Wonders Information: Building a Healthcare Ecosystem in Shanghai through the 'Four Clouds' to Advance Integrated Medical Reform
In 1997, Wonders Information formally entered the field of healthcare and pharmaceutical informatics. After nearly two decades of development, its clientele has expanded to include health and family planning commissions, medical insurance agencies, hospitals, primary healthcare service providers, centers for disease control and prevention, health inspection institutes, food and drug administration authorities, maternal and child health care centers, pediatric health care centers, and mental health centers. Serving a population of nearly 400 million, Wonders Information has become a leading enterprise in China’s healthcare informatics market.
In February 2016, Wanda Information officially released its 2015 annual report. The report showed that Wanda Information achieved an operating revenue of approximately RMB 1.86 billion in 2015, representing a year-on-year increase of 21.11%. The net profit attributable to shareholders of the listed company amounted to RMB 230 million, a year-on-year growth of 21.53%. Additionally, VCBeat (WeChat official account: vcbeat) learned that there were 25 affiliated companies in which Wanda Information held equity stakes that each contributed more than 10% to its net profit. Among these, 13 were subsidiaries based in Shanghai, contributing a combined net profit of approximately RMB 34.26 million, accounting for about 15% of Wanda Information’s total annual net profit. This clearly demonstrates that Shanghai has become the core city in Wanda Information’s healthcare strategic layout.
Leveraging its profound technological expertise, Wonders Information has developed a series of successful product operation models, including the “Four Clouds,” centered on the “tri-medical linkage” in Shanghai, an international metropolis. By leveraging “2016 China “Internet + Healthcare” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Conference”opportunity,VCBeat invited Shen Huan, General Manager of the Strategic Consulting Department at Wonders Information, to provide insights and answer questions regarding the future development of Wonders Information and healthcare IT enterprises.
Shen Huan: Wonders Information has accumulated nearly 20 years of experience in the informatization of healthcare, medical insurance, and pharmaceuticals. In recent years, the company has been actively integrating its technologies with the "Internet Plus" model, launching a series of internet-based applications such as Health Cloud, Medical Care Cloud, Medical Insurance Cloud, Elderly Care Cloud, and a unified payment platform, along with big data solutions. Leveraging this wealth of information, these initiatives have been successfully implemented in Shanghai, Sichuan, Zhejiang, and other regions. Currently, Wonders Information’s internet applications differ from those of traditional internet companies; they are not merely peripheral internet services. Instead, they integrate new business models with Wonders Information’s deep technical expertise accumulated in the traditional informatization sector. Through these efforts, the company aims to provide technical support for healthcare reform and the development of medical health services.
Shen Huan: The primary differences lie in technical architecture, as the two differ in business volume and coverage. Additionally, their application scenarios vary somewhat. Wonders Information addresses these challenges mainly through technical customization, such as deploying cloud architectures in relatively underdeveloped regions. Meanwhile, deployments are established at the county, prefecture, and provincial levels according to regional distinctions.In developed regions, community-based deployment is the predominant model, as the volume of services in these communities is substantial, effectively equivalent to that of a secondary hospital. The Cloud Clinic solution is a product specifically designed for small non-public medical institutions. Currently, the entire Changning community in Shanghai has adopted Wonders Information’s Cloud Clinic system.
Shen Huan: Wonders Information has numerous successful cases in regional health informatics, large Grade 3A hospitals, and public health. In this domain, Wonders Information ranks first in its niche market across China, while also accumulating a vast volume of data. First and foremost, we must prioritize the security of big data applications; data cannot be utilized arbitrarily. Based on this principle, Wonders Information has independently developed a big data governance platform to address application issues by mitigating risks associated with data utilization. Therefore, in the realm of medical big data,Wonders InformationThe first step is data accumulation, followed by the security and control of big data, and finally, the application of big data.
Furthermore, under a secure and controlled management system, Wonders Information has conducted in-depth big data research in collaboration with the Shanghai Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission, Shanghai Shenkang Hospital Development Center, and major Grade A tertiary hospitals in Shanghai, such as Shuguang Hospital. Meanwhile, we have signed framework agreements for big data research cooperation with various provinces. Due to its R&D achievements in big data applications for chronic heart failure and osteoporosis at Shanghai Children’s Medical Center, Wonders Information has been awarded the Second Prize of the Shanghai Science and Technology Progress Award.
Shen Huan: Fields such as “Internet Plus,” big data, precision medicine, artificial intelligence, and tiered diagnosis and treatment are all areas that may be involved. This includes certain reforms in payment systems; if card-free medical insurance payments can be realized in the future, there will be significant room for innovation and growth. Over the past two years, Wonders Information has been undergoing a transformation. We are striving to build an open healthcare ecosystem, leveraging Wonders Information’s more than twenty years of industry experience to bring enterprises together, each fulfilling its respective role, thereby forming a unified and open service ecosystem.
Anchored in the Tri-Medical Coordination: Wonders Information’s “Four Clouds”
To serve as a bridge between the government and the market, Wanda Information has established four cloud platforms—Health Cloud, Medical Care Cloud, Pharmaceutical Cloud, and Medical Insurance Cloud—in the big health sector, leveraging the “Internet Plus” model. This approach aims to facilitate the coordinated development of medical care, health insurance, and pharmaceuticals (the “Three Medicals”), enhance the utilization efficiency of existing medical resources, and build a healthcare ecosystem that connects individuals with services.
To achieve inter-institutional collaborative healthcare among medical institutions, enabling tertiary hospitals to provide remote medical consultations to suburban and community healthcare facilities; to establish collaborative medical services such as inter-hospital imaging consultations and pathological analysis; to build three major data centers—a medical resource repository, a clinical database, and an operational business database—to support the tiered diagnosis and treatment system and alleviate social issues such as “difficulty in accessing medical care” and “high medical costs.” To provide online appointment registration services, aggregate appointment resources from key hospitals, and open green channels for triage and referral.
The Pharmaceutical Sunshine Procurement Platform has achieved direct interconnectivity and automatic integration with the information systems of all medical institutions and pharmaceutical companies, supporting pharmaceutical e-commerce services. The system covers the entire process of negotiated transactions, procurement and distribution, electronic payments, and product usage, forming a B2B exchange platform. Meanwhile, the company is actively promoting the extension of the platform from B2B to B2C. Currently, Wonders Information has launched online purchases of long-term prescription medications for chronic diseases in the central urban areas of first-tier cities along the eastern coast. Residents can obtain their medications at nearby designated pharmacies by presenting their medical insurance cards, prescriptions, and invoices after receiving treatment and making payments at community health service stations near their homes. Following the implementation of external prescription dispensing, both the contract signing rate and consultation rate among patient populations at community hospitals have increased significantly, becoming an important source of users for Wonders Information’s chronic disease management services.
By leveraging big data analytics on its extensive, long-accumulated “Patient Visit Information Database” and “Physician Behavior Information Database,” Wonders Information has adopted a new model for health insurance cost containment characterized by “full-process monitoring and rational cost control,” thereby achieving an organic integration of three approaches: “pre-event prevention, in-process control, and post-event review.” Currently, the “Ningbo Model” for health insurance cost containment, which was pioneered by the company, had been rolled out to nearly 100 cities across China by the end of 2015.
Wanda Information utilizes its independently developed full-process health data collection devices to capture residents’ vital signs and automatically upload the data to the Resident Health Management Information Platform. This platform integrates with Shanghai Shenkang Hospital Consortium Project and regional health information platforms to enhance resident health records, establishing an integrated service workflow of “resident pre-screening, platform early warning, clinical reference, and physician management.” This approach not only supports Shanghai’s family doctor contract service mechanism but also introduces the European and American private physician model for offline health clinics. Leveraging the service platform jointly established by Wanda Information and the Chinese Non-Public Medical Institutions Association, it connects with non-public medical resources nationwide to provide residents with an O2O full-process service ecosystem.
In 2013, Wonders Information established the Shanghai Health Information Network in Shanghai. The network covers nearly 500 public medical and health institutions across the city, enabling interconnectivity among 16 districts (counties), 38 tertiary hospitals, over 100 secondary hospitals, and more than 260 community health service centers. This has facilitated the initial realization of intelligent operations for medical services, public health services, and community health services across these urban areas.
As the first medical information sharing and collaborative service system for tertiary hospitals in China, the Shanghai Medical Alliance Project covers 38 municipal tertiary hospitals, connects more than 15,000 physician workstations, and has established health records for over 40 million patients. The system includes 1.2 billion electronic prescription records, 130 million examination reports, and 380 million medical images.
In addition to the Health Information Network, Wonders Information collaborated with the Jing’an District Government to establish the “New Jing’an Model”—the Regional Health Informatics Initiative in Shanghai’s New Jing’an District. This system was among the first batch nationwide to achieve Level 4 certification in the National Assessment of Standardization and Maturity for Interconnectivity of Regional Health Information.Integrated data on over 830,000 individuals from the public security population registry. Provided users with a range of services, including health record registration, integration, shared access and viewing, two-way referral, and appointment scheduling.
To cater to the mobile healthcare market, Wonders Information has also launched the “Health Jing’an” app, targeting consumer-end users. The app delivers public health and medical appointment and payment services, family doctor services, community-based medical care, and chronic disease management, all powered by mobile internet technology.
In the process of interfacing with medical institutions, Wonders Information has reached strategic partnerships with Shuguang Hospital Affiliated to Shanghai University of Traditional Chinese Medicine and Shanghai Tongji Hospital, providing them with comprehensive Health Information Technology (HIT) services, including Hospital Information Systems (HIS) and Electronic Medical Record (EMR) systems.
In June 2015, Shanghai formulated and issued the “1+8” policy documents to deepen the comprehensive reform of community health services, which directly advanced the establishment of a tiered diagnosis and treatment system in the city. The so-called “1+1+1” model refers to community residents signing contracts with one community health service center, one district-level hospital, and one municipal-level hospital. Under this arrangement, contracted residents first consult their signed family doctor when ill; if the condition is severe, the family doctor facilitates referral to secondary or tertiary hospitals for specialized treatment. Wonders Information was honored to serve as the underlying technology provider for this initiative.
To address the issue of controlling medical insurance expenditures, Wonders Information developed the Shanghai Medical Insurance Cost Control System. As the largest real-time transaction cost database in China, the system processes approximately 33 million data entries per month, involving breach-of-contract amounts totaling over RMB 7 million. To date, the post-event audit system has achieved citywide coverage in Shanghai and is being implemented across all designated medical institutions and pharmacies under the medical insurance program. Meanwhile, pre-event alerts and intra-event controls have already been deployed in two districts.
Furthermore, as the proportion of commercial health insurance expenditures in total healthcare spending continues to rise, Wonders Information has actively pursued strategic collaborations with major commercial insurers. By establishing a third-party service platform catering to the entire insurance industry, the company provides comprehensive services to commercial insurers, including commercial insurance settlement, cost containment, claims administration, basic medical insurance administration, big data mining, and the design and pricing of health insurance products. Meanwhile, Wonders Information also offers innovative services to policyholders, such as health management, medical care management, pharmacy benefit management, and integrated medical and elderly care services.
Shanghai’s B2B Pharmaceutical Platform is a service platform launched by Wonders Information in response to the policy separating prescribing from dispensing. Currently, it covers 602 medical institutions across the 16 districts and counties of Shanghai. As a pilot area for external prescription dispensing, Wonders Information’s Pharmaceutical Cloud has collaborated closely with Changning District, Shanghai, achieving end-to-end digital circulation of electronic prescriptions.
After residents receive medical care at nearby community health service centers or stations, the prescription medications prescribed by doctors can be delivered by pharmacies. This approach not only facilitates pharmaceutical retail inventory management at community health service stations but also provides convenience to patients.
Currently, the system processes an average of approximately 600 prescriptions per day. In addition to Shanghai, Wanda Information’s Pharmaceutical Cloud will be comprehensively rolled out in Ningbo, Qingdao, and other cities in 2016, integrating medical insurance payment and health management to achieve a fully integrated ecosystem linking healthcare, medical insurance, and pharmaceutical services.
Shanghai Sunshine Procurement Information System is a pharmaceutical procurement system for medical institutions launched by Wonders Information. Compared withOver 100 pharmaceutical distribution enterprises in Shanghai have achieved interoperability between their ERP systems and the information systems of nearly 1,000 designated medical insurance institutions. This integration has enabled transparent, automated processing across all stages of pharmaceutical procurement, supply, and sales, from inquiry and quotation to delivery, warehousing, settlement, and payment. To date, the system has connected 602 hospitals, 220 internal medical institutions, and 107 pharmaceutical companies in Shanghai. From its launch in July 2015 through the end of that year, it facilitated over 150,000 transactions, with a total transaction value of RMB 26 billion and monthly transaction volumes ranging from RMB 3 billion to RMB 4 billion.
Under the policy guidelines of China’s healthcare reform, how will traditional healthcare IT companies develop new businesses and transfer the existing advantages of their current operations to new types of healthcare entities in order to seek growth in incremental markets? VCBeat (WeChat official account: vcbeat) will continue to closely monitor this trend.