DXY Health Achieves 55% User Repurchase Rate as Parent Company Files for Hong Kong IPO

In breaking the ice in China’s healthcare system, this company has forged a solid path with its “ICE model” (Information, Communication, Engagement), leaving an indelible mark on the medical industry. It is DXY.

So, how exactly should we understand the “ICE model”? To answer this question, VCBeat (WeChat official account: vcbeat) conducted an exclusive interview with Cong Lulu, Chief User Growth Officer of DXY and Head of Dingxiang Doctor. She shared her experience transitioning from internet consumer sectors to internet healthcare. Based on the “ICE model” and using Dingxiang Doctor as a case study, she provided a detailed overview of DXY’s efforts and initiatives in medical services over the past two years, the achievements made, and the future development plans for Dingxiang Doctor.

Two years ago, Cong Lulu was a serial entrepreneur who had never achieved success. She previously worked in marketing and user insights at Baixing.com and Dianping.com. By chance, she entered the internet healthcare sector, gradually becoming familiar with the industry and even conducting research on multiple companies within it.

“During this process, DXY was one of the companies we studied. We found it to be a promising organization and subsequently joined,” she said.

Due to her professional background, after joining DXY, Cong Lulu was primarily responsible for DXY’s consumer-facing (To-C) business—specifically the Dingxiang Doctor APP. This involved serving patients and users through health education content tailored to consumers, as well as operating the platform that connects doctors with patients.

After taking charge of the DXY platform, Cong Lulu aims to leverage it to mobilize physicians' expertise and deliver multi-dimensional services to users.

Driven by this original aspiration, Cong Lulu has led her team to continuously refine their products and services. After two years of development, the DXY Doctor app has onboarded more than 50,000 attending physicians and above from China’s Grade A tertiary hospitals. It has not only accumulated over 100,000 pieces of health education content but also established strong collaborative relationships with numerous Toutiao and WeChat official accounts. To date, the DXY Doctor app has facilitated millions of high-quality Q&A interactions on its platform, amassed a user base of more than 50 million, and partnered with several AI laboratories to leverage these Q&A data for generating diagnostic recommendations.

According to Cong Lulu, the Dingxiang Doctor app currently offers four main categories of services: popular science content focused on public health; professional, high-quality, and rapidly responsive online consultations; scientifically sound and reasonable prescription recommendations; and convenient home-based healthcare services.

These services are internet-based. However, prior to this, she also encountered a question that plagues most practitioners: Can healthcare truly be digitized?

To resolve this doubt, she attempted to understand the logic behind the digitalization of healthcare by drawing on her previous work experience. For instance, shopping has shifted from offline stores to online platforms, and dining out has been replaced by food delivery services. While these scenarios are relatively easy to implement, can healthcare services be directly migrated online?

Cong Lulu stated that the penetration rate in the healthcare industry has not yet reached a sufficient level, with relatively slow growth. Users need time to gradually accept new things and new methods, and time is the biggest challenge. This difficulty is not unique to the DXY platform; it is a problem existing throughout the entire healthcare industry.

Cong Lulu stated that as her understanding of the healthcare industry deepened, she increasingly realized that internet-based healthcare cannot fully replace offline medical practices. Internet-based healthcare is not merely the online migration of traditional healthcare, nor does it necessarily entail moving all offline activities online or replacing them entirely. Instead, its existence serves as a complement to offline medical services. This complementary role may enhance accessibility; for instance, in remote areas, elderly patients with limited mobility often struggle to access timely medical care, let alone secure appointments with specialists. The limited accessibility of medical services represents a key constraint faced by offline healthcare delivery.

In the era of consumption upgrading, medical services must not only be professional but also provide users with a better experience. How can user-centricity be reflected in the user experience? This is what Dingxiang Doctor has been continuously exploring.

What is the core challenge here? In the process of healthcare service delivery, users or patients are relatively passive. Enhancing the user experience of internet-based medical services hinges largely on shifting physicians’ mindsets to some extent. In traditional hospital settings, constraints of physical space and time make it difficult for doctors to explain specific details thoroughly to patients. However, Cong Lulu indicates that this barrier can be overcome through online platforms.

Dingxiang Doctor does not offer open registration for physicians on its provider side; the 50,000 doctors on the platform are all proactively invited and hold the title of attending physician or above at tertiary Grade A hospitals. Cong Lulu explained that Dingxiang Doctor aims to ensure the professionalism of its entire service system, with the primary measure being a sufficiently high entry threshold for physicians.

Secondly, DXY requires all physicians on its platform to provide comprehensive credentials, including educational background, academic experience, work history, and departmental affiliation.

In addition, DXY’s physician evaluation system differs significantly from those of other platforms, reflecting distinct operational logic and underlying philosophies. Before being listed on the DXY platform, every physician must undergo multiple rounds of simulations, examinations, and training. Beyond credential verification, physicians are required to complete simulated case-based assessments, and their performance is rigorously scored by professional reviewers across multiple dimensions, including clinical expertise and service quality. If a physician fails to meet the standards, the reasons for failure are thoroughly investigated, and lessons learned are incorporated into ongoing improvements.

Within the DXY ecosystem, C-end users download the app, register and activate their accounts, and then begin submitting questions to physicians, who provide responses. This constitutes the visible interaction process on the surface. In reality, the underlying operational system is the core of the core.

Every question generated on the DXY Doctor platform undergoes an intelligent review system at the moment of its creation. This system identifies whether the question contains sensitive keywords and assesses its associated risks. In effect, all questions are first subjected to an initial screening powered by AI technology.

Following this, all queries are routed to the manual review team for item-by-item assessment to evaluate their professional rigor and identify any obvious errors. Members of DXY’s manual review team are required to have at least one year of work experience in tertiary hospitals. The team also evaluates physicians’ service orientation, such as whether they have addressed all user questions, provided relatively clear recommendations, and offered guidance on lifestyle and dietary adjustments, including medication administration and contraindications. After completing the entire process, it becomes evident that relying solely on the manual review team is insufficient to ensure the platform’s professionalism.

The most convincing entities capable of ensuring the professionalism of physicians’ diagnoses are, in fact, industry experts. DXY has established an external review panel composed of top-tier specialists across each medical department, leveraging its extensive network of physicians. This panel regularly evaluates a sampled proportion of physicians through scoring. By integrating data from automated audits, manual reviews, expert spot checks, and user feedback, the platform determines which physicians should be prioritized for recommendation and which fail to meet platform standards and should therefore be removed and phased out.

The entire system effectively demonstrates that high-quality physicians on the platform gain access to more resources, while those with poor service orientation and limited professional competence are gradually filtered out by users.

Currently, the core of all backend operations at DXY is this mechanism combining intelligent review, manual review, and expert spot checks, which ensures the healthy operation of the DXY platform. The ideal outcome is that users can confidently select any doctor on the platform to ask any health- and medical-related questions they may have, and receive answers that meet or exceed their expectations.

Dingxiang Doctor has been operating in this manner for over a year. To date, the platform has achieved a pure five-star rating rate of 97% and a repurchase rate of 55%. The average response time on the platform is 23 minutes, which suggests it is not a real-time online service. Cong Lulu explained that this is primarily because the physicians on the platform are mostly attending physicians from Grade A tertiary hospitals, making it difficult to require them to be available in real time. Nevertheless, Dingxiang Doctor’s response speed ranks among the best in the industry.

In terms of consumer-facing (C-end) users, DXY has established an extensive matrix of self-media platforms. This ecosystem has accumulated tens of millions of users; however, DXY does not forcibly redirect user traffic. According to Cong Lulu, as a value-driven enterprise, DXY regards platforms such as WeChat Official Accounts as valuable channels for disseminating health and medical knowledge to a broader audience.

Cong Lulu believes that in the era of new consumption, people have multiple ways to address the same health issue, and offline consultations do not necessarily have to take place at Tier 3 Grade A hospitals. Currently, the number of clinics in China is increasing, with mid-to-high-end clinics experiencing rapid growth, as patients are willing to incur certain costs to obtain better services. For users, the greatest advantage of internet healthcare lies in the ability to select services tailored to their individual needs.

What are the new consumption models? Cong Lulu believes there are three models:

First, users have greater autonomy in their choices and are not confined to a single approach. Patients can use this platform or others; they can opt for online consultations or seek in-person care; they can visit mid-to-high-end clinics or tertiary Grade A hospitals.

Second, the essence of healthcare is service, albeit one that is highly specialized and requires delivery by qualified professionals. Therefore, the service itself should revert to its fundamental attributes as a service.

Third, services come with expectations; users are willing to pay more for better service, which is a fundamental principle of consumer behavior. In the new era of consumption, users have the right to choose superior services by paying a higher premium.

Different companies adopt varying strategies for platform operations. A distinctive feature of Dingxiang Doctor is that its platform offers no free medical consultations; all services are paid. While this approach does have drawbacks—potentially alienating price-sensitive users—its advantages outweigh the disadvantages. Cong Lulu points out that in healthcare, individuals with genuine needs are generally less concerned about price and more focused on whether the service can meet their core requirements.

Why do some people insist on seeing specialists even for minor ailments? Because they believe that specialists will definitely provide better care. In practice, Cong Lulu found that users are not price-sensitive when it comes to medical needs, nor are they driven by price.

Secondly, physicians’ efforts and labor deserve commensurate compensation. Only when doctors can earn income through their work—both psychologically and materially—will they be motivated to devote greater effort and deliver higher-quality services, ultimately fostering a virtuous cycle.

Finally, users do not always perceive free services as superior; on the contrary, when a service offers genuine value at a reasonable price, paid services tend to provide users with a greater sense of benefit.

However, Cong Lulu emphasized that this does not mean companies can set excessively high prices.

First, the essence of the internet is to improve efficiency and reduce costs. In hospitals, physicians can see a large volume of patients through standardized, high-throughput care models, thereby generating revenue for the hospital. In contrast, the Dingxiang Doctor platform leverages physicians’ spare time, the value of which can be reassessed.

Secondly, if the price of online consultations is several times higher than that of offline visits, this business model will not be viable. The services provided by internet healthcare should, in theory, offer increasing value for money, making them affordable for all users.

Furthermore, another distinguishing feature of DXY’s online consultation service is its steadfast refusal to offer discounts. Cong Lulu noted that users are segmented. For instance, a segment of mature users on the DXY platform has developed trust in physicians, resulting in a relatively higher average transaction value for this group. Another segment comprises new users who are unfamiliar with the platform and wish to try out and experience the service first. To cater to these users, DXY employs various strategies to lower entry barriers, which extend beyond discount promotions to include other measures.

Physicians on the Dingxiang platform are dynamic, comprising both seasoned practitioners and newcomers. Users naturally tend to choose experienced doctors who have answered tens of thousands of questions. However, new doctors also need opportunities for growth, which can be facilitated by leveraging price adjustments as a regulatory mechanism.

Reduce psychological barriers for new users by encouraging newly onboarded physicians to offer slightly lower prices, thereby attracting initial traffic through price incentives and facilitating their early-stage customer base accumulation. Price serves as a lever to connect users and physicians across different segments. Over time, as users become familiar with the platform and develop trust, newly joined physicians will have completed their initial accumulation phase.

Physicians on the Dingxiang Doctor platform maintain close collaborative relationships with it. Cong Lulu stated that while online medical consultation services appear similar across all platforms, they actually differ significantly. For instance, when providing online consultations on other platforms, physicians might find a one-line response to users sufficient. However, this is unacceptable on the Dingxiang Doctor platform, where physicians must clearly explain the rationale to users; otherwise, poor user experience would render the service valueless. Consequently, the time physicians spend on the Dingxiang Doctor platform differs from that on other platforms, leading naturally to differences in costs.

The Dingxiang Doctor platform does not require its physicians to respond to user messages instantly; instead, it allows a response window of up to 24 hours. Cong Lulu pointed out that the varying pricing structures across different platforms are reasonable, as physicians have their own assessment of how much time is needed to answer a question. When users offer higher fees, physicians are more motivated to respond promptly and provide higher-quality services.

If a physician practices at multiple locations and collaborates with several platforms simultaneously, there will inevitably be one platform with which the physician prefers to work. This preference primarily depends on which platform’s philosophy the physician endorses. Secondly, it hinges on whether the physician can secure a stable income from that platform over the long term. Cong Lulu informed us that currently, more than half of the physicians on the DXY Doctor platform earn an average monthly income from the platform equivalent to 20%–30% of their fixed income.

Dingxiang Yuan’s internet hospital operations are deeply integrated with Dingxiang Doctor, featuring a high degree of synergy. Dingxiang Yuan has established an internet hospital in Yinchuan and collaborates with numerous local hospitals there. Beyond Yinchuan, Dingxiang Yuan also partners with several hospitals in Hangzhou.

Cong Lulu stated that the collaboration model between DXY and these hospitals is straightforward: all physicians on the Dingxiang Doctor platform are registered with internet hospitals partnered with DXY, to the extent that Dingxiang Doctor can be regarded as an online internet hospital. All clinical departments are established in accordance with the standards for internet hospital departments, and the clinical practice guidelines are jointly formulated by hospitals and industry experts.

Dingxiang Doctor’s collaboration mechanism with offline hospitals is as follows: when users have offline healthcare needs, the Dingxiang platform matches them with local or nearby medical institutions based on their specific requirements. For example, if a user is located in Yinchuan, the Dingxiang Doctor platform will direct them to partner hospitals in Yinchuan.

Regarding internet hospitals, DXY’s immediate plans are to first continue optimizing its services to enhance user experience and satisfaction. Second, it aims to further build a closed-loop service ecosystem by integrating with offline medical institutions and providing pharmaceutical services, among others. The goal is to enable users to resolve all their healthcare issues in a single visit on the Dingxiang Doctor platform. Cong Lulu stated that the switching costs in healthcare are high; once users become accustomed to this model, trust the platform, and develop loyalty to specific physicians, they will tend to address many of their health and medical concerns through this platform. Currently, the Dingxiang Doctor platform sees a higher proportion of follow-up visit patients.

Going forward, Dingxiang Doctor will selectively and strategically migrate physicians from partner physical medical institutions to its platform. This is because certain specialties are not suitable for online consultations and require face-to-face interactions. Even for physicians joining the platform, a screening process will be implemented to assess whether their professional competence meets standards and whether they demonstrate strong service orientation. Cong Lulu stated that answering questions online differs significantly from doing so in an outpatient clinic; physicians must maintain the same level of professionalism online as they do in clinical settings, while also possessing internet-based service capabilities.

DXY also has its own vision regarding the potential integration of laboratory testing services. With the national promotion of tiered diagnosis and treatment, healthcare institutions are becoming increasingly accessible to the general public, and community health service centers are typically equipped with basic monitoring devices. On the Dingxiang Doctor platform, during online consultations, physicians may recommend that users undergo fundamental routine tests, such as complete blood count (CBC) and urinalysis, when deemed necessary. After completing these tests at a community health service center, users can share their results with the online physician. Upon reviewing the results, the physician can then issue a prescription accordingly. This approach also helps establish a closed-loop service model.

Currently, Dingxiang Doctor has significant opportunities. It requires time and ongoing preparatory efforts, including building user trust, accumulating content, cultivating relationships with physicians, delivering high-quality services, establishing more rational standards, and continuously strengthening infrastructure. Through this continuous preparation process, the user base will continue to expand.

Having been in the healthcare industry for over two years, Cong Lulu says her biggest takeaway is that healthcare companies can actually afford to slow down, refine their products and services, and wait for them to gradually demonstrate their value. In terms of service exploration within the healthcare sector, some enterprises view medical restrictions or government regulations as obstacles to their development. However, she points out that these restrictions and regulatory measures instead help keep the industry relatively contained and less complex. Moreover, in recent years, national policies toward the healthcare industry have become increasingly open, creating more opportunities. Those who entered the field earliest and have remained committed to working in the healthcare industry are most likely to reap the benefits.

The public’s demand for medical services is extremely strong, yet the approaches to addressing specific healthcare issues remain quite limited—precisely where the opportunities lie. Cong Lulu stated that in the healthcare sector, there is no need to overcomplicate matters; by focusing on delivering high-quality services, a company can achieve smooth and sustainable growth.