WeiBaiFang Files IPO Prospectus: Revolutionizing Pharma Rep Engagement via WeChat

“Merely inventing a new drug does not mean the job is done. We must also explore effective ways to ensure that the best scientific achievements benefit all of humanity.”

Near the end of the interview, Cheng Hao, founder of “Micro Visit,” reiterated Merck & Co. founder George W. Merck’s quote to VCBeat. Throughout the entire interview, she repeated it four times in total.

The second half of George Merck’s motto reads: “We must always remember that medicine is for the people, not for profit. Profits follow.”

As a seasoned practitioner in the healthcare industry, Cheng Hao believes that George Merck’s two statements accurately articulate the core objectives of pharmaceutical manufacturers: to invent new therapies and make them widely accessible to the public.

The role of pharmaceutical sales representatives emerged to promote therapeutic methods and medications. However, amid excessive competition among pharmaceutical companies, their promotional practices have gradually become distorted and drawn widespread criticism.

Driven by regulatory oversight and market self-discipline, the elimination of pharmaceutical bribery has imposed more academic and professional requirements on the promotional activities of medical representatives, giving rise to a series of professional engagement tools, among which is Micro-Visit.

Cheng Hao, founder of Micro Visit, graduated from Shenyang Pharmaceutical University and holds an EMBA from CEIBS. He previously held positions at major multinational pharmaceutical companies such as Merck & Co., Novartis, and Xian Janssen, accumulating over 20 years of experience in prescription drug marketing and training. He founded a mobile internet/WeChat-based training system for pharmaceutical representatives, pioneering the exploration of mobile learning and mobile marketing within the industry.

Co-founder Li Zhaozhou graduated from Tsinghua University and earned a Ph.D. from the Chinese Academy of Sciences. He previously held positions at Lucent, Sun, Yahoo, and Tencent, accumulating extensive experience in technical product design and development within the healthcare sector. He has developed software for chronic disease patient management, clinical research, and clinical follow-up systems.

Drawing on their years of experience in pharmaceutical marketing and their previous venture related to medical representatives, the two founders positioned their startup as a professional visitation tool for medical representatives. The project was officially launched in 2015 under the name “Wei Baifang.”

WeiBaifang Founder Cheng Hao (left), Co-founder Li Zhaozhou (right)

“WeiBaiFang is a one-stop WeChat-based professional engagement solution for pharmaceutical sales representatives.” According to Cheng Hao, WeiBaiFang is a system that encompasses content creation, content dissemination, monitoring of the dissemination process, and analysis of dissemination data.

Broken down, the process begins with pharmaceutical companies providing promotional materials for their drugs to the Wei Baifang (Micro-Visit) platform. The platform’s content creation team then adapts these materials into formats optimized for dissemination on WeChat. Pharmaceutical sales representatives subsequently forward this content to target physicians, either as a substitute for or a supplement to in-person visits, with the primary aim of disseminating diagnostic and therapeutic knowledge as well as drug-related information.

During this dissemination process, data on pharmaceutical representatives’ outreach activities and physicians’ reading behaviors can be collected, enabling targeted management of the professional promotion process. Furthermore, physicians’ reading data can help companies assess the effectiveness of their professional promotional efforts, thereby facilitating more effective promotional planning.

In effect, micro-visits shift pharmaceutical sales representatives’ engagement to WeChat, replacing traditional printed materials with WeChat articles as the medium for information delivery. Leveraging existing offline relationships between representatives and physicians, this approach achieves higher open rates and more precise dissemination, constituting a social, professionally oriented promotional pathway.

Cheng Hao stated to VCBeat that pharmaceutical sales representatives’ visits are, in essence, a process of information dissemination. Through communication between pharmaceutical representatives and physicians, these interactions aim to influence physicians’ clinical perspectives and prescribing behaviors, thereby achieving marketing objectives.

However, excessive competition among domestic pharmaceutical companies, coupled with the influx of inadequately qualified personnel into the ranks of medical representatives, has led to gray marketing practices in the pharmaceutical industry, sparking public dissatisfaction.

Therefore, crackdowns on the gray-area visiting practices of pharmaceutical sales representatives have frequently made headlines. Examples include the “GSK” scandal and China Central Television’s exposure at the end of last year of bribery by pharmaceutical sales representatives to physicians in Jiangxi, Hunan, and other provinces.

More importantly, regulators have taken notice of the gray marketing practices employed by pharmaceutical sales representatives and are making concerted efforts to crack down on such activities. This year’s key priorities and task list for healthcare reform explicitly call for the formulation of administrative measures for the registration and filing of pharmaceutical sales representatives. Once such a registration system is implemented, tracking and monitoring these illicit practices will become significantly easier.

In this context, pharmaceutical companies will also shift their product promotion strategies toward academic conferences and professional detailing, which demands higher levels of medical expertise and requires the marketing function to provide specialized tools.

From a competitive standpoint, traditional pharmaceutical ERP and SaaS management software providers may also enhance their professional content capabilities. Emerging internet healthcare and mobile health platforms have likewise recognized this trend; for instance, DXY has collaborated with pharmaceutical companies on product marketing, while Chunyu Yisheng has partnered with pharmaceutical firms to conduct research on medication adherence.

What is certain is that specialized academic exchanges and visits, primarily focused on disseminating knowledge of pathology and pharmaceuticals, represent the future trend. This approach aligns with physicians’ mobile reading and learning habits, thereby creating new market opportunities.

Cheng Hao also told VCBeat that the value of micro-visits lies in enhancing the effectiveness of professional detailing in pharmaceutical marketing, enabling pharmaceutical companies to promote their products in a more cost-effective and precise manner.

Looking ahead, Cheng Hao outlined Weibai Fang’s strategy as continuously refining its products and upgrading its technology. By optimizing its systems to better serve pharmaceutical companies, the company aims to help them establish efficient academic promotion frameworks, thereby realizing the professional value of healthcare practitioners.