Xiaoniao QuickCheck Targets At-Home Physical Examination Market with Standardized Processes to Unlock New Gateway in Internet+ Healthcare

From clinical diagnosis and treatment to preventive diagnostics, health management is gradually permeating the development of the entire industry.

Hospital consultations differ from traditional Chinese medicine’s four diagnostic methods—inspection, auscultation and olfaction, inquiry, and palpation—and rely more heavily on laboratory tests. In clinical practice, physicians are increasingly dependent on laboratory testing. Furthermore, following the implementation of the zero-markup policy for pharmaceuticals, hospitals have shifted their profit focus from medications to laboratory services.

In 2016, the market size of China’s medical laboratory testing industry reached RMB 250 billion, representing a year-on-year growth of 7%–9% compared with 2015. Among this, the third-party medical laboratory testing segment accounted for 5% of the market, with an annual growth rate exceeding 40%. During the same period, the health examination industry scaled to RMB 153.9 billion. According to forecasts by the Qianzhan Industry Research Institute, the compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of the health examination market is expected to range between 20% and 25% from 2016 to 2020, positioning it as a blue-ocean market.

From the “convenience services” of the past to today’s “premium services,” paying for time-saving solutions has become the norm among white-collar workers. From in-home nursing to at-home testing, entrepreneurs are tirelessly seeking new entry points amid a gradually saturating internet healthcare market, where untapped high-quality channels and deeply cultivated vertical services remain key opportunities. In its quest for new avenues in internet healthcare, Xiaoniao Kuaiyan has targeted the market for at-home physical examinations and laboratory testing.

Xiaoniao Kuaiyan is a sub-project under Xiaoniao Health. Its CEO, Sun Yue, is an entrepreneur with ten years of overseas experience and extensive sales expertise, along with a professional background in project work within Lenovo’s service team. Among the more than 40 employees currently comprising Xiaoniao Health’s team, many hail from internet companies such as Lenovo, 360, and Baidu.

A project established by an internet team is inherently characterized by strong internet attributes. Sun Yue positioned online channels as the primary entry point for services, adopting a service model that leverages both offline medical entities and the internet as access points. By integrating offline medical service resources, Xiao Niao Kuai Yan (Birdie Quick Test) delivers healthcare and medical services. In March 2016, the first version of Xiao Niao Kuai Yan was officially launched. At that time, no unicorn had yet emerged in the home-based testing market, most companies were still in their early stages of development, and the market remained relatively untapped.

Sun Yue believes that in medical services, testing is the preferred and common pathway after registration. Meanwhile, the cumbersome testing process is a common pain point in medical services, often requiring patients to spend more time.

Therefore, the primary challenges that Xiaoniao Kuaiyan aims to address include: the inability of traditional health checkup institutions to meet targeted screening needs; hospitals’ focus on disease treatment rather than health screening, resulting in suboptimal patient experiences and high costs; the lack of rapid testing services tailored to individual customer needs in the market; and the uneven distribution of medical resources.

Amid the gaps in internet-based services, healthcare itself remains a prominent pain point, and the market demands more comprehensive solutions.

Sun Yue believes that when healthcare is broken down, it can be divided into laboratory medicine, diagnostics, and therapeutics. However, precisely because diagnostics and therapeutics employ different methods to treat various diseases, the uncertainty and multi-standardization of these methods make it difficult to provide replicable, standardized operations for these two components during clinical consultation.

“We found that laboratory medicine can be well applied to standardized services and is replicable, so we decided to extract standardized laboratory testing services as a standalone internet-based project.”

Xiao Niao Kuai Yan is positioned by Sun Yue as a project that “brings medical services to everyone through internet-based solutions.” By prioritizing rapid at-home service delivery, it leverages professional blood testing, genetic testing, and imaging diagnostics, combined with cloud-based big data systems and one-on-one data analysis and health guidance from qualified physicians, to provide customers with convenient and safe medical screening and health management services.

In the pre-consultation services sector, Xiaoniao Quick Diagnosis relies on its own general practice clinic in Beijing, which spans over 1,000 square meters, and collaborates with multiple public hospitals. It has initially established an internet-based quick diagnosis model grounded in offline physical entities and created the “Xiaoniao Quick Inquiry” section to provide pre-examination and post-examination consultations.

In daily life, most people choose to seek medical attention at hospitals only after falling ill, which often results in disease progression due to the failure to detect physical abnormalities early. As mindsets shift, the public is gradually transitioning from post-onset disease screening to proactive, pre-symptomatic prevention. Consequently, regular specialized health examinations have emerged as a new health trend.

After patients place orders and schedule appointments via the Xiao Niao Kuai Yan platform, dedicated nurses are dispatched to their homes for sample collection. The collected samples are then sent to certified testing laboratories. Once the test results are generated, specialized systems and personnel within the company interpret the findings. Depending on the specific tests ordered, most laboratory reports are delivered to customers via mobile devices within 48 hours, enabling them to monitor their health data in real time.

Home Visit Testing for Household Users

On the backend, Xiaoniao Kuaiyan also provides tailored solutions for patients and individuals in a sub-health state. “For patients with severe conditions or those at risk of disease, Xiaoniao Kuaiyan refers them to hospitals with more comprehensive diagnostic and therapeutic capabilities better suited for their treatment.” For individuals in a sub-health state, experts conduct assessments and diagnoses to develop personalized, science-based health management plans.

Currently, Xiaoniao Kuaiyan has partnered with multiple public Grade 3A hospitals and private specialized hospitals in China to provide remote consultation services for patients requiring more advanced solutions after testing.

Xiao Niao Kuai Yan provides on-site disease screening services, offering two main service categories: corporate services and individual services. According to Sun Yue, Xiao Niao Kuai Yan’s customers fall into three categories: individual clients, corporate clients, and channel partners.

While individual and corporate clients are easy to understand, channel clients refer to B-side customers, such as insurance companies, that require additional services to maintain their own client base. On-site health examination services are provided specifically for this segment.

Xiaoniao Kuaiyan's Service Model

Currently, Xiaoniao Kuaiyan categorizes its testing services by disease type, offering various packages to meet the needs of different populations. Although it provides home-based services, its pricing remains on par with that of public hospitals. For users, this means saving time without incurring additional costs—a win-win situation.

Xiaoniao Health is a professional medical institution, with business segments and brands including Xiaoniao Quick Test, Xiaoniao Quick Diagnosis, and Bode Medical. It holds qualifications for physical medical services, medical devices, and pharmaceutical operations.

The home-visit sample collection nursing team is categorized into full-time and part-time personnel. Full-time nurses are recruited by tertiary Grade A hospitals or provided with a multi-site practice platform, and they deliver services equipped with standardized collection devices. All instruments used in the process are closed-system and incorporate traceability measures. All nursing licenses, multi-site practice agreements, and personal medical insurance information for the nurses are fully documented and verified on the Niaokuaiyan platform.

Professional Nurse Home Care Services

“Customers can view the practicing certificates and standard operating procedures of the nurses providing home services after placing an order. The equipment is labeled with traceable codes, and we retain samples collected during home visits for 20 days to facilitate customer inquiries,” Sun Yue told reporters.

Collected specimens are transported via a full cold-chain process, with specimen receiving boxes maintained at a constant temperature and GPS tracking employed throughout the dedicated vehicle transport. Furthermore, Xiaoniao Health owns a proprietary Laboratory Information System (LIS), and its services have expanded to cities including Beijing, Shanghai, and Chengdu.

The platform’s third-party laboratory partners include listed companies and renowned testing institutions such as Dian Diagnostics, Adicon Medical Laboratory Center, and BGI Genomics, ensuring the accuracy and authority of test results.

According to Sun Yue, in the home-based testing segment, the largest expense comes from post-collection testing fees, accounting for 50% of total costs, while labor costs and platform promotion expenses each account for 25%. However, as Sun Yue noted, “Testing fees are fixed costs, and the testing services themselves are high-margin.” After more than a year of operation and serving approximately over 100,000 individual consumers, Xiao Niao Kuai Yan has basically achieved break-even.

Xiaoniao Kuaiyan’s primary revenue stream comes from service fees for home-visit testing services, with its platform serving B-end and C-end customers in an approximate ratio of 1:1. Reportedly, current B-end clients partnering with the project include China Railway Group, China Overseas Property, People’s Insurance Company of China (PICC), and 58 Daojia.

Some B-end Clients of Xiaoniao Kuaiyan

Although no offline stores have been established, Sun Yue believes that “only modular and standardized services can form internet-based services,” and that the efficiency of medical services can definitely be improved through internet-based methods and the logic of sharing mechanisms.

Avoiding medical checkups due to the fear of disease detection is a prevalent psychological phenomenon among young people. This demographic often exhibits aversion to seeking medical care, and the sub-optimal health status induced by high work intensity has led to a significantly higher disease prevalence among today’s youth compared to a decade ago. The primary market challenge lies in consumer education.

The most urgent issue for the internet to address is how to leverage a means to help people efficiently and conveniently resolve current healthcare problems.

As the home-based testing market gradually takes shape, third-party testing laboratories at the backend of the service chain are poised for a new round of growth. Sun Yue believes that “testing is the best approach for both prevention and early disease detection, and currently appears to be the most effective method.”

According to Sun Yue, Xiaoniao Health has completed its Pre-A financing round and will explore the in vitro diagnostics sector, along with rapid interpretation and intelligent analysis of test results, to provide more precise triage and health management.