Mingyi Zhonghe Files for IPO After Connecting Nearly 20,000 Clinics and Serving Over 800,000 Patients Across 64 Counties in One Year

Jiang Qiang, Founder and CEO of Mingyi Zhonghe

“How can we understand the true state of grassroots healthcare without going into rural areas?” Jiang Qiang told VCBeat.

To gain a genuine understanding of grassroots healthcare, Jiang Qiang, at the age of forty, resolutely gave up a comfortable and privileged life to immerse himself in China’s vast rural market. He spent his days chatting and living alongside village doctors, adopting a lifestyle akin to that of a farmer. “My wife often complains that instead of enjoying leisurely travels, I have embarked on another entrepreneurial journey,” Jiang Qiang said with a look of contentment.

For over a year, he has been traveling from street to street and alley to alley, losing count of how many counties he has visited and how many village doctors he has met. Despite his busy schedule, he has reaped substantial rewards: with a team of fewer than 80 people, he has covered 64 districts and counties across Shandong, Hebei, Henan, and other provinces, connecting nearly 20,000 clinics, serving more than 800,000 patients, and handling over 5 million medical visits.

“In primary healthcare, 90% of grassroots physicians’ income comes from pharmaceuticals. If the cost of each drug purchased can be reduced by 1 yuan, grassroots physicians’ earnings will increase accordingly,” said Jiang Qiang.

Over the past two years, Jiang Qiang has immersed himself in rural areas, building friendships with village doctors and spending extensive time at the grassroots level. These experiences have yielded profound insights; every product inspiration stems from the grassroots, and he refers to the launch of each new product as “empowerment.”

For example, Yun Yaofang is a B2B pharmaceutical e-commerce platform. According to Jiang Qiang, in some villages, due to differences in administrative management, pharmacies and clinics have been integrated into single entities. Since each clinic’s purchase volume for individual drugs is low—sometimes only a few boxes per year—and procurement channels vary among clinics, leading to significant price discrepancies, he believes that orders from grassroots medical institutions must be consolidated. This approach would not only reduce drug procurement costs for clinics but also enable unified distribution.

For clinics, pharmaceutical procurement represents their most significant pain point. Due to the wide variety of medications and low usage volumes, clinics lack substantial bargaining power.

“Therefore, we have contacted manufacturers, large chain pharmacies, and pharmaceutical distributors across various regions, inviting them all to join the Cloud Pharmacy platform. For any medication varieties required by clinics, orders can be placed with a simple click of the mouse from home. The remaining delivery process is handled through collaborations between commercial companies and third-party logistics providers, ensuring door-to-door service. Since most medications used by clinics do not require cold-chain storage, standard logistics services are sufficient. This creates a one-stop, efficient center for drug procurement and distribution, making it no longer difficult for clinics to purchase supplies,” said Jiang Qiang.

Meanwhile, Jiang Qiang established basic distribution centers in pharmacies across various regions, assigning one employee to work alongside local personnel to handle the listing of medications. “Although this is labor-intensive work, clinics appreciate it, as it enables them to procure over a thousand types of pharmaceutical products.”

The second aspect is enhancing the medical capabilities of clinics. Medical capabilities are divided into diagnostic and therapeutic capacities. At the primary care level, diagnostic capacity is particularly weak. Even medical graduates with bachelor’s degrees prefer to stay in cities, working in medicine-related fields or sales, rather than serving as village doctors in rural areas. In such cases, appealing to human nature or ideals proves ineffective. Therefore, Jiang Qiang believes that internet-based solutions can effectively address this gap by “filling their minds,” thereby truly empowering primary care providers in both diagnosis and treatment.

So he did three things: First, he equipped primary care physicians with computers and reengineered the clinic information management system into a user-friendly, intuitive platform. All key data fields, such as symptoms and chief complaints, were tagged to enable convenient selection and prompts for end users. Meanwhile, the system provides intelligent assisted diagnostic pathways and relevant information based on different selections, effectively serving as an external “brain” for clinical decision support. “There was a 70-year-old village doctor who previously didn’t even know how to turn on a computer; now he can skillfully use this system.”

Second, enhance their diagnostic capabilities. Even in primary care clinics in developed regions, the standard equipment remains limited to the "old three" items: stethoscopes, thermometers, and sphygmomanometers, which cannot be classified as comprehensive medical examinations. Consequently, the utilization rates for basic laboratory tests, such as complete blood count (CBC) and urinalysis, are virtually zero. By introducing both laboratory testing services and the soft skills required to interpret these results to the primary care level, we can effectively improve diagnostic capabilities at the grassroots level.

Third, by connecting with high-end specialized hospitals and leading medical experts, we can enhance the treatment capabilities of primary care physicians. Currently, there are numerous startups focused on direct doctor-patient communication, but they face significant challenges. Medical information is inherently asymmetric, encompassing complex medical knowledge that cannot be adequately understood through simple online inquiries. As clinics are legally recognized medical institutions, the key to facilitating effective consultations and referrals lies in leveraging and maximizing their local capabilities in diagnosis, treatment, and communication. Establishing a “doctor-doctor-patient” model for remote consultations, specialist reviews, and referrals can better empower grassroots healthcare providers, further strengthen their capacity for initial diagnosis, and effectively reduce the geographical burden on patients seeking medical care.

“A single chopstick is easily broken, but ten chopsticks bound together are unbreakable.” At the outset of his venture, Jiang Qiang leveraged the extensive network and influence he had cultivated over more than two decades in the healthcare industry to rapidly assemble a team of co-founders. Within just a few months, the team expanded to nearly 80 members. The company’s talent structure is pyramid-shaped, spanning technical development, ground-level promotion, management, and operations, while ensuring comprehensive coverage of industry resources.

The IT technical team is highly accomplished, with core members hailing from numerous well-known enterprises and boasting an average of over ten years of industry experience. They possess extensive expertise in product planning, architecture design, and technology research and development. A prime example is Li Xianghong, the head of the technical team, Co-founder, and CTO of Mingyi Zhonghe. He served for many years at Lenovo and Digital China, establishing himself as a renowned expert in government sector informatization. Throughout his career, he has been primarily responsible for product development and the expansion of new technology businesses. He excels in planning and driving informatization projects, innovating business models, and formulating IT strategies and top-level architectural frameworks.

Wang Jian is the head of the ground promotion team. With years of deep engagement in grassroots healthcare, he possesses extensive customer and team resources. He has a profound understanding of market pain points and keen insight into market trends. Leveraging the resource network built over the years, he leads Mingyi Zhonghe’s ground promotion team to rapidly expand into the grassroots market with unstoppable momentum.

Liang Shijuan is the Head of the Medical Business Department. She has served for many years at well-known domestic pharmaceutical companies such as Guangzhou Yipinhong and Hainan Kangzhi. With over 17 years of experience in pharmaceutical marketing and team management, she is well-versed in China’s primary, secondary, and tertiary pharmaceutical markets, possessing extensive industry resources and excellent market coordination capabilities.

“All these talented individuals have been my friends for many years; we all want to contribute something to primary healthcare,” said Jiang Qiang.

“We aim to become a provider of solutions addressing the shortage of medical resources and pharmaceuticals in primary healthcare.” Through independent research and development, we have created the Yidebang Clinic Ecosystem Service Cloud Software, which encompasses four core business segments: “Cloud Healthcare,” “Cloud Hospital,” “Cloud Pharmacy,” and “Cloud Education.” Our primary clients include private clinics, pharmacies, hospitals, as well as public health centers and community service centers.

Furthermore, it can integrate various high-end cross-regional resources—including large hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, financial institutions, insurance providers, and other collaborative healthcare entities within the region such as testing centers, rehabilitation facilities, and elderly care institutions—with the aim of jointly serving primary healthcare institutions.

According to Jiang Qiang, the services primarily covered by these four major business segments include:

Smart “Cloud Clinic” Services: Aimed at supporting the daily operations of clinics and grounded in big data, these services provide integrated clinical intelligent decision support to help clinics enhance management efficiency and improve patient care standards;

Featured “Cloud Healthcare” Services: Aiming to establish specialized departments, this integrated cloud healthcare model helps clinics connect with high-end professional hospitals and expert physicians. It forms a consortium that enables consultation and referral services, vertical coordination, information sharing, and operational collaboration, thereby building the brand and reputation of primary care institutions within their local communities.

One-Stop “Cloud Pharmacy”: Leveraging a vast user base and collaborating with regional partners to integrate pharmaceutical resources, this initiative creates a virtual cloud pharmacy that optimizes the drug supply chain, providing a one-stop solution for procurement challenges and stockouts at primary healthcare institutions.

Online “Cloud Education” Services: Aimed at enhancing the skills of primary care physicians, with a focus on promoting appropriate technologies, and providing online services for medical heritage transmission, medical knowledge, and medical information.

At the strategic layout level, Jiang Qiang aims to center on empowering grassroots clinics by systematically rolling out four integrated services—“Cloud Clinic,” “Cloud Healthcare,” “Cloud Pharmacy,” and “Cloud Education”—and leveraging internet technologies to continuously strengthen primary care. Partners include Wuxing Jinfu, Yitong Tianxia, Huimin Traditional Chinese Medicine Children’s Hospital, Huimei Medical, Xiaoyuer Technology, YiQianWang, and ShuangweiWang.

“Over the next three years, we aim to serve 200,000 clinics, with each clinic reaching 1,000 individuals, thereby helping 200 million patients.”