BIMT Secures RMB 30 Million in Pre-A Funding to Build a Professional Medical Research Service Platform

BIMT recently announced the launch of a RMB 30 million Pre-A financing round, aiming to build the most professional medical research service platform, with approximately two-thirds of the funds allocated to technology research and development. BIMT entered the market by offering physician paper-writing coaching to ensure stable revenue, and subsequently expanded its services to create an academic exchange platform for physicians. In June 2015, BIMT secured RMB 7 million in funding from medical professionals.

Bimt Medical Online (Beijing) Technology Co., Ltd. was established in 2007, dedicated to providing professional medical services to healthcare practitioners. The company’s founder adopted the acronym “Bimt,” derived from the initial letters of “Bethune International Medical Treatment,” as the corporate brand. Its core business activities currently include guidance and review of physicians’ academic papers, assistance with journal article publication, organization and co-organization of medical exchange conferences, publication of medical books, and job placement services for physicians.

Wang Hongtao, the company’s founder and current Chairman of the Board, previously worked at Henan Television Station and the Health Consultation Newspaper of Capital Medical University. He participated in the Ministry of Health’s “Ten-Year Hundred-Project” initiative to promote early detection technologies for vascular diseases, establishing early vascular disease detection centers in numerous hospitals across China and organizing training for medical staff. He also conceived and served as Secretary-General of the “Health Express,” a large-scale health campaign that invited many renowned experts nationwide to deliver health lectures, with activities extending to provinces such as Guangxi, Anhui, Henan, and Shandong.

Wang Hongtao, Chairman of Bimite

According to the 2015 China Health and Family Planning Statistical Yearbook, China has over 10 million health technical personnel, including more than 2.8 million licensed physicians, of whom 91% hold junior or intermediate professional titles. Starting from graduation from medical school, physicians undergo a lengthy career trajectory that progresses from assistant physician (standardized training resident/resident) to assistant doctor, physician, attending physician, associate chief physician, chief physician, and ultimately to renowned subject-matter experts. This entire professional lifecycle spans approximately 25–30 years.

Based on the foundational value and extended value of each physician, it is estimated that the career development of a chief physician requires 1.6 million yuan. The details are shown in the table below:

Data sources: China Health and Family Planning Statistical Yearbook 2015; CSMAR Economic and Financial Database

Four Major Needs in Physicians’ Professional Careers: Heavy pressure to publish papers, as publishing a certain number of articles is mandatory for professional title promotion; fragmented learning resources with high acquisition costs, and a lack of effective channels for disseminating academic achievements from senior physicians; insufficient expert guidance, with strong demand among junior physicians for mentorship from senior colleagues and a lack of effective communication channels across different career levels; and limited time, as physicians generally work long hours and require precise access to resources and expert guidance.

Physicians’ most pressing need is the publication of medical papers. Bimite has developed a professional “writing assistant”—SmartUWrite—to help physicians address their paper-writing challenges. SmartUWrite offers the following features: literature search, citation formatting, image detection, reviewer recommendation, reference management, and journal recommendation.

Compared with the internationally renowned reference management software EndNote, BitMed’s writing assistant, SmartUWrite, is specifically designed for medical professionals. In addition to basic functions such as literature search and coverage of reference formats for nearly 100 Chinese and English journals, its distinctive feature lies in matching users with suitable peer reviewers, while further providing services including manuscript plagiarism checking, peer review, and journal submission recommendations.

Bimite’s predecessor was “Medical Service Network.” From 2007 to 2014, Bimite underwent an accumulation phase focused on physician-related services, including medical manuscript guidance, journal recommendations, conference recommendations, organizing international conferences, and medical book publishing. Its business model was traditional and offline, with its core business being medical manuscript services that addressed rigid demand.

During this period, Bimeite focused on medical publication services as its core business, providing nearly all the professional services required for a physician’s entire career journey—from graduation and job hunting to ultimately becoming a chief physician. All these services demand long-term, specialized expertise. As a result, Bimeite has established a high professional barrier in the niche field of physician services. However, under the traditional model, the company’s services were primarily delivered through manual labor. As the business expanded, this traditional approach could no longer meet demand, causing the company’s growth to reach a “bottleneck.”

Consequently, in December 2014, VCBeat initiated a strategic transformation, investing capital in internet development and implementing significant adjustments to its business and personnel structure. Approximately 30 editorial positions were either eliminated or transitioned into product manager roles. The resulting shortage of editorial staff to handle existing operations adversely impacted revenue.

In November 2015, Bemeite achieved internet-based transformation of its core medical paper services, shifting from traditional business methods to a process featuring “intelligent detection and review – intelligent expert matching – intelligent journal matching.” The company also extended its academic paper services by developing SmartUWrite, a paper-writing assistant integrated into physicians’ writing workflows. The results of this transformation have been significant. Peng Kai, CFO of Bemeite, told VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) that based on financial data from the first half of the year, revenue in 2016 would undoubtedly surpass pre-transformation levels. The company has broken through its development “bottleneck.”

(1) Data: Mining the Most Accurate Physician Profiles

Bimeite possesses comprehensive medical literature information, enabling the creation of precise physician profiles. It is the first company capable of providing physicians with

Establish a comprehensive user profile integrating job search, scientific research, education, training, career development pathways, and social connections.

(2) Algorithms: Accumulating and Evolving the Most Precise Professional Algorithms

By leveraging automated evolution in medical semantics research and a precise, continuously optimized algorithmic framework, Bimeite can evaluate physicians, articles, and journals, while delivering personalized search and dynamic, intelligent recommendations tailored to individual users.

(3) Business: Multi-dimensional services applied throughout the entire career cycle of physicians

Bimeite leverages data mining technology to integrate academic publishing, academic conferences, online education, online seminars, and pharmaceutical research

...and other fields, integrating multi-dimensional professional services for physicians, thereby supporting their entire career lifecycle.

Shen Shuo, Technical Director and one of the inaugural expert committee members of the Big Data Expert Committee under the China Computer Federation, stated that Bimeite’s comprehensive support for physicians is powered by the integration of large-scale literature analysis involving tens of millions of records, real-time dynamic web crawling, user-level intelligent search, and machine learning. This technological foundation enables the company to deliver personalized and precise scientific research information services to each physician user.

Meanwhile, other companies operate in this niche segment dedicated to serving physicians’ professional development, such as MedSci and AME Publishing Group. MedSci primarily offers services related to academic paper support, education, and social networking, with 500,000 registered members, including 120,000 clinicians. AME Publishing Group mainly provides medical Q&A, illustrated case reports, anonymous social interactions, and a physicians’ community; its platform has 100,000 real-name registered physicians.

Bimeite currently has over 486,000 physicians registered on its platform. It is projected that by the end of 2016, the number of physician users will reach one million, at which point the platform’s revenue is expected to hit RMB 15 million. Compared with its two main competitors, Bimeite also offers services such as expert peer review, customized online education, and precision pharmaceutical marketing, thereby addressing a broader range of physicians’ needs.

Peng Kai, CFO of Bimite, told VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat), “A major advantage of Bimite is that we entered the market through academic paper coaching, a service with inelastic demand and high professional barriers. This has not only ensured stable revenue but also enabled natural expansion into other areas. As a result, the company has remained profitable since its inception.”

Regarding this industry, he noted that it is a mixed bag, with gray-area practices such as ghostwriting still prevalent. However, Biomet has steadfastly refused to engage in ghostwriting, opting instead to lead industry trends by introducing Peer Review. In July 2016, Thomson Reuters sold its Intellectual Property & Science business; put plainly, this meant the sale of two foundational and heavyweight products: the Science Citation Index (SCI) and the Impact Factor (IF). Wang Hongtao stated that while this industry event appeared uneventful on the surface, it actually strengthened Biomet’s resolve to undergo business transformation, leading to the vigorous launch of its peer review services.

In addition, Wang Hongtao believes that Open Access, or the sharing of academic achievements, represents another research trend. “The international community has long since embarked on a movement to tear down academic walls,” he said. “VCBeat has launched a professional medical academic social network—Academic Circle—with a primary objective of providing physicians with a platform for sharing academic achievements and engaging in scholarly discussions.”

Phase I of the Virtual Studio is positioned to provide physicians with precise information services. Key offerings include: physician job placement, medical literature services (paper assistant + intelligent peer review), academic publishing and distribution, targeted conference recommendations, academic social networking, and online seminars. Completion is expected by July 2017.

Virtual Studio Phase II is positioned to provide scientific research and clinical support services for physicians. Biomite expects to achieve this goal by July 2018. The main initiatives include adding the following services on top of the existing offerings: precision continuing medical education (customized), online/mobile tools for physicians’ scientific research (such as clinical data management systems), cloud-based research workspaces for physicians, promotion of academic achievements, and precision pharmaceutical marketing.

The third phase of the Virtual Studio is positioned to create the most professional research and clinical decision support platform within the medical ecosystem. Upon completion in 2019, Bemet will additionally provide the following services: a Clinical Decision Support System (CDSS), commercialization services for physicians’ academic achievements, a service platform for medical publishing institutions, a crowdsourced R&D platform for pharmaceutical manufacturers, and a third-party service platform for hospitals’ scientific education and research functions.

Wang Hongtao told VCBeat (WeChat ID: vcbeat) that Bimeite will complete the construction of its virtual studio for doctors in three years, by which time its membership is expected to grow to around 3 million.。