From Passive Care to Proactive Health: Why Offline Heavy-Asset Models Are the Right Path?

On October 27, at the National “Internet + Healthcare” Innovation and Entrepreneurship Conference held in Chengdu, Sichuan Province, the Proactive Health Industry Alliance was officially established. As a core member of the alliance, Proactive Medical is building a new type of medical chain group with the mission of “promoting the realization of proactive health.” Its Chairman, Mr. Ju Nianfeng, currently serves as the Chairman of Chongqing Porton Pharma Solutions Co., Ltd. and Juxin Investment Co., Ltd. During the conference, VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) had the privilege of interviewing him to provide an in-depth analysis of the Proactive Medical Central Hospital project.

The opposite of proactive health is reactive medical care. Reactive medical care represents the traditional healthcare model, in which patients only seek medical attention after falling ill, while hospitals passively wait for patients to arrive, akin to "waiting by a stump for a rabbit." Furthermore, hospitals provide no follow-up services once patients are discharged. In contrast, proactive health involves both healthcare providers and patients shifting from a passive to an active stance. Hospitals proactively extend their reach beyond institutional walls to conduct screenings and detect diseases at an early stage, while also providing continuous care after patients leave the hospital. Patients, on their part, actively undergo health check-ups to detect diseases early, take the initiative to modify their lifestyles, and promote their own well-being.

Proactive health entails shifting from a “hospital-centric” model to a “patient-centric” one, and from a “disease-treatment-oriented” approach to a “health-oriented” approach. This aligns closely with the spirit of the National Health and Wellness Conference held recently. The conference explicitly pointed out that the healthcare sector should develop toward the integration of hygiene and health, transitioning from being “disease-treatment-centered” to “health-centered.” This essentially embodies the concept of “preventive treatment of disease,” which involves intervention before illness occurs. Such interventions may also be non-medical in nature, such as nutritional management and physical exercise.

In rural areas, poor health literacy has led to countless cases of poverty caused by illness, imposing a heavy burden not only on families but also on the government. Taking hypertension and diabetes as examples, costs would be significantly lower if these conditions were controlled in their early stages. Early intervention is akin to building a dam; without such measures, disease progression can become as devastating as a flood, causing substantial harm. Therefore, Active Medical Company is committed to investing in grassroots and rural healthcare. Through systematic measures, it aims to achieve early detection, early treatment, and early recovery, while improving farmers’ health literacy and promoting healthy lifestyles among the rural population.

Proactive Healthcare Inc. was established in April this year and is currently in the process of setting up five Proactive Healthcare Central Hospitals. The first hospital is expected to be officially completed and commence operations in early next year. Although operations have not yet begun, Proactive Healthcare’s business model has taken shape and will continue to be iterated upon during its operational phase.

Proactive Healthcare Central Hospitals differ significantly from both traditional hospitals and internet hospitals. Compared with traditional hospitals, Proactive Healthcare Central Hospitals integrate various information technologies—including mobile health, telemedicine, and smart healthcare—to deliver a superior user experience.

Compared with internet hospitals, Proactive Medical Center Hospitals are physical hospitals located within local communities. More importantly, the goal of Proactive Medical Center Hospitals is not merely to enhance the convenience of medical access for patients, but to invest in primary healthcare through an asset-heavy model, bringing high-quality medical resources to the grassroots level and ensuring that serious diseases can be treated within the county. Through systematic measures, we aim to achieve early detection, early treatment, and early recovery from diseases, reduce complication rates of chronic conditions, improve public health literacy, and promote healthy lifestyles among the population.

It is understood that the investment required for a Proactive Medical Center ranges from approximately RMB 30 million to RMB 100 million. Regarding the significant variation in investment amounts, Ju Nianfeng stated, “The scope of services offered at our Proactive Medical Centers is determined based on local healthcare demands. In areas with scarce medical resources, we offer a broader range of specialized departments. In regions where medical resources are relatively abundant, we provide fewer specialized departments and focus instead on health check-up screenings and chronic disease management.”

Currently, only a few companies have joined the Active Health Alliance as its founding members, but more enterprises are expected to join in the future. The Active Health Alliance is essentially fostering an ecosystem for active health, where different companies play distinct roles to collectively advance the realization of active health.

For example, stakeholders in the strategic cooperation agreement on big data for proactive health will work closely with the proactive health services provided by Proactive Medical Company. Ju Nianfeng stated, “The novel medical services offered by Proactive Medical Company will inevitably be big data-driven and gradually achieve intelligentization in the future.”

On the other hand, Active Medical is also engaging in complementary collaborations with large public Grade 3A hospitals, such as Sichuan Provincial People’s Hospital, to achieve synergy in medical resources.

The proactive health model requires technological support, particularly from precision medicine and artificial intelligence. Proactive healthcare companies will continue to introduce various practical information and medical technologies, especially those capable of enhancing the capabilities of primary care physicians.

In addition to its app, Active Health employs mobile medical vehicles equipped with various functionalities to serve populations in remote areas. In the realm of chronic disease management, Ju Nianfeng and his company, Active Health, aim to leverage intelligent, medical-grade home-based and personal wearable devices to provide continuous data that supports physicians in patient management and intervention implementation.

Ju Nianfeng stated, “Whether it is big data, artificial intelligence, robotics, wearable devices, or emerging medical technologies such as precision medicine, all will be integral components of the alliance. Even if relevant enterprises do not join the alliance, we will integrate them into our service workflows.”

In addition to applying various new technologies, Active Health has also introduced novel insurance products. The company has established pilot collaborations with numerous insurtech startups, focusing on insurance innovations for individuals with chronic diseases and coverage for pre-existing conditions, such as New Jianbao and Chuan Taiyi.

Only in this way can new healthcare and new payment models form a closed loop. Regarding social health insurance, since the model of proactive healthcare companies focuses on shifting the point of intervention upstream and prioritizing proactive health interventions, it can reduce patients’ medical costs and alleviate the government’s healthcare burden; therefore, integration with health insurance schemes is relatively straightforward.

If internet hospitals represent a restructuring of efficiency across various stages of healthcare, then proactive healthcare constitutes a restructuring of the entire medical process. The primary challenge for internet hospitals lies in integrating online and offline resources, whereas the main obstacle to proactive healthcare is the high cost associated with asset-heavy models. In comparison, this fundamental innovation aligns more closely with the core principles of national healthcare reform, enjoys greater public acceptance, and offers improved accessibility. If proactive healthcare can be deeply integrated with internet hospitals, both models will achieve greater completeness and flexibility in terms of business scope and breadth.