, dropping from 1,126,443 in 2011 to 1,000,324 in 2016. In comparative terms, China’s per capita physician count is 40% lower than that of Western countries, and fewer than 15% of Chinese physicians hold degrees comparable to those of their Western counterparts. Primary care, which should be the cornerstone of grassroots medical services, remains underdeveloped in China.

Currently, primary care family physicians in China are primarily responsible for three major areas: public health services, basic medical care, and health management. However, prevalent shortcomings in primary healthcare include: first, heavy workloads, frequent inspections, and low operational efficiency; second, uneven service capabilities that fail to meet residents’ expectations, resulting in a poor sense of gain; and third, rigid performance evaluation mechanisms, high staff turnover rates, and difficulties in standardized management. Coupled with the long-standing phenomenon of “prioritizing public health over clinical care,” frontline primary healthcare workers have been trapped in a vicious cycle characterized by “heavy workloads, limited competencies, and low incomes.”

Under the New Healthcare Reform, How Can Public Health and Primary Care Be Integrated? Industry Experts Generally Believe That Digital Technologies Are Poised to Break Traditional Healthcare Service Models, Driving the Integration and Restructuring of the Entire Healthcare Delivery System.

It is foreseeable that, under the new circumstances, primary healthcare institutions must actively respond to changes and proactively leverage digitalization to advance informatization, thereby achieving data-driven management and more precise services. First, for residents, access to high-quality medical services via internet platforms is essential; this foundation fosters platform reliance, enhances user stickiness, and improves satisfaction. Second, for primary healthcare professionals, the application of “Internet Plus” will bring about the most significant changes, notably improvements in service efficiency and quality.

Compared with pure internet healthcare platforms that experienced explosive growth starting in 2014, the entire industry has long returned to rationality. There is a consensus within the sector that platforms deeply rooted in primary care and focused on industrial internet are likely to emerge as the ultimate “winners.” Although the smart family doctor industry remains in the early-to-mid stages of business model exploration, overall development is trending positively under policy support. Currently, within China’s family doctor services segment, Jianjian Family Doctor boasts the deepest market penetration and the clearest business model.

After more than three years of research, testing, and pilot programs, and aligned with CITIC Group’s “Internet+” strategy, Beijing Guoan Guangchuan has proposed a primary healthcare informatization solution centered on the “Jianjian Family Doctor” Smart Workstation. This solution focuses on addressing practical pain points such as low service efficiency, challenges in standardized management, and poor patient satisfaction in grassroots health institutions. Adopting a design philosophy of “smart hardware + software platform,” it integrates three key domains—public health, basic medical care, and health management—and incorporates seven core functions of the Comprehensive Family Doctor Service Management Platform. By enhancing data collection, interoperability, and process standardization, the solution comprehensively improves the service quality of primary healthcare institutions with family doctors at the forefront.

The “Jianjian Family Doctor” Smart Workstation is currently designed to address two key tasks in primary healthcare: follow-up visits and physical examinations. The follow-up care solutions primarily tackle the challenge of data collection during family doctor follow-ups. For instance, patients with hypertension require four follow-up visits per year. With Jianjian Family Doctor’s hardware devices and software platform, this process can be completed efficiently, enabling real-time data interconnectivity and significantly improving workflow efficiency at the grassroots level.

Health check-ups represent another critical task at the primary care level, yet they are plagued by difficulties in notification, low efficiency, and highly complex, inefficient data integration processes following the examinations. To address these challenges, the “Jianjian Family Doctor” Smart Workstation leverages AI and cutting-edge communication technologies to provide two solutions—one for in-hospital and one for out-of-hospital settings. This enables primary care institutions to significantly enhance operational efficiency while achieving scientific and effective process management. Examination results are not only pushed to users in real time but also seamlessly integrated with regional healthcare information platforms.

In fact, like most teams working on “Internet + Primary Care,” Jianjian Family Doctor has also encountered pitfalls and taken detours. Jin Lei, the founder of Jianjian Family Doctor and a serial entrepreneur with nearly 20 years of experience in health informatics, reflects: “Those of us providing family doctor services must always place physicians at the center, prioritize the needs of the general public, and aim to enhance health management services. It is essential to maintain close communication with primary care physicians and truly listen to their perspectives.”

Since the beginning of this year, VCBeat and VBInsight have jointly collaborated with the Medical and Health Industry Branch of the China Information Association to prepare the report “Smart Family Doctor Services Driven by Digitalization.” By combining field research with expert interviews, we have gained an in-depth understanding of the current state of smart family doctor services and are now releasing the “Report on Smart Family Doctor Services Driven by Digitalization.”

The report provides a detailed discussion on the characteristics, current development status, and the construction, management, and operation of smart family doctor workstations. By integrating practical case studies from Shiyan and Xiantao in Hubei Province, Hechi in Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region, and Xuancheng in Anhui Province, it conducts a comparative analysis with traditional family doctors, highlighting improvements in service delivery methods, service content, service efficiency, and service quality. The aim is to comprehensively, objectively, and authentically demonstrate the advantages of smart family doctor solutions, offering reference and insights for government bodies, medical institutions, enterprises, and other stakeholders.

The full report is structured as follows:

I. Insight: Family Doctor Development Enters a New Phase ............................................................................ 1

1.1 Development History of Family Doctors ..................................................................................................... 1

1.2 Market Demand for Family Doctor Services ............................................................................................ 3

1.3 Main Models of Family Doctor Services ....................................................................................... 5

II. Evolution: Family Doctors Endowed with New Connotations .................................................................................... 6

2.1 Family Doctors Are Being Redefined ....................................................................................... 6

2.2 Analysis of the Smart Home Doctor Industry Chain ....................................................................................... 7

2.3 Comparison between Smart Family Doctors and Traditional Family Doctors ................................................................. 8

III. Implementation: How to Build and Operate Smart Family Doctor Workstations ......................................................... 10

3.1 Smart Family Doctor Workstation Addresses 5 Major Pain Points in Family Doctor Services ................................................. 10

3.2 Construction Process of the Smart Family Doctor Workstation ........................................................................ 14

3.3 Operational Model of the Smart Family Doctor Workstation ........................................................................ 16

IV. Empowerment: Smart Family Doctors Empowering Health Management ...................................................................... 19

4.1 The Demand in the Health Management Market Urgently Needs to Be Met ................................................................................. 19

4.2 Four Major Pain Points Plaguing Health Management ................................................................................. 21

4.3 Smart Family Doctor Health Management Solution ........................................................................ 22

V. Case Study: Creating a Standard Template for Smart Family Doctor Services ............................................................. 24

5.1 Shiyan, Hubei: Refining Service Categories to Enhance Service Quality ...................................................... 25

5.2 Hechi, Guangxi: Introducing AI Technology to Innovate Service Models ........................................................ 29

5.3 Xuancheng, Anhui: The “1+1+2” Model Strengthens Service Capabilities ...................................................... 33

VI. Capital: Increase Attention to Smart Family Doctor Enterprises ......................................................... 37

6.1 30 Companies Have Cumulatively Raised RMB 996 Million in Financing ............................................................ 37

6.2 Early-Stage Financing Rounds, Industry in Growth Phase ............................................................... 38

7. The Future: Development Trends of Smart Family Doctors .............................................................................. 40

7.1 Expansion from Basic Services to Personalized Services ............................................................................ 40

7.2 The outpatient visit volume of tertiary hospitals will become an incremental market for smart family doctor services ............. 41

7.3 Private Clinics (Outpatient Departments) Will Fill the Gap in Smart Family Doctor Service Supply .......................... 42

This report will be officially released on May 14 at the 2019 Deep Dive - Grassroots Medical Innovation Practice Summit held in Guangzhou, PC endClick here to view the full report., jointly exploring the "new future" of primary healthcare.

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