Five Presidents of Top-Tier Hospitals Are Actively Building Internet Hospitals: Their Strategic Considerations and Practical Approaches

With the implementation of new regulations governing internet-based medical diagnosis and treatment, physical hospitals and enterprises are actively seeking adjustments to their existing operations in response to this emerging landscape, whether by adding new services or optimizing processes.

Enterprises engaged in online medical diagnosis and treatment have not only gained “legitimate” status but also identified a new direction: co-establishing internet hospitals with physical hospitals to identify practical application scenarios for online healthcare and explore monetization pathways.

For physical hospitals, optimizing processes and adding functionalities to existing infrastructure to better serve patients also aligns with the overarching direction of the new healthcare reform.

From this perspective, collaboration between enterprises and hospitals should yield mutually beneficial outcomes.

VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) has learned that some physical hospitals have already begun establishing internet hospitals, while others are still in the preparatory stages, with varying paces of progress. So, what are the perspectives of hospital directors on internet hospitals? How do they weigh the decision to build or not to build? What are their key needs?

With these questions in mind, VCBeat conducted exclusive interviews with Chen Yong, President of Beijing Chaoyang Hospital; Li Weimin, President of West China Hospital; Qiu Chen, President of Shenzhen People’s Hospital; Ma Xiaofei, President of Yinchuan First People’s Hospital; and Cao Rui, Vice President of Nanfang Hospital.

During our interview at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, we found that President Chen Yong attaches great importance to the new model of internet hospitals.He believes that with the development of internet technology, the service models of physical hospitals will inevitably undergo corresponding changes in the future; if hospitals fail to seize this opportunity to learn and apply these advancements, they will sooner or later be eliminated.

From the hospital perspective, some hospitals are still in a passive phase of waiting for patients to come to them, while most large hospitals are overcrowded.However, with the widespread adoption of internet technology, this status quo will change.

While the core essence of healthcare services remains unchanged, hospitals will need to compete not only on medical technology but also on service quality in the future; therefore, no hospital can afford to overlook the application of internet technologies.

President Chen Yong aims to transform Beijing Chaoyang Hospital into a national-level medical center. Its responsibility is to extend high-quality medical resources further down the hierarchy within the tiered diagnosis and treatment system, promote the development of primary care capabilities, and ensure the effective implementation of tiered diagnosis and treatment.

To achieve this goal, he put forward the following requirements for Beijing Chaoyang Hospital’s pilot initiatives in internet healthcare:

First, we must strengthen primary healthcare.Strengthening primary care is essential to truly implement tiered diagnosis and treatment. Internet-based approaches can facilitate the decentralization of high-quality medical resources, thereby improving the service quality and capabilities of primary healthcare institutions.

Second, enhance the hospital’s visibility, academic influence, and outreach through the development of internet-based healthcare services, with the aim of establishing it as a National Medical Center at the earliest opportunity.

In strengthening primary care, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital began establishing a medical consortium in 2012, and its tightly integrated medical consortium model has received widespread acclaim from various sectors. Currently, the hospital is also enhancing internal connectivity among these tightly integrated medical consortia, including through remote consultations and other means.

With the establishment of the Medical Imaging Diagnosis Center at Beijing Chaoyang Hospital, hospitals within the medical consortium now enable patients to undergo imaging examinations directly at community hospitals, with diagnostic reports interpreted by radiologists from Chaoyang Hospital. This has achieved standardization of radiological diagnosis quality across the medical consortium.

Nationwide, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital is also gradually extending its reach to county-level hospitals, with the Beijing-Tianjin-Hebei region serving as the core. County-level hospitals in various regions are key regional medical centers prioritized by the state, which has invested substantial funds in both their hardware and software infrastructure.

However, President Chen Yong stated that while medical equipment is easy to purchase, interpreting the resulting images requires experienced professionals, and such experience is accumulated over time.

Therefore, Chaoyang Hospital is gradually extending its reach to county-level hospitals by providing remote diagnostic support—such as imaging consultations, virtual ward rounds, and surgical guidance—to empower these institutions, strengthen regional medical centers, and achieve the goal of “keeping the treatment of serious diseases within the county.”

Meanwhile, Beijing Chaoyang Hospital is also providing training to specialist physicians at county-level medical institutions on “Internet + Healthcare” through its medical consortium.

In response to national policies such as “tiered diagnosis and treatment” and “equalization of medical resources,” Dr. Chen Yong, the Hospital President, established a Telemedicine Center in 2016. This initiative effectively integrated specialized and high-caliber medical experts, physicians, and healthcare information, thereby expanding the temporal and spatial coverage of medical services and broadening the scope of care. The hospital has designated the Telemedicine Center as a first-level department, managed by dedicated personnel.

This telemedicine center adopts Internet-based, holographic, lossless, diagnostic-grade telemedicine technology. The system platform utilizes the IX-5000 video transmission equipment and consists of three main components: a high-definition remote consultation room, a telemedicine platform, and remote consultation terminals.

In addition to the high-definition remote consultation room, consultation terminals have been installed in multiple departments—including conference rooms, the Department of Respiratory Medicine, the Heart Center, the Imaging Center (Radiology), and the Imaging Center (Ultrasound)—to facilitate remote consultations.

The hospital is currently constructing digital operating rooms, which will further facilitate remote surgical broadcasting and teaching demonstrations.

Currently, the Telemedicine Center offers services including specialist teleconsultations, remote diagnostics, multidisciplinary interactive consultations, remote teaching rounds, remote discussions of typical cases, remote lectures, and specialized remote training. Among these, teleconsultations encompass a wide range of services, such as remote imaging (radiology and ultrasound), remote pathology, remote electrocardiography (ECG), remote surgical guidance, and remote emergency care.

According to President Chen Yong, the Telemedicine Center is business-oriented and technology-driven, implementing the “Internet+” healthcare innovation concept. It continuously improves its telemedicine service platform and expands its telemedicine service network.

As the concept of “Internet+” gains momentum, President Chen Yong is also concerned that some large hospitals may use this opportunity to embark on a new round of aggressive expansion if oversight is lax.He believes that the “Internet + Hospital” model of medical services is targeted at hospitals, with the focus should be placed on county-level medical institutions. This is a point he has repeatedly emphasized during interviews.

“Although the investment in the Telemedicine Center is substantial and its current output is limited, we are not in a hurry. This is because the center’s primary focus is on providing remote consultation services to medical institutions, and it has not yet opened online medical services directly to individual patients. If patients were able to consult specialists online without going through the tiered diagnosis and treatment system whenever they fell ill, it would undermine the tiered diagnosis and treatment framework that hospitals are currently establishing,” explained Chen Yong.

Are enterprises involved in hospitals’ development of “Internet + Healthcare”?In response, Chen Yong stated that Beijing Chaoyang Hospital has not yet partnered with private capital; its investment and development rely solely on the hospital’s own resources.

He believes that if hospitals undertake the initiatives themselves, they can fully adhere to their own concepts and strategic thinking. In contrast, as enterprises are primarily profit-driven and require a return on investment, hospitals would lack autonomy in many areas.

Certainly, Chaoyang Hospital does not exclude cooperation with social capital.In 2019, Chaoyang Hospital signed cooperation agreements with five medical enterprises., to assist hospitals in operational promotion.

Dean Chen Yong finally emphasized,The enterprise merely serves as a facilitator.Regarding “Internet + Healthcare,” Chaoyang Hospital is also in an exploratory phase, hoping for less external interference and striving to move in the direction envisioned by the hospital. The hospital is also undergoing gradual changes.Once “Internet + Healthcare” is well established, collaborate with third parties to leverage their professional marketing teams for market expansion.

At the end of 2018, West China Hospital of Sichuan University announced that its internet hospital had entered a trial operation phase, marking a new exploration in the development of internet hospitals by Grade A tertiary hospitals in China.This is an internet hospital built with the hospital as the main entity, which has already launched services such as online outpatient clinics, web-based consultations, expert team online consultations, online prescriptions, and medication delivery.

Li Weimin, President of West China Hospital, stated that the driving force behind the establishment of West China Internet Hospital is to address the pain points in patient care and the challenges in hospital management. By leveraging internet technologies to innovate experiences, services, and management practices, the hospital aims to deliver more convenient and efficient services to patients, the hospital itself, administrative departments, and society at large. This initiative will help effectively promote tiered diagnosis and treatment services, build an integrated national health system, and fully advance the Healthy China strategy.

He would rather, ““Through the internet hospital, West China Hospital aims to reduce its daily outpatient volume from the current approximately 20,000 visits to 10,000 visits per day, enabling follow-up patients who do not need to visit West China Hospital in person to access care via telemedicine at primary care and community levels.”

Dean Li Weimin believes that the development of West China Hospital’s Internet Hospital has significantly driven the upgrading of the hospital’s philosophy. The previous model, which was centered on individual physicians and guided by operational management, has gradually evolved into a new paradigm for Internet hospitals. This new approach leverages internet thinking to integrate patients, the hospital, physicians, and society into a cohesive ecosystem, united by the shared value of life and health and oriented around patient needs.

Within West China Hospital’s internet hospital system, online outpatient services and virtual clinics primarily cater to follow-up visits for common and chronic diseases. Unconstrained by location or time, these services provide a direct channel for online communication between patients and physicians. After submitting a request on the platform, patients and doctors can communicate about medical conditions and review medical records through text, images, voice messages, and real-time video consultations, thereby enabling online disease consultation and remote diagnosis.

What sets this service apart from conventional online outpatient consultations is that, following an online diagnosis, physicians can issue hospital admission certificates, order diagnostic tests and laboratory exams, or prescribe medications based on the patient’s actual condition. Patients can simultaneously complete online procedures such as admission registration and waiting for bed availability, payment for medical orders and prescriptions, scheduling of diagnostic tests, and requests for medication delivery.

Meanwhile, authoritative expert teams organized by specialty, specific disease, or multidisciplinary team (MDT) models establish online collaborative physician-nurse teams. For instance, after patient discharge, the original medical and nursing team can continue follow-up care based on the disease type, providing chronic disease follow-up and consultation services. This approach optimizes medical resources and better delivers diagnostic, therapeutic, and disease management services to target patients.

Currently, more than ten departments at West China Hospital have launched initiatives and designed relevant service packages targeting areas such as allergic rhinitis, dermatology, and thoracic surgery.

Regarding the specific preparatory work for the establishment of the internet hospital, the objectives were finalized in late 2017. According to Liu Lunxu, Vice President of West China Hospital, the development of the internet hospital was one of the key construction projects for the hospital in 2018, receiving high priority from the entire Party and administrative leadership team.

Liu Lunxu also stated that the hospital is currently actively encouraging approximately 1,200 internally based physicians with outpatient qualifications to apply for certification in online diagnosis and treatment. Subsequently, admission privileges will be gradually extended to physicians within the West China Hospital Medical Consortium, with the ultimate goal of opening access to physicians across China.

In terms of construction, Sichuan Huaxi Health Technology has participated. The company belongs to the “Pan-Huaxi” system, but West China Hospital is an open platform, and any other enterprise is welcome to participate if willing.

However, most external internet healthcare companies have entered the field of consultation services and are unable to provide genuine medical services. Healthcare is a specialized service that cannot address all medical issues through simple lightweight consultations alone.

In healthcare, the entity bearing responsibility for diagnosis and treatment is not the physician. For patients, the goal of seeking medical care is to cure their illness; however, internet healthcare companies provide consultation-based services and are unable to address fundamental medical issues.The Internet Medical Management Measures issued by the state clearly stipulate that, in the event of medical disputes involving an internet hospital, the entity bearing liability shall be the physical hospital.

In terms of regulatory oversight, the Chengdu Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission has established a provincial-level regulatory platform., all internet hospitals must integrate with it; the CA certification of physicians on internet hospital platforms must be reported to the regulatory platform; medical services provided by internet hospitals must be registered based on their affiliated public physical hospitals, ensuring full documentation of the entire service process.

If the various services of internet hospitals are disaggregated, regulatory oversight becomes significantly more convenient. Following such service segmentation, the formulation of service evaluations and performance indicators also becomes more streamlined, thereby enabling effective quality control.

In the interview, President Li Weimin emphasized, “The primary purpose of internet hospitals is to further advance the implementation of tiered diagnosis and treatment.”

In response to the challenges faced by primary healthcare institutions, such as shortages of talent and technical expertise, President Li Weimin has adopted a targeted approach: leveraging the “Medical Consortium” model to extend West China Hospital’s medical services down to the grassroots level.

Currently, West China Hospital is collaborating with Chenghua District in Chengdu to achieve interoperability in online medical services, including mutual recognition of laboratory and imaging tests and the dissemination of standardized clinical protocols. In the future, tiered collaboration will be expanded to more than 681 telemedicine partner hospitals affiliated with West China Hospital, as well as additional regional alliance hospitals.

This also aligns with his initial objective: to decentralize hospital patient flow.

What West China Hospital aims to achieve is for patients to continuously receive its services at community hospitals, with the understanding that patients will return to West China Hospital when their medical needs exceed the capabilities of community facilities. As the overarching coordinator of healthcare services, West China Hospital is not concerned that diverting patient flow will result in patient attrition.

In this way, the experts at West China Hospital can also improve their work efficiency.Experts lead medical teams in patient consultations, allowing physicians to address manageable issues first while the experts focus on resolving core problems. This approach not only enhances the patient service experience but also saves physicians’ time and mitigates asymmetric demand. Regarding service structure, hospitals must implement segmented services to improve operational efficiency.

When issuing electronic prescriptions, West China Hospital will implement strict controls.

The Department of Pharmacy at West China Hospital currently employs over 200 staff members. To implement online medication management, real-time monitoring of drug prescriptions is required. This monitoring goes beyond the traditional assessment of the rationality of individual prescriptions; it focuses on the rationality of clinical medication use and controls the overall medication regimen for each patient.

West China Hospital also requires the Pharmacy Department to conduct medication reviews for patients with chronic conditions. Since the launch of its internet hospital, the rationality of electronic prescriptions has been better ensured, reducing the rate of inappropriate medication use.

In his concluding remarks, President Li Weimin expressed the hope that West China Hospital’s Internet Hospital would uphold the spirit of pragmatism and innovation, collaborate with medical institutions across China and Sichuan Province, join hands with partners from various industries, continuously pioneer new frontiers, and strive for progress, thereby jointly building a people-centered Internet Hospital that leads both nationally and globally.

When Yinchuan is mentioned, people associate it with labels such as “Internet healthcare” and “Internet hospitals.” Following the implementation of new regulations on Internet-based medical services, Yinchuan has once again become a hub for professionals across China to study and learn about Internet healthcare.

Yinchuan First People’s Hospital has not only collaborated with multiple enterprises to co-establish an internet hospital, but also achieved satisfactory operational results.

When discussing the original intention behind building the internet hospital, Ma Xiaofei, President of Yinchuan First People's Hospital, had a simple need:To retain patients who would otherwise seek medical care outside their local area within the locality.。

As Yinchuan is located in western China, where economic development lags and local medical resources are scarce, a significant proportion of patients with complex and refractory diseases still seek medical care across provincial borders. Many seriously ill patients must travel long distances for treatment, imposing a heavy burden on both the patients and their families, whether due to the hardships of traveling back and forth during the course of care or the additional costs associated with receiving medical services outside their home region.

Dean Ma Xiaofei believes that only by leveraging emerging technologies such as the internet to connect with leading experts in major cities like Beijing and Shanghai at the upper end, while extending coverage to county-level hospitals and township health centers at the lower end to deliver diagnostic and treatment capabilities, can a multi-tiered hierarchical diagnosis and treatment model be established. This approach fosters a win-win situation for all stakeholders and ultimately benefits the public.

During the development process, Ma Xiaofei provided maximum support to partner companies and embraced an open mindset toward collaboration with various enterprises. Partner organizations include Haodf Online, Aisino Jinglian, Yizhan Medical Group, and more than ten others.

These enterprises assist hospitals in establishing various remote diagnostic centers, including those for teleconsultations, internet-based outpatient services, remote imaging diagnosis, remote electrocardiography (ECG), remote ultrasound diagnosis, and remote pathology diagnosis. This addresses the common challenge in primary healthcare settings of “being able to afford equipment but unable to recruit radiologists,” enabling patients to “pay primary-care prices while receiving diagnostic services equivalent to those provided by tertiary Grade A hospitals.”

Taking remote imaging diagnosis as an example, the hospital’s radiology department currently has 19 physicians, with those holding senior professional titles (associate chief physician or above) accounting for 76%. This inverted pyramid staffing structure, coupled with insufficient training of junior physicians, is more conducive to conducting remote consultations and providing technical support to primary healthcare institutions.

Through the remote imaging diagnosis system of Yinchuan First People's Hospital, primary healthcare facilities can upload medical images to the Yizhan Cloud Imaging Diagnosis Platform by connecting to the external network via a compact Yizhan Box. Upon receiving the images, the remote diagnosis center enables radiologists to promptly complete the diagnosis and draft the report, which is then transmitted back to the referring lower-tier hospital.

On average, the primary healthcare center can receive the diagnostic report within approximately 30 minutes, enabling timely follow-up diagnosis and treatment for the respective patients. This service fundamentally addresses the shortage of radiologists in primary medical institutions, as well as the issue of insufficient diagnostic expertise among existing physicians.

Currently, the center is connected to 62 institutions, including secondary hospitals, township health centers, and community health service centers. It has achieved a peak daily diagnostic volume of 1,400 cases and has completed 52,000 remote diagnoses over the past year.

Nanfang Hospital of Southern Medical University, located in Guangzhou, has also launched initiatives in internet healthcare—namely, its “Smart Outpatient” service.Data from within the hospital indicates that following the implementation of smart outpatient clinic construction in December 2018, online engagement with the smart outpatient services showed a steady upward trend,The smart hospital facilitates approximately 1,100 online appointment registrations per day, accounting for about 15% of the total appointment volume, while daily online payments represent approximately 10% of the total payment volume.

During an interview with the hospital director, Cao Rui, Deputy Director of the hospital, stated that a significant proportion of patients seeking care at Nanfang Hospital are those with major diseases or critical, complex, and difficult-to-treat conditions.

The hospital classifies arriving patients into four severity levels: A, B, C, and D. Level A indicates the mildest condition, Level B represents a progressively worsening state, Level C denotes relatively severe cases, and Level D signifies the most critical conditions. Patients classified as Level C or D account for 84% of all cases—the highest proportion in Guangdong Province—with this figure increasing by single-digit percentage points annually.

“Our hospital is characterized by its cross-regional reach and a high volume of patients with complex, critical, and severe conditions, which served as an endogenous driving force compelling us to embrace the Internet,” Cao Rui stated, outlining the initial rationale for developing the smart outpatient service.

During the construction process, the hospital aims to optimize and enhance patient healthcare services across all stages: pre-consultation, during consultation, and post-consultation.

Shifting Mindsets Is Key to Implementing Internet Initiatives in HealthcareCao Rui noted, “Hospitals have two key leaders: the president and the Party Committee Secretary. Their mindsets are at least as open as mine, if not more so. Since we cannot avoid the advent of the internet era and the big data era, we should embrace them. We will move forward while navigating the inherent uncertainties, even if the path is winding or requires occasional small steps back. Our goal is to join the first tier of innovators; there is no need to be the outright leader. Overall, our mindset remains open. Embracing the internet and innovation is crucial.”

When selecting partners, the hospital chose Tencent, which possesses the strongest innovation DNA and innovative elements, as its strategic partner. For online services, Tencent was selected, while DHC Software Company was chosen for offline information infrastructure development.

With these strategic partners, coupled with the hospital’s willingness to experiment, a critical step has been taken.

Cao Rui believes that building an internet-based smart hospital must first ensure the solid foundation of offline physical hospitals. It requires optimizing physical workflows, breaking down barriers between departments and specialties, and only after integration can these services be effectively presented online.

In the long run, intelligent technologies will make it possible for non-local patients to receive remote online consultations, or the digital transformation of physical hospitals will become a trend.

However, it is impossible to rely solely on telemedicine for the complete diagnosis and treatment of patients; partial care delivery is feasible. This, however, rests on a prerequisite: standardized interconnectivity among hospitals, along with mutual recognition of electronic medical records and laboratory test results, which form the foundation of telemedicine.

According to VCBeat, municipal-level regional hospitals in Guangzhou are currently implementing interoperability standardization, enabling seamless integration of all medical documentation across every hospital in the city, while also promoting the mutual recognition of laboratory test results.

Cao Rui believes that as physical hospitals undergo digital transformation and integrate their online and offline services, the ultimate vision of value-based healthcare will be easier to achieve.

He treats the triad of patient treatment efficacy, medical safety, and convenient patient experience as the numerator, with the cost of healthcare resource consumption as the denominator; a larger numerator yields higher value, while a smaller denominator also yields higher value.

In simple terms, the convenience of internet-based smart hospitals and their benefits across pre-consultation, during-consultation, and post-consultation stages will empower physical hospitals with internet capabilities, naturally improving efficiency and streamlining the patient care journey.

In terms of safety,Taking smart pharmacies, AI-assisted case diagnosis, and AI-assisted imaging diagnosis as examples, if machines are used to assist physicians in screening,The misdiagnosis and missed diagnosis rates have dropped to very favorable levels, potentially reaching zero.。Therefore, the quality and safety of healthcare are enhanced through internet information technology.

In terms of efficacy, by establishing a more systematic and comprehensive clinical framework, generate new knowledge tailored to the health status of the Chinese population to guide our clinical practice and medication. Reduce costs through improved efficiency, rational resource utilization, and risk control, thereby conserving medical resources.

The development of internet-enabled smart hospitals has significantly promoted the nation’s healthcare sector, particularly by driving the realization of value-based care and fundamentally transforming the maximization of patient value—a prospect that holds great promise.

When VCBeat interviewed President Qiu Chen, it arrived at the outpatient hall of Shenzhen People's Hospital at 9:00 a.m. There were no long queues at the payment and registration counters; instead, only a few people were waiting.

In fact, it is the largest modern comprehensive hospital in Shenzhen, serving not only local patients but also attracting a large number of patients from Hong Kong, Macao, and surrounding areas. It records the highest annual outpatient and emergency visit volume among all hospitals in Shenzhen, with over 3 million visits each year.

Why, then, are there no massive queues of people?

According to Qiu Chen, President of Shenzhen People’s Hospital, the hospital introduced the concept of “continuity of care” as early as 2012, extending medical services from hospital wards to patients’ homes and guiding the orderly triage and consultation of patients. The “Internet + Healthcare” model leverages smart tools to further expand the scope of “continuity of care” and enhance service efficiency.

Leveraging Smart Tools to Upgrade Outpatient Services: By Pioneering the New “Internet + Healthcare” Model, Shenzhen People’s Hospital Has Standardized Its In-Hospital Services, Reengineered Service Workflows Based on Its Existing Information Technology Platform, and Built an Integrated Online-Offline Service Platform to Enhance Medical Access Efficiency and Deliver a High-Quality Patient Experience for Citizens.

In 2013, Shenzhen People's Hospital launched China's first cloud-based "Internet Hospital," leveraging internet technology to enhance and supplement the functions of traditional hospitals.Continuity of care has also extended from offline to online channels, offering greater convenience and efficiency. While benefiting a broader population, the content has been enriched and upgraded.

In 2018, leveraging WeChat’s medical insurance payment capabilities, Shenzhen People’s Hospital streamlined the entire online consultation process and became China’s first “WeChat Medical Insurance Payment Demonstration Hospital”:

Through the AI-powered triage mini-program, patients can be accurately matched with a doctor in one second, enabling seamless online triage and appointment registration.

By linking their social security cards to WeChat, insured users can make fingertip payments without waiting in line, enabling them to directly access medical consultations, examinations, and medication pickup, thereby achieving the goal of "at most one visit" for medical care.

Via the hospital’s official WeChat account, patients can also easily access appointment details, medical billing statements, online test reports, and social insurance payment records.

According to hospital statistics, at Shenzhen People’s Hospital, patients’ use of “finger-tip operations” via the hospital’s official WeChat account has reduced average waiting times from over 50 minutes to just 2 minutes, improving consultation efficiency by more than 25-fold.

After registration, patients follow the “Full-Process Triage Guidance” feature on the hospital’s official WeChat account, significantly improving consultation efficiency. With the support of online processes, the hospital’s service efficiency has also increased substantially, eliminating 14 payment windows and reducing staffing requirements for fee collection by 17 personnel.

It can thus be seen that, in Shenzhen—a city with relatively advanced economic and technological development—many initiatives and concepts in internet healthcare are ahead of their time.