Meiwei Dental Unveils Five-Pillar Empowerment Strategy for Chain Development at 2018 Primary Healthcare Innovation Summit
David Song, Partner and COO of Meiwei Dental, is delivering a presentation on “Meiwei Dental’s Path to Chain Development””Speech
Conference: 2018 Summit on Innovative Practices in Primary Healthcare
Venue: Landison Plaza Hotel, Hangzhou
Speaker: David Song, Partner and COO of Meiwei Dental
Below is a compilation of David Song’s insightful perspectives by VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat), primarily covering two key areas:
I. Meiwei Creates a Third Business Model for the Dental Industry Through Its “Business Partner” Model;
II. Empowering dental healthcare institutions through five key areas: establishing standards, advancing technology, attracting talent, strengthening operations, and prioritizing informatization.
From June 9 to 10, the “New Structure – 2018 Summit on Innovative Practices in Primary Healthcare,” co-hosted by the National Engineering Laboratory for Internet Medical Systems and Applications, Sir Run Run Shaw Hospital affiliated with Zhejiang University School of Medicine, the Internet Medical Health Industry Alliance, and VCBeat, was grandly held in Hangzhou. The event featured six specialized forums, bringing together more than 1,000 top experts, scholars, industry talents, and investors from across China, and attracted coverage from over 30 industry media outlets.
David Song, Partner and COO of Meiwei Dental Care Group, was invited to attend the summit and delivered a keynote speech titled “Meiwei Dental’s Path to Chain Development” at the Frontier Subforum on New Clinic Models. The following is a summary compiled by VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat).
In recent years, the rise and development of Dental Support Organizations (DSOs) in the United States have become a focal point in the field of oral healthcare both domestically and internationally. While there has been speculation about whether this model is applicable to China’s oral healthcare service industry, the rapid ascent of Meiwei Oral Healthcare has allowed the industry to witness the emergence and strength of a third developmental paradigm within China’s dental sector.
Empowering China’s leading dental care chains through “strategic investment, standardization export, and brand management” to facilitate their personalized growth constitutes the core of the Meoway model. This approach has been instrumental in attracting ten high-quality regional dental chain brands to become Meoway’s “business partners” within just two years.
China’s dental care services market remains dominated by regional dental chains. Although the market has expanded rapidly alongside rising living standards, these regional chains are increasingly trapped in a predicament of survival and development. They face numerous barriers, including intensified competition leading to patient attrition, lagging medical technologies and equipment that fail to keep pace with industry advancements, a scarcity of high-quality talent, the absence of systematic training mechanisms, and persistently high operational and management costs.
“Meiwei has built an empowerment platform precisely to help them address these challenges, providing support across multiple dimensions—including healthcare, financing, talent, operations, and management, among others,” said David Song, Partner and COO of Meiwei.
The “Business Partner” model was conceived by Meiwei based on its development experience with existing private specialized chain institutions. Under this model, Meiwei collaborates with business partners to develop locally dominant dental brands into subsidiaries under the Meiwei umbrella. Guided by the principles of “complementary advantages and mutual integration,” it aims to build a stable community of shared destiny characterized by win-win outcomes.
According to Song Dawei, the biggest difference between Meiwei and U.S. Dental Support Organizations (DSOs) is that Meiwei integrates multiple roles—including industrial investment firm, management company, executive search firm, internet company, physician group, and medical standards setter—into a single entity. It not only helps dental institutions resolve operational challenges but also aims to empower them to scale up and become leaders in their respective regions or niche sectors.
As an industrial investment company, Meowei leverages the robust capital support from Tianyi Group and a RMB 1.5 billion special M&A fund for oral healthcare, jointly established with China Orient Asset Management, to provide financial backing for the regional expansion of its dental chain brands. This has significantly accelerated Meowei’s nationwide market presence. To date, Meowei’s 12 dental chain brands operate 130 dental hospitals and clinics across 35 cities in China.
As a key component of the Meinian ecosystem established by Tianyi Group, Meiwei has forged a strong partnership with Meinian Onehealth, China’s largest personal health big data platform and primary gateway for health service demands. The demand flow for dental care services, generated annually by over 400 medical and check-up centers and 20 million patient visits, is directly channeled into Meiwei’s dental service network.
David Song stated, “Although Meiwei enters into partnerships with brands through a capital-operated model, it implements a three-tier equity incentive scheme and establishes a partner system comprising the core management team, city partners, and clinic partners. By delegating authority to local business partners, Meiwei not only effectively reduces its management span but also incentivizes partners to leverage their accumulated local market expertise, medical teams, operational management capabilities, and social networks to expand market presence.”
While engaging in capital operations, Meiwei places greater emphasis on post-investment management, primarily empowering dental healthcare institutions through five key areas: “establishing standards, advancing technology, attracting talent, strengthening operations, and prioritizing informatization.”
First, establish standards. In partnership with DNV GL, an internationally renowned certification body, and based on the NIAHO® International Hospital Quality Accreditation Standards authorized by the U.S. Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS), Meiwai Dental has introduced prospective risk management and a systematic process management system into the dental healthcare industry for the first time. It has established a hospital management system and medical standard accreditation framework that are pioneering within the dental sector. Building on this foundation, Meiwai Dental has developed the “M+” Management Certification System, fully aligning with global dental practice management standards, and is committed to transforming its dental brands into leading institutions that integrate academic excellence, precision care, digitalization, patient comfort, and informatization.
Second, advancing technology. The level of clinical medical expertise is primarily reflected in the caliber of dentists and equipment. Meiwei has joined forces with Loma Linda University in the United States, Guangdong Medical University, Tianjin Medical University, Hubei University of Science and Technology, and other dental institutions to establish an “Industry-Academia-Research Innovation Alliance.” This alliance brings together authoritative discipline leaders from various domestic specialties to engage in deep collaboration across academic forums, clinical teaching, scientific research innovation, and medical technologies. By building a scientific research innovation system and a physician group, as well as establishing a talent pipeline development mechanism, Meiwei helps dental institutions enhance their clinical skills, service philosophies, and overall service standards. Meanwhile, the company has introduced internationally advanced digital medical equipment and established specialized treatment centers such as the “Sino-US Cooperative MAXI Digital Complex Implant Center” and the “DEO Orthodontic Center.”
Third, attract talent. Meiwei has implemented a multi-level strategy to help all its dental brands recruit and cultivate talent. Leveraging resources from renowned medical experts both domestically and internationally, Meiwei has gradually established a diversified, international talent development platform. This platform includes initiatives such as the “2017 Meiwei Implantology Forum,” the “Meiwei Dental Case Competition,” the “Orthodontics/Implantology Reading Club,” the “Dental Clinic Management Training Camp,” the “China MaxiCourse® Implant Training Program,” and the “Biennial Meeting of the Western District of the American Academy of Implant Dentistry.” These efforts aim to help dental institutions build a comprehensive talent pipeline comprising discipline leaders, department heads, academic key personnel, and young reserve talents.
Fourth, robust operations. Local dental brands often suffer from deficiencies in operational management. To address this, Meiwei assigns professionals to help establish local marketing and operations teams, formulate market operation strategies, and standardize internal management practices—including finance and human resources—within three to six months, thereby rapidly bringing enterprise management and market operations onto the right track. Meanwhile, leveraging economies of scale, Meiwei provides its affiliated brands with a timely, efficient, high-quality, and standardized supply chain system. This offers particular advantages in the introduction of sophisticated, digitally enabled large-scale equipment, and helps build a specialized materials management system centered on material requirements planning, procurement execution, fund disbursement, and inventory reserves. Throughout the entire supply chain, Meiwei assists dental institutions in reducing procurement costs.
Fifth, prioritizing digitalization. Leveraging its independently developed SaaS cloud platform, Meiwei has built an intelligent cloud platform for the oral health ecosystem based on the “data + technology + scenario” model. This system comprehensively and efficiently collects and analyzes clinical information from dentists, patients, and hospitals/clinics, establishing a big data framework that provides a one-stop overall solution for dental outpatient management. This elevates the digital management standards of Meiwei’s affiliated dental clinics to a new level. Furthermore, by connecting domestic and international clinics, dentists, patients, partners, data resources, and third-party ecosystem integrations, Meiwei delivers multi-dimensional, comprehensive services—including physician group support, digital infrastructure export, and AI applications—across oral prevention, diagnosis, treatment, pharmaceuticals, and medical services. This fosters a new future model of care encapsulated by the concept: “For dental care, consult Wei Xiaomei first.”
While empowering its partners, Meiwei has deeply integrated the upstream and downstream segments of the dental care industry chain, fostering an internally connected, cross-sector collaborative, and co-evolving health-focused sustainable business ecosystem. This strategy gradually establishes and refines a closed-loop service model encompassing dental examinations, disease diagnosis and treatment, health management, and medical security.
Moreover, Meiwei places great emphasis on building its corporate culture. David Song shared that two principles in Meiwei’s corporate culture will never change: “Everything has nothing to do with teeth, but everything has to do with people; a group of people shares only one goal.” “It is this alignment with our cultural philosophy that is key to how Meiwei selects, empowers, and enables its partners to succeed.”
The ongoing systemic transformation is driving the deconstruction and reshaping of China’s dental healthcare industry, and Meowii Dental’s innovations in business models may well be ushering in a new era of industrial upgrading and leapfrog development in dental care.