DXY Launches Its First Internet Hospital in Yinchuan, Aiming to Lead Through Deep Industry Expertise
On March 19, at the signing ceremony for the Yinchuan Internet Hospital, DXY, a company with years of deep engagement in the healthcare sector, announced that its first internet hospital and big data center would be established in Yinchuan. With this development, the participants in Yinchuan’s internet hospital and related services now include nearly all major players in the online healthcare industry.
Li Tiantian, Founder of DXY
Li Tiantian, founder of DXY, to VCBeat(WeChat: vcbeat)The reporter stated that the establishment of DXY Internet Hospital marks another firm step by DXY in responding to the national call and exploring new models of medical services in the internet era. Meanwhile, this also represents a significant move for DXY’s expansion into the consumer-facing sector, as its core product, DXY Doctor, has officially upgraded from a light-consultation model based on online inquiries to providing comprehensive online diagnosis and treatment services for users.
If DXY has long positioned itself over the past decade-plus as a professional exchange platform for physicians, medical institutions, pharmaceutical professionals, and life sciences practitioners, then its frequent forays into consumer-facing businesses in recent years seem to signal greater ambition. A “different” DXY is gradually coming into public view.
As early as 2014, DXY launched the “Dingxiang Doctor” WeChat official account matrix to provide public health education, currently boasting over 20 million users. In 2016, DXY expanded its efforts both online and offline, sequentially launching an online consultation product offering pre-visit consultations for patients, and establishing four “Dingxiang Clinics” in Hangzhou and Fuzhou based on the U.S. general practice healthcare system.
The establishment of an internet hospital in Yinchuan will serve as another strategic supplement to its consumer-facing (C-end) business, further enhancing the services and connectivity DXY provides to individual users. This move completes the “ICE Model”—Information, Communication, and Engagement—developed by founder Li Tiantian, thereby comprehensively addressing users’ health management and medical care needs.
In terms of the concrete implementation of internet hospitals, DXY’s advantages are evident. Within DXY’s various business lines, its Mass Medicine Division and Clinic Division form the foundation for establishing the Yinchuan DXY Internet Hospital, with these two divisions collectively employing over 100 full-time professional physicians. Currently, DXY Doctor’s online consultation platform hosts more than 10,000 attending physicians and above from Grade IIIA hospitals, supplemented by a professional medical and nursing team numbering in the thousands. DXY provides medical services to 70% of multinational pharmaceutical companies and maintains collaborative relationships with over 3,000 medical institutions. More importantly, DXY commands a vast pool of professional physicians, representing over 70% of China’s total physician population, which serves as a significant asset in its establishment of an internet hospital.
“Whether in terms of internal development or external conditions, DXY has reached a juncture where business upgrading is imperative. Building on substantial prior accumulation, the establishment of Yinchuan DXY Internet Hospital at this stage is a strategic move aligned with prevailing trends,” introduced Li Tiantian. He noted that the resources among physicians, hospitals, and pharmaceutical companies accumulated by DXY over its 17-year history will be seamlessly integrated with DXY Internet Hospital, creating an extensive online diagnosis and treatment network. “However, the establishment of an internet hospital is far from being the final piece of DXY’s consumer-facing (C-end) strategy; in the future, DXY will continue to explore broader opportunities within the general health sector.”
During preliminary discussions with the Yinchuan Municipal Government, DXY found that Yinchuan’s internet hospital planning aligned with its own vision. First, DXY can establishA wholly owned internet medical institution, rather than one established in partnership with a local Grade A tertiary hospital in Yinchuan, is the model for building internet hospitals endorsed by DXY’s management team.
Second, the Yinchuan Municipal Government and the Health and Family Planning Commission have provided policy support for internet hospitals, in addition to the previous “In addition to the “One Platform, Two Systems” model, reforms were also implemented in areas such as physicians’ multi-site practice, professional title promotion, and mutual recognition of medical insurance, laying the foundation for the development of internet hospitals. Thus, DXY came to Yinchuan.
What advantages does the establishment of Yinchuan Dingxiang Internet Hospital have over traditional brick-and-mortar hospitals, and what changes can it bring? Founder Li Tiantian also shared his views with VCBeat.
Dingxiang Yuan has already developed a mature product, “Dingxiang Doctor,” where tens of thousands of professional physicians are actively engaged daily on the platform to respond to users’ health inquiries. With the establishment of the Dingxiang Internet Hospital, and under strict medical quality control and management, physicians will be able to issue prescriptions based on patients’ consultations or descriptions of their conditions. This upgrade will transform Dingxiang Doctor’s health consultation services into online diagnosis and treatment services, enabling corresponding consultations and follow-up visits to be conducted on the internet hospital platform.
When discussing DXY’s strategic focus in building its internet hospital, Li Tiantian told VCBeat, “First, we place greater emphasis on pre-consultation and post-consultation care; second, we focus more on common and chronic diseases.”
For governments and healthcare institutions, while treating existing diseases is certainly important, preventing potential illnesses is the ultimate priority. Disseminating valuable health education information to the public has been a long-term commitment for government agencies and healthcare providers. Last year, the total number of views for DXY’s WeChat articles exceeded 1 billion, with this year’s target set at 4 billion. This achievement ranks among the top on self-media leaderboards, establishing DXY as a leading traffic driver in the field of online health science popularization.
Following the establishment of DXY Internet Hospital, the DXY Doctor new media matrix will continue to serve as a producer and disseminator of science-based health information. DXY will deliver greater value in pre-consultation patient education and post-consultation medication guidance. “The science-based health information provided by DXY will ultimately generate a large volume of trustworthy, structured disease data, becoming a new gateway for patients to access medical information,” said Li Tiantian.
In the realm of chronic disease management, Li Tiantian believes there is a gap under the current medical model. Hospitals and physicians focus solely on treatment and surgery, making it difficult for hospitals to continue managing patients after discharge. This presents a promising entry point for DXY Internet Hospital.
On February 13 this year, Eli Lilly China, Tencent, and DXY jointly developed and launched the “Eli Lilly Diabetes Youxing Care Project.” This represents an industry-exclusive strategic partnership in the field of diabetes, bringing a novel model of disease management and patient care to tens of thousands of diabetic patients in China. In the future, with the implementation of the DXY Internet Hospital, it is hoped that more similar chronic disease management and care service models will be promoted.
The value of internet-based healthcare, in simple terms, lies in its entry points and platforms. Although DXY had previously explored entering the healthcare sector through offline clinics, online and offline services are not mutually exclusive. While offline clinics can provide online consultations and remote specialist consultations, they are limited by the specific specialties (such as internal medicine, surgery, obstetrics and gynecology, and pediatrics) approved for their practice. In contrast, internet hospitals can offer a broader range of specialty services and enable a model where a single internet hospital serves patients across China.
Establishing an internet hospital leverages DXY’s years of deep industry expertise and mobilizes its extensive network of physicians to make online consultation the primary entry point for digital healthcare. Meanwhile, it integrates online and offline medical services into a closed-loop system, effectively addressing the challenge of difficult access to medical care.
Online, remote, and real-time capabilities are the fundamental characteristics of internet hospitals. Supported by comprehensive information and data, internet hospitals will evolve into cloud-based platforms for tiered diagnosis and treatment services, population health management and services, and platforms enabling physicians’ independent practice. In this sense, companies represented by DXY have invested substantial human, material, and financial resources in building internet hospitals, driven by strategic imperatives for their own corporate development.
“The establishment of the Internet Hospital and the Big Data Center signifies that DXY will adopt a more open stance to collaborate with a greater number of institutions, enterprises, platforms, and cities, continuing to fulfill its role as a value connector in the healthcare sector,” stated Li Tiantian. He expressed his hope that DXY could build an ecosystem-level alliance through external cooperation. “By leveraging the technological capabilities of the DXY platform, we will deliver standardized data to other small and medium-sized medical institutions, assisting them in managing information, data, and customers. In the future, as China’s healthcare system continues to open up, more physicians will engage in informatics-related work on a part-time or full-time basis, and this system will also support physicians in their management tasks.”
“Internet + Healthcare Services” Model: According to Li Tiantian, this model is an inevitable path for exploring tiered diagnosis and treatment and improving primary healthcare. From a macro perspective, it holds significant and far-reaching implications for promoting the transformation and upgrading of traditional healthcare service models, enhancing the service capabilities of grassroots medical and health institutions, and exploring innovative models of tiered diagnosis and treatment. The establishment of Yinchuan DXY Internet Hospital has facilitated the co-construction of high-quality medical resources, contributing to the “Yinchuan Model” under the new healthcare reform and providing valuable supplements to primary healthcare services for Yinchuan residents.
As internet hospitals continue to penetrate and develop, they will inevitably break the imbalance in regional medical resources and create a better platform for the free mobility of physicians. We have reason to believe that the eventual establishment of DXY Internet Hospital will unlock a broader horizon of possibilities for DXY.