People's Choice Awards Ignite the Return to Core Medical Values: Haodf Online Files for IPO

“To cure sometimes, to relieve often, to comfort always.” For a long time, Dr. Trudeau’s epitaph has been regarded as a classic interpretation of the essence of medicine. In an era of rapid advancement in medical technology, “SCI-only” metrics and “technology worship” once prevailed. With the advent of the new internet age, the value of patient-initiated feedback is gaining increasing recognition, and greater emphasis is being placed on patients themselves rather than solely on their diseases. Unlike the previously most esteemed “peer review,” feedback and evaluations from consumers (C-end) may well be the primary force driving medicine to prioritize humanistic care and return to the “biopsychosocial medical model.”

On January 20, 2018, at the “Navigator Conference” hosted by Haodf Online, more than 300 physicians were awarded the title of “Top Doctor of the Year.” Their recognition stemmed neither from administrative authorities nor from peer reviews, but entirely from the patients they served through internet-based healthcare services. Allowing the public to select their preferred doctors embodies the “People’s Choice Award”; using patient evaluations as the benchmark represents the greatest respect for the “return” to the core values of medicine. We owe thanks to internet technology, whose rapid development has made it possible to collect feedback from individual consumers (C-end); and we owe thanks to this era, in which social progress has elevated respect for individuals to new heights.

“Socialism with Chinese characteristics has entered a new era.” This is an important conclusion put forward by General Secretary Xi Jinping at the 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China. Specifically in the healthcare industry, the rapid development of internet technology is reshaping the ecological structure of this traditional sector. In the past, the medical consultation process began with queuing for registration and ended with picking up medication or returning home after surgery; it is now gradually transitioning toward whole-process health care facilitated by internet-based tools. New technologies have created new tools, and these new tools have ushered in a new era.

Renowned host Jing Yidan moderated the “Navigator Conference.” At the event, she stated that physicians should not only treat patients’ diseases but also bring them warmth. Rather than discussing how the internet disrupts, covers, or refreshes the industry, it is more meaningful to explore how doctors in the new era leverage tools to achieve the goals of disease treatment, patient care, and health management. In the future, only those physicians who can fully utilize internet-based tools will be considered modern and in tune with the times.

The Navigator Conference also attracted numerous prominent figures from both within and outside the industry. Zhang Quanling, formerly a renowned host and currently an investor, noted that in this era of rapid internet technology development, technology is transforming people’s lives, including in the realms of health and healthcare. With the continuous emergence of new technologies such as big data, artificial intelligence, and blockchain, channels, traffic, and branding have become key factors for success in the new era. The rapid rise of third-party healthcare platforms, coupled with the adoption of new technologies and tools by traditional institutions, will provide individual physicians with greater room to excel. The integration of internet technology and healthcare holds boundless promise.

Bai Jianfeng, a senior journalist at People’s Daily, has been covering the healthcare industry for more than a decade. From an observer’s perspective, he argues that the healthcare sector’s entry into a new era is an inevitable outcome of social development. In the past, the public’s primary concern regarding medical services was accessibility (“whether they are available”); today, their expectation has shifted to quality (“how good they are”). The 19th National Congress of the Communist Party of China made a major assessment that China’s economy has transitioned from a stage of high-speed growth to one of high-quality development, which constitutes the fundamental characteristic of China’s economic development in the new era. Accordingly, the future direction of healthcare reform will shift from pursuing growth speed to enhancing quality, with patient satisfaction serving as the guiding principle for healthcare reform.

Duan Tao, former president of Shanghai First Maternity and Infant Hospital, has over 20 years of experience in healthcare management. After stepping down from his leadership role in a public medical institution, he ventured into the non-public healthcare sector closely tied to the internet. He shared that the current landscape of medical institutions in China is characterized by increasing numbers, expanding scale, growing proportions, improving quality, and intensifying competition. With the maturing influence of commercial insurance, the internet, and physicians’ independent practice, new healthcare models with inherent internet DNA are poised for rapid emergence.

As of 2017, statistics from the Haodf Online platform alone showed that more than 170,000 licensed physicians had launched personal websites. The number of consultations, referrals, and telemedicine services provided by doctors through internet platforms exceeded 160 million, growing at an annual rate of over 50% in the past three years. In addition, patient feedback generated online, following offline services that were subsequently reviewed online, has accumulated to more than 4.5 million entries on Haodf Online. This vast volume of feedback serves as the basis for the “People’s Choice Award” and acts as a beacon illuminating the value of medicine’s “return” to its core principles.

365365 days, 24 hours a day, 27 specialties, 170,000 doctors, and 35 million online service records—all healthcare-related data generated via the internet have been systematically archived. Six key dimensions—volume of text-and-image consultation responses, number of telephone consultations (including free clinic services), referral appointments, patient reputation scores, timeliness of online services, and patient satisfaction with online services—provide a comprehensive evaluation of both the quantity and quality of online healthcare services.

According to reports, in order to authentically replicate online scenarios, the Mobile Health Research Institute of Health News partnered with Haodf.com to verify the authenticity of all data, ensuring that the year-long efforts of healthcare professionals are evaluated fairly and rewarded credibly. To enrich the dimensions of service quality assessment and make the evaluation results more reflective of patients’ actual experiences, two new dimensions—“timeliness of online services” and “patient satisfaction with online services”—were specifically incorporated into the 2017 data analysis, compared to 2016. The timeliness of online services reflects physicians’ response speed to patient inquiries. Given that doctors typically have heavy daytime workloads, a 24-hour window was adopted as the evaluation period, encouraging physicians to address simple patient consultations during fragmented spare time. Patient satisfaction with online services is calculated entirely based on feedback from end-users (patients), encouraging doctors to move beyond the misconception of “technical worship” and return to the essence of medicine, which emphasizes communication and collaborative efforts in combating disease.

In addition to the “2017 Top Doctors” award, the conference also unveiled two lists: “2017 Young Role Models” and “2017 Grassroots Role Models.” These lists reveal that patient-driven forces are pushing medicine back to its core essence. Physicians are increasingly prioritizing medical services, with a cohort of outstanding doctors shifting their focus from the disease itself to the patient as a person, thereby earning strong brand reputation.

The New Era is an era of national rejuvenation, and the Chinese Dream of Health in the New Era is a dream illuminated by the sunshine of technology.

The principal contradiction in Chinese society has evolved into one between the people’s ever-growing needs for a better life and unbalanced and inadequate development. The public’s pursuit of health no longer stops at “access to medical care,” but extends to the aspiration for a healthy lifestyle. Zhu Hengpeng, Director of the Center for Public Policy Research at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and a renowned expert on healthcare reform, noted that the public’s sense of gain from healthcare reforms remains weak. This is largely due to the excessive concentration of medical resources; despite year-on-year increases in fiscal investment, resource waste remains severe. Meanwhile, on one hand, there is a lack of a family doctor system to serve as health gatekeepers for the general public, and on the other, public hospitals and their physicians generally lack a service-oriented mindset. Mobile internet tools may be the key to addressing these challenges and transforming the current healthcare ecosystem and doctor-patient relationships.

Wang Hang, founder and CEO of Haodf Online, stated that the era of paying for services has arrived in China. Having moved past an age of material scarcity, China has resolved the fundamental issue of availability at the hardware level. Current consumer demand is shifting toward higher-quality services, with education, entertainment, and healthcare emerging as three key sectors poised for transformation. In the medical field, the era of paying for services is dawning.

In 2017, the 170,000 registered physicians on the Haodf Online platform served a total of 10.12 million patients. Internet-based tools have yielded significant results in increasing the volume of medical services. On one hand, rapid socioeconomic development has made people increasingly willing to pay for services, particularly high-quality ones; on the other hand, outstanding physicians have also secured substantial legitimate income through online services. Enhancing medical services and returning to the essence of healthcare have become a consensus among the physician community. Notably, as both patients and physicians have come to embrace this service-oriented philosophy, online services have further fostered improved doctor-patient relationships.

In January 2018, the daily number of patient complaints received by Haodf Online’s Complaint Handling Center dropped from a peak of 1,800 to 300. In an era where patients are willing to pay for services, the greatest challenge lies in the quality of medical care. Enhancing service quality is a long-term, continuous process; those who master superior service skills first will gain a competitive advantage in development.

Technology Reshapes the Future; The Future Is Here.