National Healthcare Industry Cloud Platform Launches, Aiming to Become the Sector's 'Infrastructure' and 'Computing Engine'

Recently, at the 2018 China Health Information Technology/Health and Medical Big Data Application Exchange Conference held in Jinan, the “National Health and Medical Industry Cloud Platform,” jointly built by the Family Health Professional Committee of the Chinese Society for Health Informatics and Medical Big Data, Tencent Cloud, and WeDoctor Cloud, was released.

The launch of the platform was supported by multiple stakeholders, including the government, industry sectors, and medical institutions. Jin Xiaotao, former Deputy Director of the National Health and Family Planning Commission and President of the Chinese Society for Health Informatics and Medical Big Data; Han Demin, President of the China International Exchange and Promotive Association for Medical and Health Care and Academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering; Zhang Xuegao, Director of the Statistical Information Center of the National Health Commission; and thousands of other attendees witnessed the platform’s launch.

Family Health Professional Committee of the Chinese Society for Health Informatics and Medical Big Data, Tencent Cloud, and WeDoctor Cloud Join Forces to Build a National Health and Medical Industry Cloud Platform (Photo provided by the enterprise)

In his address, President Jin Xiaotao stated that leading the joint establishment of the National Health and Medical Industry Cloud Platform aims to accelerate the informatization and intelligent transformation of the healthcare sector, thereby better implementing the “Healthy China” strategy.

Following the press conference, a reporter from VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) interviewed Dr. Ni Rong, CEO of WeDoctor Cloud. He provided a detailed overview of the preparations for establishing China’s national health and medical industry cloud platform, as well as the roles that the Health and Medical Big Data Society, Tencent Cloud, and WeDoctor Cloud will play in the platform’s subsequent operations.

Dr. Ni Rong, CEO of WeDoctor Cloud (Image provided by the company）

As planned, the platform primarily serves a full spectrum of industry users, including primary care institutions, hospitals, government agencies, and healthcare enterprises. It provides dozens of intelligent medical cloud applications and AI-driven medical solutions, such as internet hospitals, internet-based medical consortia, family doctor contracting services, and cloud pharmacies, with the aim of becoming the “infrastructure” and “computing engine” of China’s healthcare industry.

Dr. Ni Rong introduced that the Chinese Society for Health Informatics and Medical Big Data, Tencent Cloud, and WeDoctor Cloud will play distinct roles in the operation of the national health and medical industry cloud platform.

Specifically, the participation of the China Health Information and Healthcare Big Data Association signifies regulatory endorsement and aligns with mainstream trends. Its authority also helps break down medical information silos. Dr. Ni Rong used a vivid metaphor: previously, medical informatization not only suffered from “silos” but also from “chimneys,” with numerous information systems belonging to different entities and operating on disparate platforms, making interoperability extremely difficult. To build an industry cloud platform, without the involvement of authoritative institutions, it would merely become “self-indulgent,” creating even more “silos” and “chimneys.”

As a leading cloud computing service provider in China, Tencent Cloud has been committed to better integrating cloud computing, big data, and artificial intelligence, while focusing on developing in-depth solutions for key industries. In the healthcare sector, Tencent Cloud offers a range of cloud-based solutions, including telemedicine communication architectures, remote collaboration platforms, medical imaging data management systems, and live surgical teaching systems. Additionally, it helps genetic enterprises process massive datasets efficiently and cost-effectively, thereby supporting the development of the biogenetics industry. Tencent Cloud’s involvement will provide technical support for the national health and medical cloud platform.

As the healthcare industry cloud platform encompasses every aspect of medical processes, extending beyond hospital premises to include online appointment scheduling, remote consultations, and mobile payments, Tencent’s involvement can fully leverage its capabilities in platforms such as WeChat and mobile payment systems. This facilitates user access to the industry cloud platform and integrates internal and external hospital workflows. Furthermore, Tencent has previously made multiple rounds of investments in WeDoctor, fostering a close partnership that will streamline future communications. Additionally, Tencent has an extensive investment footprint in the healthcare sector and possesses abundant industry resources, which can deliver significant value to the industry cloud platform.

As a primary builder of the national cloud platform for the health and medical industry, Weiyi Cloud will undertake technical support, operations, and other related tasks. It will open its informatization capabilities to the industry, provide diversified solutions, and promote the application of cloud computing in the medical sector.

“We hope that the three parties will work together in good faith to build an industry cloud platform, achieving a synergistic effect where 1+1+1>3. This will truly contribute to industry development by helping medical institutions gradually achieve data, workforce, and resource collaboration, thereby empowering the healthcare sector with breakthrough capabilities,” stated Dr. Ni Rong.

Regarding the future trajectory of the industry cloud platform, Dr. Ni Rong stated that WeDoctor is confident and capable of operating the platform effectively. This confidence is primarily based on three factors: first, WeDoctor has established a solid foundation in medical informatization and intelligent construction, with proven case studies and a mature application ecosystem; second, the entire WeDoctor team possesses extensive experience in the healthcare industry; and third, WeDoctor continues to consolidate and enhance its technological capabilities.

The integration of medical resources is a key reason why WeDoctor is confident in successfully building its industry cloud platform. As of December 2017, WeDoctor had connected with the hospital information systems of more than 2,700 hospitals across 30 provinces and municipalities in China, with over 220,000 physicians registered on the platform and more than 110 million real-name registered users.

Overall, to meet the needs of hospitals at all levels, WeDoctor Cloud provides solutions such as Internet Hospital/Medical Consortium platforms, artificial intelligence (AI) applications, data integration platforms, Xuanhu Tai (Traditional Chinese Medicine AI), Lianxin Tang, Huatuo Cloud, primary care general practice clinical decision support, and primary care general practice training and education.

Currently, WeDoctor Cloud operates both a provincial regional health big data platform and an intelligent tiered diagnosis and treatment platform for primary care institutions. A representative example of the former is the Heilongjiang “Internet + Healthcare” project, jointly developed by WeDoctor and the Heilongjiang Provincial Health and Family Planning Commission. This initiative leverages five core platforms—cloud-based health big data, cloud imaging, cloud laboratory information systems, cloud electronic health records, and health cloud cards—to successfully achieve integration with the national platform. It has established three foundational databases covering the entire population, electronic medical records, and health archives, while connecting 71 key hospitals within the province.

A representative example of the latter is the intelligent tiered diagnosis and treatment platform co-established by WeDoctor and Jia County, Henan Province. The platform comprises a remote ECG center, a remote imaging center, a remote consultation center, a family doctor contract service center, and an intelligent tiered diagnosis and treatment data management platform. By providing family doctor teams with hardware and software solutions such as all-in-one health kiosks and mobile examination vehicles, the platform has established health records for 587,300 individuals (a coverage rate of 95%) and secured family doctor contracts for 465,100 residents (a contracting rate of 80.88%). Over one year of operation, it has completed 5,576 remote ECG diagnoses, 13,521 remote consultations, and 48,125 online consultations, significantly enhancing the service capacity of local township health centers.

Targeting the insurance and pharmaceutical industries, WeDoctor Cloud has launched solutions such as an Insurance Data Service Platform, a Pharmaceutical Marketing Service Platform, and a Financial Data Service Platform.

From the perspectives of healthcare informatization and the cloud ecosystem, the healthcare informatization industry has reached a relatively mature stage. Service providers include listed companies such as Winning Health Technology Group, B-Soft Co., Ltd., and E-Lianzhong, while hospitals have achieved a high level of informatization. In the healthcare cloud sector, business models primarily encompass IaaS, PaaS, and SaaS. Market participants include internet giants such as AWS, Azure, Alibaba Cloud, and Tencent Cloud, as well as a range of startups and traditional companies undergoing business transformation.

Medical informatization and medical cloud services share many commonalities, with the “cloudification” of medical information increasingly becoming a trend. Leveraging cloud platforms enables the integration of diverse application products tailored to meet various healthcare needs. This also includes the services and products launched by Weiyi Cloud for medical institutions, pharmaceutical companies, insurance organizations, and other stakeholders.

One month ago, the General Office of the State Council issued the “Opinions on Promoting the Development of ‘Internet + Medical Health’” (hereinafter referred to as the “Development Opinions”), which explicitly called for accelerating the realization of interoperability and sharing of medical and health information, and improving tiered diagnosis and treatment information systems based on internet and big data technologies. This has provided a policy basis and business direction for the development of cloud services in the medical and health industry. The launch of the National Health and Medical Industry Cloud Platform can be seen as the industry’s response to these policies.

Dr. Ni Rong introduced that WeDoctor Cloud will provide seven core capabilities to the national healthcare cloud platform: matching, diagnosis and treatment, prescription, pharmaceuticals, payment, health management, and data. These seven capabilities also represent WeDoctor’s development trajectory since its inception and constitute its most significant accumulated expertise.

Let’s break it down step by step. In 2010, WeDoctor started in Shanghai, providing hospitals with services to optimize medical processes such as appointment registration. This was its first stage of development, with the core capability being matching—specifically, matching hospitals with patients’ appointment needs to improve the medical consultation process.

Subsequently, WeDoctor pioneered the “Expert Team” service model across China, leveraging the internet to extend specialist resources to grassroots levels and enhance the clinical capabilities of primary care physicians. In 2015, it established China’s first internet hospital—the Wuzhen Internet Hospital—thereby building core competencies in “diagnosis and treatment.”

Subsequently, the “National Prescription Sharing Alliance” was launched. By fostering collaboration among medical institutions, pharmaceutical companies, retail pharmacy chains, and internet healthcare enterprises across China, and by deeply leveraging technologies such as the internet, big data, and artificial intelligence, the alliance aims to achieve data synchronization and high-level coordination among “medical care, prescriptions, medications, and insurance.” This initiative will promote the separation of prescribing from dispensing and control health insurance expenditures in China, thereby strengthening WeDoctor’s core capabilities in “prescriptions” and “medications.”

In terms of payment, the primary strategic focus is “Wei Yibao.” As a platform-level gateway for internet-based commercial health insurance, Wei Yibao offers a diverse range of individual and group commercial health insurance products, serving as a significant supplement to medical payment solutions. Meanwhile, WeDoctor is also working to integrate online social health insurance payments and facilitate cross-regional medical expense settlement, thereby providing patients with enhanced medical payment services.

In the “Health” sector, its layout follows the HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) model, which integrates the resources and advantages accumulated by WeDoctor in the fields of healthcare, pharmaceuticals, and insurance to form a new-type medical health service system featuring “online + offline” and “general practice + specialty care,” thereby providing users with holistic, end-to-end, and family-oriented managed healthcare services.

The aforementioned business operations have accumulated a wealth of healthcare “data.” Processing this data requires infrastructure and computing engines, which form the foundation of WeDoctor Cloud. In November 2017, WeDoctor launched its intelligent medical cloud platform, “WeDoctor Cloud,” with the aim of opening up its data processing capabilities and solutions to the industry. With the release of the “National Healthcare Industry Cloud Platform,” WeDoctor Cloud has further intensified its openness.

From the perspective of its own development needs to the needs of industry development, WeDoctor Cloud’s open strategy is not only closely related to its own experience but also an inevitable trend in the integrated development of the industry. This open strategy of WeDoctor Cloud has precedents in China’s cloud computing industry. For example, Alibaba Cloud, which currently holds the leading position in China’s cloud industry, was initially established to meet the business development needs of Alibaba itself and was gradually introduced to the market after its capabilities matured.

“As an industry cloud platform, we should be like water and electricity—indispensable to the healthcare sector while remaining extremely low-cost. Our goal is to satisfy both regulatory authorities and hospitals, effectively enabling intelligent healthcare solutions and facilitating regulatory oversight. The widespread adoption of industry clouds can foster an ecosystem that benefits all stakeholders: enhancing public satisfaction and the quality of medical services, freeing up physicians’ time, and improving overall healthcare efficiency.” Dr. Ni Rong concluded by expressing his vision for China’s national health and medical industry cloud platform.