Breaking into the 'Deep Water' of Medical Science Communication: Tencent Medpedia and 'Life Matters' Collaborate on In-Depth, Human-Centered Health Education

On January 1, the second season of "The World of Humans" officially premiered, earning a high score of 9.6 on Douban that very evening and setting a new record for Chinese-made medical science popularization programs. Behind the audience acclaim and media buzz, the series has also sparked deeper reflection within the industry: Medical science communication has progressed through two phases—basic health knowledge and common diseases, followed by health management. Now that it has entered the “deep water zone,” what should be the next steps?

“Life Matters,” a television documentary series, portrays the “100% life” behind the low-probability occurrence of severe diseases by authentically recreating medical scenarios and focusing on individual families. Against this backdrop, how to present complex and challenging medical principles and knowledge in an innovative way—thereby helping viewers understand diseases and comprehend diagnosis and treatment processes—has become a significant challenge for the “Life Matters” production team and its partner, Tencent Medical Encyclopedia.

“Medicine often feels cold and impersonal. Take osteosarcoma, for example: medically speaking, it is a malignant tumor with an incidence rate of three per million. Yet for every family affected, the impact is not three in a million, but 100 percent.” Zhang Meng believes that early detection of any disease, coupled with compassionate care genuinely felt during treatment, can significantly improve individual survival rates and family quality of life—especially in the case of critical and rare diseases. How medical science popularization addresses these two issues is the key to breaking through in the “deep-water zone” of healthcare communication. This is precisely what Tencent Yidian aims to explore through its collaboration with The Human World.

In recent years, the rapid proliferation of the internet has provided fertile ground for the development of medical science popularization, making it an effective supplement to the front-end segment of the broader healthcare system. A survey by Penguin Intelligence reveals that 39% of users currently search online first when they fall ill. Over the past few years, more than 40,000 health-related self-media accounts have emerged in China, achieving weekly readership exceeding one million, with daily health-related searches across the entire internet surpassing 60 million.

However, to date, both common third-party online platforms in China and medical institutions or mass media have tended to focus their content on “highlight” areas, such as the dissemination of general health knowledge, debunking myths, and popular science introductions to common diseases. Platforms such as Alibaba’s “Yizhilu,” the Baidu Baike partnership with Mingyi.com, and Dingxiang Doctor have all made progress in these fields.

“If the dissemination of basic health knowledge in the early years constituted the first stage of medical science popularization, then the surge in recent years of public education on common diseases and health management represents the second stage. However, is this sufficient?” Zhang Meng argues that current efforts in medical science popularization face significant limitations in both breadth and depth. In terms of breadth, the range of conditions covered is limited, with scant content dedicated to rare diseases. In terms of depth, information remains largely confined to answering questions such as “What condition do these symptoms typically indicate?” and “How are common diseases treated?” Systematic and structured medical knowledge graphs for severe conditions, such as mid-to-late stage cancers, and for rare diseases, remain exceedingly scarce.

It is with this consideration in mind that, since the second half of last year, Tencent Medical Dictionary has been continuously exploring the “deep waters” of medical science popularization: by entering into a strategic partnership with WebMD to secure exclusive Chinese-language rights to more than 60,000 medical articles, and by collaborating with more medical experts in science communication content creation, thereby addressing issues related to the breadth of content coverage.

“In the future, only integrated platforms that can meet the diverse information needs of different patient groups will be the medical science popularization platforms users truly need,” believes Zhang Meng.

By partnering with "The World of Humans," we aim to achieve a breakthrough in the depth of communication, integrating medical science popularization into authentic documentary scenes of healthcare news. This initiative seeks to provide more reference pathways to help patients with critical and rare diseases enhance their self-awareness and collaboratively explore diagnosis and treatment plans with physicians.

Zhang Meng believes that for medical science popularization to evolve further, it must thoroughly address three levels: from precise and personalized coverage, to providing full-cycle professional education on various diseases—including critical and rare conditions—so that patients and their families can gain a holistic understanding of the entire diagnosis and treatment process, thereby securing more time for effective treatment decisions; and finally, by continuously offering attention and warmth to help patient families navigate the cold and challenging realities of disease.

In the view of Cai Zhengdong, Director of the Department of Orthopedics at Shanghai General Hospital and Director of the Shanghai Institute of Bone Tumors, setting aside terms like “depth” and “breadth,” the core of the “deep-water zone” of medical science popularization for individuals and families should be care and warmth: paying attention to each individual’s life experience is the ultimate goal that medical science popularization aims to achieve.

“Taking osteosarcoma, the focus of the first episode, as an example, this condition is currently featured in the final chapter of surgical textbooks as a ‘niche’ disease with the briefest coverage. However, in real-world clinical settings, even a medically calculated probability as low as one in a hundred million translates to 100% certain suffering and a life-or-death matter for the patient,” stated Cai Zhengdong.

This is also the shared starting point for the collaboration between Tencent Medical Dictionary and The Human World. However, in practice, the challenges are immense: to achieve this goal, it is necessary to ensure greater depth of content, information security and reliability, and responsiveness to individual needs, while also achieving precise dissemination. Yet, this is no easy task. On one hand, disease knowledge itself is highly complex, with significant variations among individuals. On the other hand, there remains inherent uncertainty in the medical diagnosis and treatment of critical illnesses and rare diseases.

Taking the oncology entries in Tencent Medical Dictionary as an example, the average time required to compile each entry is approximately two and a half months. During this period, the editorial and review team consults 5 to 10 authoritative medical journals, searches at least two specialized medical databases for verification, conducts interviews with leading physicians specializing in the relevant diseases, and collaborates with top-tier medical experts and institutions in China for joint compilation and review.

Meanwhile, delivering medical science popularization more precisely to users in need requires the integrated application of technologies such as online social networking, big data, and artificial intelligence. By providing complementary support for specific offline medical scenarios, these technologies enable the provision of information that is desirable, useful, and accessible to users at the right time and place.

Nevertheless, despite the significant challenges, Zhang Meng remains confident in achieving his goals: In the oncology section of Tencent Medical Dictionary, there are already over 500 articles dedicated to individual diseases such as breast cancer and lung cancer. Leveraging the mini-program platform, all content is structured and presented according to the patient journey, allowing patients to access personalized recommendations based on their specific conditions. “The evolution from basic health literacy and myth-busting to science popularization for critical and rare diseases, coupled with a shift from extensive content distribution to precise, scenario-based engagement, is key to breaking through in the ‘deep-water zone’ of medical science communication.”