From Doctor to Disruptor: How Ma Yukun Aims to Transform Healthcare for China's Middle Class

Ma Yukun, who hails from a traditional family of medical practitioners, served as a physician at Tiantan Hospital for ten years. Driven by the dream of transforming how China’s middle class accesses healthcare, she embarked on an entrepreneurial journey and founded Yuguo Doctor, a premium private healthcare discount platform. Transitioning from a licensed physician to an entrepreneur, particularly by tackling healthcare—one of the two most intractable challenges facing ordinary Chinese citizens (the other being education)—has been fraught with difficulties. Where does her confidence stem from?

Ma Yukun, Founder of Yiguo Doctor (Photo provided by the company)

In recent times, news about “hospitals strictly controlling costs and suspending the use of consumables at year-end” has sparked significant controversy online. Information from unofficial sources suggests that cost-control measures have severely impacted the medical experience. In fact, as early as the first decade of this century, the scarcity of medical resources and asymmetry in medical information had already intensified doctor-patient conflicts. News of attacks on doctors frequently made headlines, challenging the professional dignity of physicians. Many public hospital doctors decisively left their positions, leveraging internet platforms to build personal brands and reshape doctor-patient relationships.

While most physicians who venture out on their own continue to practice traditional medicine—relying on inspection, auscultation and olfaction, inquiry, and pulse-taking to save lives and heal the wounded—Ma Yukun’s reasons for leaving her previous position differ from those of her peers. She has built Yuguo Doctor, a premium private healthcare discount platform, driven by a singular ambition: to transform the way China’s middle class accesses medical care.

In the view of Ma Yukun and her team, “price is the sole determinant of service quality in any field.” In the healthcare sector, government-backed public health insurance consistently provides basic universal medical services. For individuals with middle-class incomes or above, it is only natural to opt for commercial healthcare to access more professional, secure, and comfortable services—a distinction that the government welcomes. Yiguo Doctor serves this demographic by offering an information platform, patient referral and review systems, and discounted promotions, functioning much like Meituan-Dianping does in the private hospital sector.

“It’s not that I was worn out by being a doctor, nor was I scared away with a knife to my throat. What I do has always remained within the healthcare industry. I hope to change the way more people access medical care through entrepreneurship,” said Ma Yukun. “Mr. Lu Xun believed that ‘studying medicine cannot save China.’ In my view, if dedicating my entire life as a physician would have allowed me to impact only a few thousand people, then in the past few years of full-time entrepreneurship, I have already reached nearly one million people—thereby helping far more.”

“Big things have small beginnings”—this line is from the film Prometheus. It echoes the story of Prometheus in Greek mythology, who stole fire from Apollo, the god of the sun, and gave it to humanity, bringing light to mankind.

All of Yuguo’s partner private healthcare institutions offer users the lowest discounts, including United Family Healthcare, Maple Medical, Vista, Hong Kong and Macau International Medical Center, Parkway, and Word. Yuguo now covers nearly 700 healthcare institutions in more than ten cities across China, including Hong Kong, placing it far ahead in the industry. To provide better follow-up support, Yuguo has established a more professional team of insurance brokers and developed features that integrate insurance with hospital services. By partnering with over ten leading high-end medical insurance companies in China, Yuguo offers the most comprehensive range of hundreds of insurance plans.

It can be said that Ma Yukun’s aspiration is to ensure that all middle-class individuals across China recognize that their social status and income level entitle them to superior medical services. For a cost comparable to mid-range cosmetics or even just a group meal, families could secure medical consultations for themselves and their children without enduring long queues, chaotic crowds, indifferent attitudes, perfunctory examinations lasting less than two minutes, and the subsequent frustration and confusion. Instead, they would enjoy a comfortable environment, streamlined processes, and, most importantly, comprehensive medical communication and professional care with consultation times exceeding 45 minutes.

The comprehensive relaxation of the two-child policy has ushered in another baby boom, leaving maternity hospitals in first-tier cities completely saturated. For what might be merely the cost of a vacation, expectant mothers can enjoy ten months of safe, professional, and stress-free medical services—from preconception preparation to delivery. Ma Yukun always speaks from personal experience when discussing this topic. Although her professional medical background and heritage from a three-generation family of physicians enable her to easily access high-quality medical resources, she remains deeply committed to promoting the essence of commercial healthcare among the middle class. After all, is there anything more important in life than health and happiness? Choosing better medical care and taking better care of oneself will undoubtedly yield greater rewards in the future.

Interior of a Private Hospital in Beijing (Photo provided by the company)

Ma Yukun is deeply grateful for the medical expertise and character fortitude her clinical background has afforded her; she still retains the title of “Attending Physician in Endocrinology” on her business card. The logical reasoning, emotional regulation, execution capabilities, and habit of perspective-taking cultivated during her hospital years have become deeply ingrained in her personality. Her experience as a licensed physician has taught Ma Yukun that everything has its cause; she has learned to make critical decisions in life-and-death situations, and to respond and execute with remarkable speed.

Only after she plunged into the tidal wave of healthcare internet startups, bearing these scars, could she utter a sigh like a seasoned entrepreneur: “In this world, apart from life and death, everything else is negotiable.” Indeed, the dead cannot be brought back to life; therefore, as long as one is alive, there is hope. This is precisely the most crucial psychological attribute for an entrepreneur.

As a clinician, she must make decisions at every moment of change in a patient’s condition; as a company founder, she must make choices for her business and the clients it serves. As a clinician, she must keep every value in mind, closely monitoring patients’ biochemical indicators at all times; as a company founder, she must have an intimate command of all operational, financial, and other key data. As a clinician, she must delve into the reasoning behind every outcome; as a company founder, she must focus solely on results in the marketplace, without seeking to attribute causes.

The Young Yiguo Doctor Team (Photo provided by the company)

Amid the entrepreneurial boom in “Internet + Healthcare,” Ma Yukun chose a distinctive path. For a small startup team, only by thinking different can it survive, grow, and forge ahead steadfastly amidst the pressure from industry giants.

Capital market recognition of Yiguo Doctor has laid a solid foundation for the rapid advancement of Ma Yukun and his team. In public media, Yiguo Doctor appears not to have announced any new funding rounds since its A+ round in the first half of 2016.

According to insiders, Yiguo Doctor has seen two rounds of follow-on investments from existing shareholders since its Series A+ round, with a total amount exceeding RMB 30 million. Information gathered from various sources indicates that several venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital, Zhejiang University Youchuang, Tunlan Capital, and Chaoshan Capital, are among Yiguo Doctor’s shareholders. The early investor lineup also features prominent figures in the investment community, such as Liu Jun, an angel investor in Toutiao. By maintaining a low profile in the capital markets, the company has gained valuable time and space for development. Under the strategy of “dig deep tunnels, store ample grain, and delay claiming kingship,” Ma Yukun has, in fact, accelerated Yiguo Doctor’s strategic expansion.

The first segment is online payment.Yuguo Doctor currently supports online appointment scheduling and online payment of consultation fees for dozens of hospitals. On a broader scale, the online payment functionality is being rolled out to nearly 100 hospitals across China, and the scan-to-pay feature is also set to launch soon. From free appointment services to paid value-added services, and further to platform-based cash flow data, Yuguo Doctor’s overall strategy for internet platform development has clearly taken shape.

The second part is the establishment of the Tmall flagship store.It is reported that by the end of 2017, Yiguo Doctor had entered into a strategic partnership with Alibaba, leading to the launch of the Yiguo Doctor Flagship Store—the only medical-category marketplace-style flagship store on the Tmall platform. This move transformed private hospital medical packages into online, marketplace-oriented, supermarket-style, comprehensive, and platform-based offerings, marking a revolutionary step in the O2O (Online-to-Offline) model of healthcare services. The initial product lineup covered multiple cities across China, including more than ten top-tier obstetrics and gynecology hospitals, pediatric hospitals, general hospitals, and postpartum care centers. Leveraging the strength of a giant like Tmall through such a powerful alliance demonstrates Ma Yukun’s strategic wisdom and broad vision.

The third component is the development of a microservices matrix.By leveraging a matrix of WeChat Service Accounts, Yugu Doctor successfully shifted its user endpoint from a standalone app to the WeChat platform, delivering a more convenient, rapid, and consistent experience that eliminates the need for reinstallation even when users switch devices. The Yugu Pregnancy Assistant, officially launched in 2017, further refined its target audience from general patients to specifically those establishing maternity records, thereby extending its service reach to clients of public maternity hospitals and securing this user base early through services such as registration-related information. Bringing such services to a broader population is not only a milestone for Yugu but also a benefit to Chinese internet users.

Unlike most startup teams founded by programmers or technical experts, Ma Yukun and her team at Yugu Doctor adopt a more intuitive approach in their work. They name projects after figures from Greek mythology—for instance, naming their underlying development platform “Gaia,” after the Mother Earth—and empower frontline employees with greater authority and better resources to help users resolve issues.

For users of high-end medical services, this distinctive respect and care may represent the warmth they have never experienced in public healthcare. Beyond teams, technology, and resources, this additional love and warmth extended to users may well be the source of Ma Yukun’s confidence.