Dooan Medical: A 1Billion-Yuan Healthcare Venture by Han's Holdings Expands with Six Clinics Nationwide

It is undeniable that healthcare reform continues to advance under significant pressure. However, national policies are increasingly signaling a clear tilt toward the marketization of healthcare, with substantial encouragement for social capital to participate in hospital ownership and operation. Coupled with the surge of mobile internet and the active involvement of diverse investors, this has sparked a wave of innovation, entrepreneurship, and investment across both online and offline sectors, as well as throughout the interconnected realms of medical services, pharmaceuticals, and insurance.

During this period, numerous enterprises from other industries have also been actively investing heavily to cross over into the healthcare sector. These include internet giants such as BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent), as well as traditional companies facing sluggish performance due to macroeconomic headwinds and seeking transformation.

In 2017, Han’s Holdings, a Shenzhen-based enterprise renowned for its high-tech and advanced manufacturing prowess, formally entered the healthcare industry through its wholly-owned subsidiary, “Du Anquan” Medical. Notably, Du Anquan pursued an integrated online-and-offline startup model, with clinics in Beijing, Guangzhou, Shenzhen, Nanjing, Qingdao, and Xi’an established nearly simultaneously. The Du Anquan Medical clinic in Guangzhou, currently in its trial operation phase, will officially open on February 19, followed by the sequential grand openings of the clinics in the other five cities.

Yu Jiwu, General Manager of Du'anquan Medical

Yu Jiwu, General Manager of Du’anquan Medical, is a seasoned veteran in the healthcare sector. Both of his parents are physicians, and he graduated from China Pharmaceutical University. He previously served as General Manager of Sanjiu Pharmaceutical Co., Ltd., Chairman of China Resources Sanjiu Medical Chain Co., Ltd., and Chairman of Sanjiu Brain Hospital.

Yu Jiwu stated that among the more than 15,000 private hospitals, only a small proportion can truly be considered as providing high-quality medical services, even by optimistic estimates. The core issue, or the greatest challenge facing the private healthcare sector, is the difficulty in attracting outstanding medical experts.

Nevertheless, Yu Jiwu appears quite satisfied with the team of medical experts at Du’anquan Medical’s Guangzhou Clinic, comprising both directly hired physicians and those affiliated through various collaborative arrangements. All directly hired physicians come from public Grade A tertiary hospitals and are core professionals aged between 35 and 45, each holding at least a master’s degree. For instance, Chen Yue, the Executive Dean of Du’anquan Medical’s Guangzhou Clinic, was previously an obstetrics and gynecology specialist at the Fifth Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University and attained the associate senior professional title at a relatively young age.

Collaborating experts include Professor Qian Deying, a senior chief physician in the Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital and head of the academic group, who is a leading authority in cervical lesions and colposcopy. Other confirmed collaborating experts include Professor Zhao Zhigang, Director of the Center for Urology and Andrology at the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University; Liu Mingxing, Director of the Outpatient Department of Obstetrics and Gynecology at the Third Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou Medical University; and Professor Qiu Yongchao from the First Affiliated Hospital of Guangzhou University of Chinese Medicine, among other renowned specialists.

When asked about how these experts were attracted, Yu Jiwu stated that one key factor was the recognition by experts of the “quality healthcare” advocated by Du Anquan. It was revealed that Chen Yue, Executive Director of Du Anquan Medical’s Guangzhou Clinic, spent nearly a year engaging with the Du Anquan team and personally participated in the design of clinic service offerings as a consultant during the early stages. Only after becoming convinced that Du Anquan genuinely integrates “quality healthcare” into its actual operations did he decide to leave his position at a tertiary Grade A hospital and join Du Anquan full-time.

Moreover, Yu Jiwu candidly stated that the industrial background in high-tech and advanced manufacturing, along with the financial strength of Han’s Holdings, the controlling shareholder of Du Anquan, has given medical experts greater confidence that the investor is genuinely committed to long-term development rather than seeking quick profits. This constitutes a unique competitive advantage in attracting top-tier medical professionals.

Han’s Laser, a subsidiary of Han’s Holdings, is the world’s second-largest and Asia’s largest manufacturer of specialized laser processing equipment. It ranks first globally in production and sales volume for multiple categories of laser equipment, holds several technologies that are unique in China, and was the first enterprise inspected by Premier Li Keqiang during his visit to Shenzhen in October 2016. Gao Yunfeng, the founder of Han’s Laser, has a technical background and graduated from Beihang University (Beijing University of Aeronautics and Astronautics). He established Han’s Laser in Shenzhen in 1996, and the company was listed on the Shenzhen Stock Exchange in 2004.

Moreover, beyond Han's Laser, the scale of Han's real estate business is also among the top tier in China.Du’anquan Medical is the third industry Han’s Holdings has entered, following laser technology and real estate, with an investment of RMB 1 billion in Phase I.

Du Anquan positions itself as a chain of specialized clinics dedicated to reproductive health for both men and women. Sexual and reproductive health has long been a key growth area for private healthcare providers, accounting for a significant proportion of services offered by the “Putian network” of hospitals. However, a notable phenomenon is that the Putian network has largely failed to adopt a chain-based operational model in this sector. Industry analysts point out that this stems from irregular business practices; under a unified national brand, an incident at any single hospital could trigger a systemic collapse.

From the outset of service design, “Du Anquan” has maintained close collaboration with experts in relevant fields, ensuring that diagnostic and treatment processes strictly adhere to the latest international and domestic guidelines to guarantee medical quality and safety. Furthermore, at Du Anquan Clinics, the compensation of medical and nursing staff is not linked to patient expenditures, thereby preserving the professional independence of healthcare providers.

Yu Jiwu has also repeatedly expressed his pursuit of “quality healthcare.” For instance, he and his team are averse to being described as “high-end healthcare” or “high-end clinics” in external communications; instead, they emphasize providing the middle class with more convenient, precise, and private innovative medical services, while ensuring medical efficacy and safety.

Du Anquan Medical Guangzhou Clinic focuses on building four core service specialties: Cervical Disease Specialist Clinic, Infertility Specialist Clinic, Andrology and Sexual Psychology Specialist Clinic, and Medical-Grade Specialized Health Checkups. Each specialty is led by renowned professors from top-tier (Grade 3A) hospitals.

Moreover, unlike the traditional “single-disease, single-specialty” approach in hospitals, Du Anquan implements a “single-disease, multi-disciplinary” treatment model: the platform brings together cross-specialty experts from multiple Grade 3A hospitals to tailor treatment plans for patients.

Meanwhile, Du Anquan Clinic has fully leveraged internet services from the outset, launching an open medical O2O platform in sync with its offline clinics. Adhering to a patient-centered philosophy of medical practice, it collaborates with experts across various specialties to reengineer the clinical care process. By providing online consultation, health education, appointment scheduling, order placement, and post-consultation management, the platform maximizes the efficiency of offline expert consultations and comprehensively enhances the experience for both physicians and patients.

Du Anquan also provides each patient with dedicated medical assistant services. These responsibilities include pre-consultation counseling, post-visit follow-up, and assisting patients in establishing lifelong personal health records. Due to limitations in the clinic’s hardware, supporting infrastructure, and particularly its defined scope of services, Du Anquan has established stable collaborative partnerships with other large medical institutions. Through these partnerships, medical assistants facilitate appointment scheduling and activate expedited “green channel” access at hospitals. For surgical patients, Du Anquan’s medical team communicates in advance with the referred specialists to ensure thorough preparation for preoperative tests and other necessary arrangements. This approach enables Du Anquan to deliver comprehensive, end-to-end medical service solutions and enhance the overall healthcare experience for patients.

To provide patients with more convenient and private services, Du Anquan supports product mailing and nurse home-visit sampling services. The entire process employs unique barcode identification for identity verification, with stringent privacy protections implemented throughout the medical care journey. Its independently designed sampling and treatment spaces ensure a warm and comfortable clinic environment, while strict one-on-one consultation services are enforced.

In addition, Du Anquan also provides customers with home medicine delivery, traditional Chinese medicine decoction services, health-preserving herbal paste preparations, and pharmaceutical consultation services.

While matching international peers in service quality, Du Anquan offers its medical services at affordable prices. According to Cao Shuangquan, General Manager of Guangzhou Du Anquan, the consultation fee for its directly employed physicians is RMB 100, while fees for collaborating specialists mostly range from RMB 200 to RMB 400, both lower than the market rates for doctors of comparable seniority. Moreover, the company guarantees a 20-minute consultation time for each patient.

Meanwhile, the pricing of medications and related tests is benchmarked against public hospitals. The prices for identical test items are comparable to or lower than those at public hospitals, yet the facility employs the most advanced international testing equipment. Taking HPV testing as an example, Du Anquan has jointly established a PCR laboratory meeting international standards with Roche Diagnostics, enabling a single sample to be tested for infection with 14 high-risk HPV types, including HPV16 and HPV18. Another key partner in testing equipment for Du Anquan is Hologic, a global leader in women’s health diagnostics.

According to Yu Jiwu, the laboratory at his outpatient clinic is equipped with the most advanced international testing devices, causing the cost per test for many items to be three to four times higher than that of the equipment used by typical public hospitals in China. In response to reporters’ questions about the profitability timeline, Yu Jiwu stated that the major shareholders have repeatedly emphasized the need to stay true to the original mission of providing high-quality medical care during the early stages. The primary goal is to establish a reputable foundation for innovative medical services before refining the business model.

For the scaled development of private healthcare, talent remains the biggest bottleneck. Currently, Du Anquan primarily sources physicians through four channels: direct hiring, establishing expert studios, collaborating with physician groups, and having experts apply to set up independent clinics under unified management but operated independently.

However, from a long-term perspective, Du Anquan aims to strengthen its in-house team while also taking responsibility for the career development of young key physicians recruited from outside. To this end, Du Anquan has made special arrangements for clinical staff by forming expert teams structured as “1 Chief Expert + N Physicians, Laboratory Technicians, Ultrasound Physicians, and Medical Assistants,” with the expectation of cultivating its own medical and nursing team through this expert-led model.

In terms of market expansion, Du Anquan has also launched its “1+N” strategy. This involves establishing one flagship clinic in each city and opening multiple satellite clinics in other areas of the same city. The aim is twofold: first, to increase brand-consumer touchpoints and leverage the convenience advantage of the clinics; second, to make fuller use of the service capacity of the costly flagship clinic laboratories and expert teams, thereby achieving deep penetration and coverage of the local market.

In March 2015, the Du’anquan Medical Project was launched. Throughout 2016, flagship clinics were being established in six cities—Guangzhou, Beijing, Shenzhen, Qingdao, Nanjing, and Xi’an—and were set to open for business in succession. Yu Jiwu revealed that four additional flagship stores would be opened in 2017 in cities including Wuhan and Chengdu. The first phase involves a RMB 200 million investment in ten flagship clinics to test market response.

Yu Jiwu stated that Du Anquan will focus on the field of sexual and reproductive health, providing customers with continuous medical services encompassing prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation. Meanwhile, it will build two major platforms: one is to develop into a chain medical group with a unified national brand, and the other is to become a collaborative entrepreneurship platform for experts.

Moreover, Du Anquan established from the outset a strategy of concurrent online and offline entrepreneurship: its online presence comprises the Du Anquan Medical Network, the Du Anquan Official WeChat Account, and the Du Anquan APP, while its offline operations include 50 comprehensive outpatient clinics and laboratories. To integrate online and offline operations, coordinate business deployments across multiple cities nationwide, and incorporate collaborating experts under various partnership models into a unified management system, the company made substantial investments in information technology and data systems from the very beginning.

It is understood that the core founding team of Du Anquan mostly comprises executives with experience in large technology enterprises, who place significant emphasis on the critical supporting role of system platforms in business and market expansion. Additionally, Yu Jiwu believes that the siloed distribution of medical data in China entails numerous drawbacks. Therefore, from the outset of Du Anquan’s establishment, he aimed to organically integrate complete patient data—including testing and diagnosis/treatment records—based on its own business operations. Against the backdrop of the AI boom, this approach is expected to unlock greater potential for medical big data.