Eggshell Weekly 20180805: State Council's New Policy to End 'Medicine-Sustained Hospitals' and Promote 'Triple Healthcare Reform' Reshapes Industry Landscape

On August 3, the State Council released the “Guiding Opinions on Reforming and Improving the Comprehensive Regulatory System for the Healthcare Industry.”

The Opinions propose optimizing market access for healthcare service elements and accelerating the reform of the administrative approval system; strengthening supervision over the quality and safety of medical services, and strictly implementing core systems for quality and safety management; enhancing operational oversight of healthcare institutions and strictly enforcing classified management requirements for medical institutions; strengthening supervision of public health services to improve service levels; intensifying oversight of healthcare practitioners and seriously investigating and punishing illegal and non-compliant activities; reinforcing supervision of industry order and establishing sound mechanisms for joint prevention and control; and strengthening regulation of the health industry by establishing inclusive, prudent, and effective regulatory mechanisms, thereby achieving rule-of-law-based, standardized, and routine comprehensive supervision of the healthcare sector.

The issuance of this document will fundamentally reshape the sales model across the entire pharmaceutical industry, completely reversing the previous “drug-revenue-dependent healthcare” model, and ushering in a new era of profound transformation.

Monday |If you haven’t noticed, you may not realize that highly digitalized hospitals are already right in front of you.

The second cohort of the Future Healthcare Academy’s “New Healthcare Transformation: Innovators’ Evolution Camp” is about to launch, with a primary focus on digital innovation in hospitals. We will invite innovative hospital presidents to join the program’s mentor team and also engage more hospital presidents, directors of information departments, and startup companies in collaborative learning and exchange.

Tuesday |E-prescriptions Become Standard for the Trillion-Yuan Outflowing Prescription Market: How Are Internet Hospitals, Pharmaceutical E-commerce Platforms, and Retail Pharmacies Strategizing?

Rather than blocking, guiding is more effective; extending prescriptions beyond hospitals is an inevitable trend. The application of electronic prescriptions can standardize rational drug use among pharmaceutical retail enterprises, facilitate prescription refills and medication purchases for patients—especially those with chronic diseases—and promote the separation of prescribing from dispensing. Meanwhile, the widespread adoption of electronic prescriptions will bring substantial customer traffic to pharmaceutical retail enterprises, driving incremental growth in prescription drug sales.

Wednesday |WeDoctor, LinkDoc, Medlinker, and Other Medical Big Data Companies Race to Bring in State-Owned Capital—The Reason Behind It Is...

VCBeat’s analysis suggests that the alliance between medical big data companies and state-owned capital is no accident, but an inevitable move as the industry reaches a certain stage of development.

Thursday |How Can Enterprises Implement Internet Hospitals? What Are the Key Challenges? We Interviewed Eight Heads of Internet Hospitals

VCBeat interviewed relevant executives from eight companies, including DXY Internet Hospital, Chunyu Doctor Internet Hospital, Little Apple Internet Hospital, and 7LeKang Internet Hospital, aiming to reconstruct the pathway for building an internet hospital based on their development experiences.

Friday|Merck and Pfizer Forge Partnerships: A Review of Over 40 AI-Driven Drug Discovery Companies Worldwide—Can R&D Investments Exceeding $1 Billion Reverse the Predicament?

According to a 2017 assessment, the cost of bringing a drug to market is as high as $3 billion, with R&D timelines spanning at least five years. Typically, only one out of every ten drug candidates developed by pharmaceutical companies successfully reaches the market. This high-cost, low-success-rate investment landscape hinders new drug development and raises the barriers to entry. Whether AI can disrupt new drug R&D remains uncertain, as the few successes to date are insufficient to establish a clear trend. However, one year is too short a timeframe to judge; a bright future still requires patience from all stakeholders.

This Week, 17 Financing Deals Occurred in the Medical Sector Both in China and Abroad。

Technology, brand, and dimensionality—we believe these three elements form a stable triangle, serving as the three criteria by which we assess the quality of a hospital or an investment target.

However, these three factors alone are insufficient; one more element is required: whether we believe the enterprise has a “soul.” This soul refers to the people within the hospital, including its founder and founding team. Our judgment does not prioritize academic status as the primary criterion; instead, we focus more on whether the investment target can place patients’ interests first and prioritize mission over profit. While social capital inevitably seeks financial returns, we firmly believe that only with compassionate medical ethics can hospitals be well-managed. With high-quality hospitals and effective operations, financial benefits will naturally follow. The return cycle should not put the cart before the horse.

Beyond medical benevolence, it is crucial to assess whether the founders possess a spirit of contract and are willing to abide by the agreements signed with industrial investors. We sometimes observe that medical teams have become spoiled, having grown accustomed to various unspoken rules. In such an environment, entrepreneurial teams that uphold contractual integrity are highly favored by us. (Source: Health界)

On July 16, a small study published in JAMA Neurology indicated that PET imaging can directly measure synaptic loss in Alzheimer’s disease (AD). Synapses are the hubs of neural transmission and processing, characterized by a dense matrix of receptors, channels, and functional proteins.

Researchers found that hippocampal SV2A-specific binding was significantly reduced in participants with AD compared to normal controls (P = 0.005). The reduction remained significant after correcting for atrophy (P = 0.02). A correlation was observed between hippocampal SV2A-specific binding and a composite episodic memory assessment across the entire sample (P = 0.01). This approach, which provides a direct measure of synaptic density, holds promise as a biomarker in AD and for assessing outcomes following disease-modifying therapies.

Source: www.physiciansbriefing.com

Researchers at Case Western Reserve University in the United States are exploring a wearable sensor technology to help people quit smoking by developing an automated alert system.

It is understood that the sensor detects movements associated with the arm and body during smoking. The application automatically sends video messages lasting 20 to 120 seconds to smokers, emphasizing health benefits, with the ultimate goal of capturing their attention. Researchers stated that this mobile alert system is the first application to integrate an online mindfulness training platform with a personalized smoking cessation plan.

Source: /www.healthcareitnews.com

Naked Labs, a San Francisco-based fitness company specializing in applications for rotating scale technology and smart body-scanning mirrors, raised $14 million in a funding round led by Founders Fund. The company has begun shipping its products to pre-order customers and plans to launch them widely in the fourth quarter.

Naked 3D Fitness Tracker is a Wi-Fi-enabled mirror with built-in infrared sensors that can communicate and connect with a rotating scale. When users step onto the scale (which simultaneously activates the mirror), the scale rotates them 360 degrees for a body scan. The tracker measures users’ body fat percentage and weight, and scans their bodies using Intel RealSense technology.

Source: www.mobihealthnews.com

Professor Anthony Chan of McMaster Children’s Hospital stated that many rare diseases are monogenic, which facilitates the application of gene therapy to develop therapeutic solutions for patients. Currently, lentiviruses and adeno-associated viruses (AAV) are viable vectors for gene therapy. Lentiviruses can be used for ex vivo gene therapy, including transplantation following hematopoietic stem cell engineering, whereas AAVs can be directly employed for in vivo corrective gene therapy.

Source: www.genengnews.com

The report points out that after nearly a decade of exploration, the business models of the private elderly care industry have gradually become clearer. However, institutional elderly care products are trending toward “real estate-ization,” while home- and community-based elderly care products are trending toward “domestic service-ization.” A common issue in both cases is the lack of medical attributes, making it difficult to meet the daily living needs of semi-disabled and disabled elderly individuals. Zheng Qun, Managing Partner of Deloitte China’s Healthcare Industry, stated, “The problems brought about by ‘real estate-ized’ and ‘domestic service-ized’ elderly care are not limited to the absence of medical attributes; they also result in a lack of product independence. Therefore, a key focus for the future will be to uncover and explore diverse models and products that integrate medical and elderly care services, thereby avoiding homogeneous competition.”

The report shows that technology has become so deeply embedded in our lives that the boundary between commercial and personal spheres is more blurred than ever before. Healthcare institutions are increasingly harnessing the power of smart technologies to deliver personalized, efficient, and informed care. However, with such innovation comes responsibility. To enable people to fully benefit from digital healthcare services, healthcare providers and health plans must prioritize trust and accountability.

The report points out that medical institutions’ use of WeChat to enable online appointment registration, report inquiries, and mobile payments has become a “killer app” for optimizing healthcare delivery processes, with the potential to significantly drive the upgrading of healthcare consumption demand.

The Report analyzes and studies 2,057 data points from 362 cities currently covered by WeChat applications, along with ten representative application cases. It mines, organizes, and analyzes the relevant data, conducting multi-dimensional research on WeChat coverage, user activity, and WeChat-enabled medical insurance payments. The study focuses on the progress made by WeChat applications in improving medical services (specifically non-clinical services), highlighting phased achievements in bridging information asymmetry and enhancing service quality.

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