Founder Liang Liang Aims to Open 100 Pediatric Clinics Nationwide After Raising Over $300M and Amassing 5.5M App Users
Liang Liang, Founder and CEO of Yixin
“Only Mom Is the Best in the World; Children with Moms Are Like Treasures...”
This song celebrates maternal love as the greatest emotion in the world. Liang Liang, a devoted father, has leveraged his efforts to integrate this love with technology, professionalism, and the internet, transforming medical consultations into an experience of care. Today, this compassion has extended from its origins in online consultations via the “Mommy Knows” app to offline physical practice at Yixin Pediatrics. He aspires to make healthcare and universal human love eternal.
Liang Liang, founder of Shenzhen Yixin Technology Co., Ltd. He previously worked at Aramark, the world’s largest hospital outsourcing services company, and has served more than 150 well-known hospitals in China, gaining deep insights into the differences between Chinese and American healthcare services.
In February 2014, after returning to China from his studies in the United States, he turned down a lucrative executive position at a multinational corporation. He joined forces with his childhood friend, who was then working at Tencent, and a close friend from Aramark to co-found Yixin Technology, embarking on the arduous journey of entrepreneurship. Over time, the company secured successive investments from SoftBank China, Morningside Venture Capital, Fosun Kunzhong, and Hawthorn Capital.
Three years later, Liang Liang’s achievements for himself and his investors were truly outstanding. Consider the following data: the Mommy Knows app boasts over one million monthly active users and more than 5.5 million registered users; it has secured exclusive contracts with over 2,000 renowned obstetricians and pediatricians across China; it has established a strategic partnership with Hong Kong United Medical; and it has garnered favor from investment firms affiliated with the Chow Tai Fook Group, securing tens of millions in Series B+ financing after just a single meeting.
A Corner of Yixin Pediatrics
Everyone who steps into the Yixin Pediatrics clinic at Tianli Central Plaza in Nanshan, Shenzhen, pauses for a moment: Is this a children’s playground or a pediatric outpatient clinic?
Spanning over 900 square meters, the pediatric outpatient department was designed by the medical informatics team led by Liang Liang. While warmth, spaciousness, and cleanliness are fundamental, the true highlights lie in the subtle details. Inside the clinic, you will not find rows of uniform infusion beds and chairs. Instead, what greets the eye are brightly colored, adorably shaped floor mats and building blocks for children to play with. The walls are adorned with decals of dolphins and starfish. Each doctor’s consulting room features a height-measuring stadiometer for babies, surrounded by illustrations of small animals such as white rabbits and deer. In the restrooms, two toilets are provided—one sized for children and the other for adults.
Remarkably, there is an open-air balcony in front of the outpatient department, adorned with blooming flowers and lush green vines, offering distinct scenic beauty across the four seasons...
Since most patients are required to schedule appointments in advance, the pediatric department at Yixin Medical remains exceptionally quiet, with well-ordered clinical operations. For instance, when an infant comes for a child health check-up, the physician will first interact with and engage the baby, ensuring the examination is completed in a happy and pleasant atmosphere.
For mothers who have previously sought care at large hospitals, this represents a completely different healthcare experience. Since the inception of his venture, Liang Liang has been committed to delivering “compassionate healthcare” and innovative, high-quality medical services. Accordingly, he has adhered to international JCI standards for both pediatric outpatient clinical protocols and the competency requirements for pediatricians, while integrating the health characteristics of Chinese children and the needs of their parents. By ensuring professional, comprehensive, and rapid responses, with a particular focus on holistic health management throughout children’s growth and development, he has established an in-depth and comprehensive pediatric specialty healthcare service system.
In addition to transforming the clinical environment, Liang Liang has made significant efforts to enhance the soft power of Yixin Pediatrics. Currently, Yixin Pediatrics boasts a robust medical and service team, comprising a group of pediatricians who have joined full-time from prestigious institutions such as The First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University, The First Affiliated Hospital of Sun Yat-sen University, Shenzhen Children’s Hospital, The University of Hong Kong-Shenzhen Hospital, and Children’s Hospital of Fudan University. Each family is assigned a dedicated health consultant to address concerns and clarify questions, serving as a vital bridge between parents and physicians.
Compared with traditional hospitals, Yixin Pediatrics offers a streamlined medical process and a comfortable environment. Its services span the pre-consultation, consultation, and post-consultation phases, providing comprehensive and attentive healthcare for pediatric patients. Physicians prioritize the child’s health by delivering evidence-based diagnosis and treatment plans, strictly prohibiting overtreatment and rigorously controlling the administration of injections and prescriptions. This ensures that patients receive trustworthy medical care.
Liang Liang’s original aspiration and persistence in improving maternal and infant healthcare destined his entrepreneurial vision to extend beyond that of a purely online mobile health company.
From the outset, pediatric clinics were integral to Liang Liang’s strategic vision. Today, the “Mommy Knows” app, which provides direct online connectivity, has reached maturity. Within just over two years of its launch, the platform has attracted more than 2,000 pediatricians from top-tier (Grade A tertiary) hospitals in major first-tier cities, serving over 5.5 million families with children and accumulating a substantial volume of personal health data and disease case records for urban children in China.
Meanwhile, “Mommy Knows” enables telephone consultations with renowned specialists from Grade A tertiary hospitals and provides real-time online follow-up visits, delivering a 360-degree specialized pediatric care experience.
Supported by the online “Mommy Knows” app, Yixin Pediatrics’ offline services will flourish even more. Compared with traditional pediatric clinics, the most distinctive feature of Yixin Pediatrics is service innovation: creating a closed-loop healthcare model that integrates online and offline services. Users can directly connect with renowned specialists from Grade 3A hospitals via the “Mommy Knows” app to access online health consultations and preventive care services. For further diagnosis and treatment, they can visit offline “Yixin Pediatrics” clinics to receive professional, compassionate, face-to-face medical care from physicians.
The integrated one-stop service of “Yixin Pediatrics + Mommy Knows” breaks the traditional boundaries of purely treatment-oriented medical care, alleviates parental anxiety, and reduces users’ overall healthcare costs.
As an innovative, technology-driven next-generation healthcare services company, Yixin Technology has independently developed “Smart e-Clinic,” a cloud-based SaaS clinic management system specifically tailored for Yixin Pediatrics. The system’s most prominent feature is its patient-centric approach, which reengineers the care journey, enhances pre- and post-consultation follow-up functionalities, leverages data-driven management to improve medical efficiency, and permanently stores users’ personal health records in the cloud.
When people are united, they can move Mount Tai. To safeguard the professional dignity and transparent income of physicians, Liang Liang decided to break with convention and pioneer an innovative management model for pediatrics: the physician partnership system. As is well known, China faces a shortage of 200,000 pediatricians. Their current situation is far from optimistic, characterized by low compensation, heavy workloads, and strained doctor-patient relationships, leading to a year-on-year decline in the number of pediatricians.
As multi-site practice regulations are gradually relaxed, pediatricians now enjoy greater professional flexibility. Yixin Pediatrics is committed to providing pediatricians with a favorable practice environment and enhanced career development pathways, enabling them to focus on disease diagnosis, treatment, and patient care, while achieving professional dignity and transparent, compliant income.
The establishment of the physician partner system has enabled Yixin Pediatrics to attract a large number of top-tier pediatricians in China. Dr. Liu Ying is the first physician partner at Yixin Pediatrics. Prior to joining Yixin Pediatrics, Dr. Liu worked for ten years in the Department of Nutrition at the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University. By joining Yixin Pediatrics, she aims to ensure that children receive better and more standardized medical care.
In addition to the onboarding of physicians, Yixin Pediatrics has entered into a strategic partnership with United Medical Group (Hong Kong) to jointly operate the pediatric services at United Medical’s clinics in Beijing and Shanghai.
United Family Healthcare is the largest private outpatient group in Hong Kong, with over 600 outpatient service locations across the region, and was listed on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange in 2015. Leveraging its high-quality pediatric medical resources and advanced internet technology, Yixin has become a strategic partner of the United Family Healthcare Group. Furthermore, backed by healthcare-focused investment institutions such as SoftBank, Morningside Venture Capital, Fosun International, Hawthorn Partners, and Chow Tai Fook, Yixin Group has established long-term collaborations with renowned medical institutions in mainland China, Hong Kong, and the United States. These partnerships enable Yixin to provide reliable value-added services, including expert referrals and consultations, for its pediatric users.
In Liang Liang’s mind, Yixin is like a seed that has gone through various stages such as germination and growth. It will continue to expand exponentially in the future, but its original philosophy remains unchanged. His plan was to complete the establishment of 100 Yixin pediatric chain clinics by 2020, becoming the health guardian for new urban families. Both the hardware and software of the clinics will reach the highest standards to ensure patient safety and quality of medical care.