Senyint International: Empowering Smart Healthcare Through Its Proprietary Formula for Internet+Health Innovation

At the State Council executive meeting held on April 12, Premier Li Keqiang outlined measures to develop “Internet + Healthcare.” The meeting emphasized the need to extend telemedicine coverage to all medical consortia and county-level hospitals across China, facilitating the alignment of high-quality medical resources in eastern regions with the demands in central and western regions. Support shall be provided for high-speed broadband network coverage in urban and rural medical institutions, and dedicated internet lines shall be established to meet the requirements of telemedicine.

This signal released by the State Council has undoubtedly elevated the importance of telemedicine to a new height. Under the development measures for “Internet + Healthcare,” telemedicine is poised to become the top priority in the advancement of smart healthcare.

The term “smart healthcare” has never had a clear definition. Some consider it to be the integration of the Internet of Things (IoT) with healthcare, while others believe that big data and artificial intelligence also fall within its scope. In short, different companies and individuals have their own interpretations. According to Tai Congyue, CEO of SENYINT, telemedicine and the development of medical consortia are equally core components of smart healthcare.

After years of successful practice, SENYINT has successively undertaken the construction of provincial-level telemedicine platform demonstration projects in Qinghai, Henan, Guizhou, and Shanxi provinces, and has actively participated in their operational services. Among these, the Guizhou Provincial Telemedicine Platform has achieved remarkable results. From June 2016 to October 2017, Guizhou conducted over 21,000 remote consultations, a figure 80 times the sum of all previous years. Through the telemedicine platform, tertiary Grade-A hospitals at the provincial and municipal levels have carried out more than 300 regular remote training sessions for medical institutions across the province, reaching nearly 300,000 participants. These compelling data serve as undeniable proof of SENYINT’s success in facilitating “Internet + Healthcare” and creating a new model of collaborative and interconnected smart healthcare services.

According to SENYINT's definition:Smart Healthcare = (Technology + Operations + Disciplines) × (Ecosystem + Data) = Healthcare Empowerment. This formula perfectly embodies the company’s latest strategy.

While building China’s largest integrated telemedicine service platform, SENYINT leverages remote operations and specialized medical services to provide targeted support for grassroots institutions in co-developing branded specialties. It delivers on-demand practical clinical skills training to primary care physicians, driving the development of Medical Consortia through service-oriented initiatives. This approach ensures that Medical Consortia are not only “connected” but also “activated,” truly empowering healthcare delivery.

In terms of technology: SENYINT serves medical institutions at all levels and various medical consortium projects through its five R&D centers established across China, an independent R&D team of over 270 members, and a remote operations and quality control team of more than 200 professionals.

In terms of operations, SENYINT boasts the industry’s only “Medical Consortium Development + Sustainable Operations” service model. This model enables multi-terminal interactive connectivity with primary care physicians, adopts an integrated planning approach of “IT + Clinical Specialties + Operations” for medical consortium development, and provides governments and healthcare institutions with a comprehensive suite of solutions covering consulting, design, implementation, and operations.

In terms of specialty disciplines, SENYINT has built an open platform that provides integrated solutions encompassing IT, clinical specialties, and operations. By sharing resources with specialty institutions to empower healthcare delivery, it assists primary-care facilities in jointly building branded clinical specialties. Closely aligned with the “clinical care, education, research, and management” framework of specialty disciplines, SENYINT actively empowers medical institutions at all levels. To date, it has launched co-construction services for 12 major branded specialties, including respiratory medicine, oncology, neurosurgery, rehabilitation, vascular surgery, cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases, and hepatobiliary surgery, and has implemented 27 specialized medical consortia across China.

In 2017, SENYINT further introduced the concept of an open platform. By bringing in external teams of specialists from various disciplines and partnering with ecosystem collaborators in pharmaceuticals, medical devices, supply chains, and more, it continuously integrated resources to enhance value. This effort culminated in a “three-network integration” business model, anchored by medical consortiums as the backbone network and extending across regional health networks and ecosystem collaboration networks.

In terms of data, SENYINT, leveraging China's largest remote medical consortium network built over years of accumulation, supports hospitals in managing nearly 100 million comprehensive and authentic clinical imaging records.

From an IT company to a specialist in smart healthcare development, SENYINT’s growth has been far from an overnight success.

In its initial years, SENYINT focused exclusively on developing informatics software such as electronic medical records (EMR) and picture archiving and communication systems (PACS), operating no differently from conventional health IT vendors. However, as the company evolved, Tai Congyue and his team realized that many critical challenges could not be resolved through informatization alone.

“In the past, we were a sales-driven company, often trapped in a vicious cycle focused solely on delivery or customer satisfaction. Later, we realized that enterprises must dedicate time to sit down with clients for collaborative discussion and research in order to develop a comprehensive suite of timely, effective, and accurate products and services. Any company that seeks shortcuts will ultimately find itself with no way forward,” said Tai Congyue.

Moving beyond the narrow mindset of Hospital Information Technology (HIT) and helping patients and healthcare institutions realize the value of improved efficiency from an industry development perspective—this is the positioning that SENYINT should embrace. With this clarity, Tai Congyue has enabled SENYINT to rediscover its place as a leading provider of innovative smart healthcare solutions.

Leading, as defined by SENYINT, refers to network coverage and resource integration capabilities. SENYINT boasts China’s premier remote healthcare network for medical consortia, covering 4,500 hospitals nationwide. It has also connected with 50 national-level hospitals and 160 regional leading hospitals.

Innovation means that as tiered diagnosis and treatment becomes the mainstream, and telemedicine revitalizes itself by aligning with national policies, innovative thinking and approaches become the key to solving problems. Being a supplier means that SENYINT is no longer just a hardware and software sales company, but rather, like Huawei, provides a comprehensive long-term solution ranging from products to services.

Of course, achieving this transformation is by no means easy.

Disciplinary empowerment is a crucial component of SENYINT’s new strategic positioning. Its mission is to build an open platform, share resources with academic and professional institutions, and empower healthcare delivery. Against this backdrop, collaborations between SENYINT and hospitals or experts each present their respective advantages and disadvantages.

The advantage of collaborating with hospitals is that SENYINT can gain greater support in medical practice, education, and research; however, the implementation cycle tends to be longer. The advantage of partnering with individual experts lies in flexibility and efficiency, but the drawbacks are also evident: different experts often adopt varying approaches to leadership. Therefore, companies need to carefully consider whether to align their efforts from a technical perspective or from the standpoint of clinical application and scientific research.

Once a multidisciplinary collaborative telemedicine platform is established, clients often present new requirements, such as integrating additional hospitals and medical specialties.

As a qualified “matchmaker,” SENYINT not only connects primary care hospitals with higher-level hospitals but also leverages technology and services to address the asymmetries between them. This asymmetry encompasses two dimensions: cognitive asymmetry and asymmetry in technical standards.

"Often, lower-tier hospitals are unclear about how to collaborate with higher-tier hospitals, while the latter worry that integrating telemedicine services may compromise their operational efficiency."

For instance, once a lower-tier hospital completes its remote medical record request, it is essential to assess whether the submitted information meets the content requirements of specialists at higher-tier hospitals. In addition, the completeness of physician orders and laboratory/test results are factors that constrain the implementation of telemedicine. Any information incompleteness constitutes a waste of specialists’ time.

Therefore, SENYINT’s work is to ensure timely responses to client service requests. It enables lower-tier hospitals to schedule appointments with specialists at higher-tier hospitals and ensures that medical records from lower-tier hospitals meet the consultation requirements of higher-tier institutions.

In addition to platform development, SENYINT also oversees the overall quality of the process by providing targeted training to lower-tier hospitals on the diagnostic and treatment evidence and standards from upper-tier hospitals. Remote medical services can be successfully implemented only when lower-tier hospitals understand the needs of upper-tier hospitals.

When patients and physicians at lower-tier hospitals initiate remote consultation requests, the recipients may be hospitals, medical specialties, or individual doctors, each corresponding to distinct product requirements. Whether the model is “selecting hospital and specialty but not specific physician” or “selecting hospital, specialty, and specific physician,” the content and pricing of SENYINT’s services differ. This process of alignment requires continuous coordination by SENYINT.

“Telemedicine operates like a dumbbell, with both ends growing in synergy. If resources at the upper end are insufficient, the lower end is inevitably constrained from expanding.” Tai Congyue offered this vivid analogy.

Telemedicine is merely one component of the construction of medical consortiums. The development of such consortiums presents more complex and stringent challenges for healthcare IT service providers.

The radius limitation of medical services is the core reason for the state’s promotion of tiered diagnosis and treatment. Due to varying reimbursement rates under medical insurance and the transportation costs associated with cross-province travel, patients are reluctant to undertake long-distance journeys to seek medical care in northern regions. Trust has become the key issue. In this context, Medical Consortia have emerged as the optimal solution currently available.

Within the framework of medical consortiums, hospitals at different levels have distinct roles. Primary care hospitals serve as gatekeepers, focusing on early screening of diseases; secondary hospitals provide standardized treatment; and tertiary hospitals lead the development of their respective medical disciplines.

In the past, hospitals’ unclear definition of their roles and the resulting misalignment led to a lack of trust in primary care institutions and a siphon effect favoring large tertiary hospitals. Today, these major hospitals are leveraging their specialized disciplines to foster effective collaboration with lower-tier hospitals.

Taking the specialized respiratory medical consortium as an example, the role of lower-tier hospitals is to conduct screening. The absence of primary care screening in the past has led to the worsening of conditions for many patients with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) or pneumonia.

The role of secondary hospitals is to provide standardized basic treatment and prevent disease progression. For high-risk populations, secondary hospitals should promptly engage expert tertiary hospitals for remote guidance or referral.

“Isolationism is by no means a characteristic that a mature enterprise or institution should exhibit. Some large hospitals harbor certain concerns about the tiered diagnosis and treatment system, fearing that their patient base will be diverted. However, in reality, the larger an enterprise or institution is, the more open it should be,” said Tai Congyue.

Transitioning from a loose to a tight-knit model is one of the objectives in the development of SENYINT’s Medical Consortium. According to SENYINT’s planning, it should encompass three levels:

1. Professional decentralization;

2. Deployment of experts to lower-tier institutions;

3. Decentralization of Specialized Care.

Currently, the established tight-knit medical consortia in China mostly take the form of hospital groups. For the vast majority of these consortia, operational synergy must be achieved first before considerations can expand to the integrated management of human resources, finances, and materials.

Taking hospitals collaborating with SENYINT as an example, tertiary and primary hospitals within the medical consortium first sign performance assessment agreements. Some large hospitals assign deputy-level expert directors to partner with lower-tier hospitals in the consortium, with these experts stationed at the lower-tier hospitals on a regular biweekly basis.

During this period, experts are required to assist lower-tier hospitals in establishing standards for discipline construction, such as the renovation of operating rooms and the improvement of talent recruitment methods. In terms of patient referrals, whether the process complies with the assessment agreements and disciplinary management requirements is also a key aspect of mutual supervision.

During this process, some uncooperative hospitals within the medical consortium will be eliminated, while others will stand out, driving the consortium toward a more tightly integrated model.

“The service-oriented approach is the conclusion Tai Congyue has drawn from years of industry experience and reflection. ‘The more eager a company is to rapidly complete a project, the more difficult it becomes, creating a vicious cycle. There is little middle ground in the informatization industry: either you maintain strong relationships with clients, or they turn out poorly.’”

Under delivery pressure, companies often fall into the trap of being self-centered, adopting low-cost delivery methods. Ultimately, due to mismatched expectations, this can escalate into high-cost delivery amid customer complaints, resulting in both financial losses and reputational damage for the company. However, if companies respond promptly to customer needs and deliver high-quality results on time, the outcome will be significantly different.

The essence of service is customer-centricity, a principle that SENYINT has been continuously reflecting upon.

“You must demonstrate tangible results to clients, allowing them to reap immediate benefits, and work alongside them to drive the project’s growth and development. By providing continuous follow-up services, you can establish a sustainable, long-term service model. For instance, through a five-year roadmap, the project can be divided into multiple phases and completed incrementally, rather than simply collecting payment and walking away upon final acceptance,” said Tai Congyue.

It is evident that since its repositioning, SENYINT has been streamlining its operations by focusing intently on its core target customer base and striving for service excellence. Rather than attempting to do everything, Tai Congyue and SENYINT have identified the formula best suited to their strengths.