Duan Tao Appointed as Chief President of WeDoctor Women & Children Medical Consortium to Build Nation's Largest Integrated Maternal-Child Healthcare Platform
On June 24, the inaugural China Innovation Conference, guided and hosted by the Development Research Center of the State Council and the People's Government of Guangdong Province, was held in Guangzhou. At the Healthy China sub-forum of the conference, WeDoctor’s maternal and child health division, WeDoctor Beilian, unveiled its latest strategy. Building on its three core platform positioning pillars—“precise entry points, open platforms, and closed-loop ecosystems”—WeDoctor Beilian announced its development goals: to build China’s largest maternal and infant health service platform and China’s largest internet-based medical consortium for women and children.
Meanwhile,Renowned “Internet-famous hospital director” Duan Tao has been appointed as the President of the WeDoctor Women’s and Children’s Medical Consortium, where he will oversee, manage, and guide all aspects of services provided by the consortium’s partner institutions.Duan Tao announced his new strategy for building the WeDoctor Women’s and Children’s Medical Consortium, describing it as a “Game changer, Solution provider, Ultimate terminator,” meaning “the game changer, the solution provider, and the ultimate terminator.”
As the former president of Shanghai First Maternity and Infant Hospital and a leading figure in China’s obstetrics and gynecology field, Duan Tao announced his resignation on January 25, 2017, via his personal WeChat public account, “Dr. Duan Tao.” On June 2, Duan announced his venture into entrepreneurship. However, industry insiders have been speculating and waiting to see where the “internet-famous hospital president” will focus his entrepreneurial efforts.
He could have quietly enjoyed his retirement as a “veteran hospital director and seasoned expert,” but Duan Tao ultimately chose to embark on an entrepreneurial journey, aiming to “do something different, transform the industry, and make an impact on the world.” This time, Duan Tao is set to address the shortcomings of China’s private healthcare institutions and the systemic constraints faced by public hospitals. What drives his entrepreneurship is not merely dreams and ideals, but more importantly, a sense of responsibility as a Chinese physician and an entrepreneur.
“Most existing regional medical consortia or alliances for women’s and children’s hospitals are characterized by loose, weak ties; various barriers persist, resulting in superficial connectivity rather than genuine interoperability.” Duan Tao frankly pointed out these shortcomings in the current state of the healthcare system for women and children. As a seasoned professional bridging healthcare and the internet, Duan Tao believes that the rational and in-depth application of internet technologies will bring revolutionary changes to the traditionally conservative healthcare system.
Upon assuming the role of President, Dr. Duan Tao will focus on building an ideal national platform for medical consortia in obstetrics, gynecology, and pediatrics. By integrating his team’s extensive experience in hospital operations management with WeDoctor’s mature capabilities in internet-based balanced allocation of medical resources and cross-regional services, the platform will provide comprehensive online-to-offline solutions based on the “medical consortium + internet” model to healthcare institutions across China through centralized development and open service delivery.
The WeDoctor Women’s and Children’s Medical Consortium Platform is an open platform. By integrating Duan Tao and his team’s professional expertise in hospital operations management with the existing strengths of the WeDoctor Internet-based Women’s and Children’s Health Platform, it establishes a unified technical platform, standardized service and management protocols, and consistent standards for discipline development and talent cultivation. Through an open collaboration model, it facilitates the formation of diverse medical consortiums or alliances—featuring one-to-one, one-to-many, many-to-one, and many-to-many configurations—among high-quality public and private women’s and children’s healthcare institutions across China.
As the President of WeDoctor’s Women and Children’s Medical Consortium, Duan Tao will also promote substantive cooperation and complementarity in capital, assets, and resources, break through the bottlenecks in user acquisition and access to medical resources faced by women’s and children’s healthcare institutions, and establish strong linkages within the consortium.
As planned, the WeDoctor Women’s and Children’s Medical Consortium will also leverage its big data platform to voluntarily assist women’s and children’s healthcare institutions in conducting data benchmarking and gap analyses with domestic and international peers. Furthermore, a professional team will provide management improvement systems and tools that are internationally aligned, scientifically systematic, and practical.
“As a new-generation hospital director with a strong spirit of innovation and pioneering reform, Dr. Duan Tao will bring a completely new hospital management model to WeDoctor, providing an immense boost to the development of the WeDoctor Women’s and Children’s Medical Consortium Platform,” said Liao Jieyuan, Chairman and CEO of WeDoctor. Leveraging the resources and operational advantages accumulated through WeDoctor’s Medical Consortium Platform, along with its independently developed hardware and software technologies capable of handling large-scale concurrency, WeDoctor will provide essential growth support to the Women’s and Children’s Medical Consortium Platform, helping it rapidly evolve into a scaled and mature medical consortium system.
According to VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat), WeDoctor Beilian, the operational entity of the WeDoctor Women’s and Children’s Medical Consortium Platform, is an innovative women’s and children’s healthcare service platform formed by integrating the former Beilian (Shanghai) Information Technology Co., Ltd. with WeDoctor’s comprehensive women’s and children’s services. By leveraging hospital Wi-Fi entry points in maternal and child health hospitals, building internet-based women’s and children’s hospitals, and co-establishing a women’s and children’s medical consortium platform with offline maternal and child health hospitals, it provides nationwide one-stop, customized, online-to-offline integrated services covering the entire journey of pregnancy, childbirth, and childcare for mothers and infants.
The development of Weiyi Beilian has undergone three stages:
1. In 2013, the former Beilian Technology was established, providing Wi-Fi network construction services for maternal and child health hospitals across China, and developed into a Hos-WiFi portal covering 382 cities and 1,500 maternal and child health hospitals nationwide;
2. In 2016, the former Beilian Technology completed a strategic merger with WeDoctor’s maternal and child health business, establishing WeDoctor Beilian. The company launched the National Internet Hospital Platform for Women and Children at the Great Hall of the People, providing open internet-based medical and health services to maternal and child health institutions and women and children across China;
3. In 2017, WeDoctor Beilian comprehensively launched offline business collaborations with maternal and child healthcare institutions at all levels, prioritizing the integration of high-quality resources from women’s and children’s medical facilities to establish a nationwide medical consortium for maternal and child health, thereby creating a closed-loop specialty service model for women and children that combines online and offline care.
Currently, WeDoctor Beilian is the largest maternal and child health service platform in China, holding the country’s only internet license for a women’s and children’s hospital.Established Hos-WiFi network service partnerships with 1,500 women’s and children’s hospitals across 382 cities in China, covering an annual total outpatient volume of 350 million visits.