Ping An Health and Southwest Hospital Launch Chongqing's First Innovative Internet Hospital
No Hospital Visit Required: Complete Registration, Consultation, Prescription, and Follow-Up Directly on Your Mobile Phone. Yesterday, Southwest Hospital of the Third Military Medical University announced a partnership with Ping An Good Doctor, the internet healthcare subsidiary of Ping An Insurance Group, to jointly create the innovative “Southwest Ping An Internet Hospital” and establish a new O2O medical service platform.
This platform will pioneer a new regional healthcare service model, delivering an innovative “Internet+” experience across pre-consultation, during-consultation, and post-consultation stages. During the pre-consultation phase, patients can log into the “Southwest Ping An Internet Hospital” APP to communicate directly with online physicians about their conditions via text, images, voice, or video. They can access services such as online diagnosis, appointment registration, and referrals. If an in-person visit is required, patients can schedule hospital laboratory tests and examinations online using electronic test orders issued by the physician. During the consultation phase, patients can view electronic prescriptions issued by the physician online; orders are automatically transmitted to partnered offline pharmacies or hospital pharmacy departments. Upon completion of online payment, medications are delivered to patients via logistics services. In the post-consultation phase, patients can online access vouchers and notifications, including settlement information and itemized bills from the referral process, and complete self-service discharge settlement. For follow-up visits, patients can conduct follow-up consultations and communicate with physicians through the APP using various formats such as video or text-and-image exchanges, enabling them to complete diagnosis, treatment, and medication purchases online without the need for re-hospitalization.
According to VCBeat (WeChat Official Account: vcbeat), as an innovative internet hospital, “Southwest Ping An Internet Hospital” will focus on enhancing patient experience and upgrading hospital informatization. By addressing the three stages of pre-hospital, in-hospital, and post-hospital care, it aims to achieve deep integration between offline medical institutions and online health service platforms. Through internet-based solutions, it seeks to improve current challenges such as low efficiency in offline medical services, uneven distribution of medical resources, and poor patient experience, thereby building a comprehensive internet healthcare service system and creating a new regional model for medical services.
As the largest Grade A tertiary hospital in Chongqing, Southwest Hospital recorded 3.8 million outpatient and emergency visits, 130,000 admissions, and 90,000 surgeries in 2015. With coordinated development in medical care, education, research, and nursing, the hospital has achieved first-class comprehensive strength nationwide. As of August this year, Ping An Health Internet had provided health management services to over 100 million users, with a peak daily consultation volume exceeding 250,000, equivalent to the daily outpatient volume of 10–15 Grade A tertiary hospitals.
Southwest Ping An Internet Hospital, jointly established by two giants in the healthcare industry, represents a synergy of their respective strengths. Ping An Health Internet provides robust internet technologies and online operational solutions, while Southwest Hospital contributes medical expertise and offline healthcare resources. This collaboration will break down the physical barriers of traditional brick-and-mortar hospitals, ushering in a seamless integration of online and offline services for conventional medical institutions.
“Southwest Ping An Internet Hospital” will pioneer a new regional model of medical services, delivering an innovative “Internet+” experience across the pre-consultation, consultation, and post-consultation phases. During the pre-consultation phase, patients can log in to the “Southwest Ping An Internet Hospital” app to communicate directly with online physicians about their conditions via text, images, voice, or video. They can access services such as online diagnosis, appointment scheduling, and referrals. If an in-person visit is required, patients can schedule hospital laboratory and imaging tests online using electronic test orders issued by the physician. During the consultation phase, patients can view electronic prescriptions issued by their physicians online; orders are automatically transmitted to partnered offline pharmacies or hospital pharmacy departments. Upon completion of online payment, medications are delivered to patients via logistics services. In the post-consultation phase, patients can online access vouchers and notifications, including settlement information and itemized bills from the referral process, and complete self-service discharge settlement. For follow-up visits, patients can conduct follow-up consultations with physicians through the app using video or text-and-image formats, enabling them to complete diagnosis, treatment, and medication purchases online without the need for rehospitalization.
Regarding the payment issues underlying medical services, Ping An Health Internet will conduct online integration to enable diverse payment scenarios, including cash payments, social health insurance payments, and commercial insurance payments. This approach aims to maximize user satisfaction by fully streamlining the payment process within the internet hospital’s operational workflows.
Recently, Ping An Good Doctor Cloud launched an online medical service platform called “Hospital One-Account Pass.” Tailored to the distinct needs of users, healthcare institutions, and commercial insurance payers, the platform leverages internet technologies in its product design to deliver scenario-based, O2O (online-to-offline) medical products and services. In addition to offering online triage and guidance, appointment registration, queue management with call-out notifications, and point-of-care payment, it also provides services such as advance payment of hospitalization deposits, installment plans for medical expenses, and small-amount credit loans. The current collaboration with Southwest Hospital is expected to see practical application in these areas.
The medical care scenarios currently planned by Southwest Hospital will break through geographical limitations, fully mobilizing the resources and capabilities of surrounding community hospitals and other medical institutions centered on Southwest Hospital. By establishing more efficient triage and referral platforms on a regional basis, the hospital aims to create innovative "Internet + Healthcare" concepts, including bidirectional patient transfers between tertiary (Grade 3A) hospitals and surrounding medical facilities, as well as remote ward rounds and teleconsultations. These initiatives seek to standardize and unify patient services, thereby alleviating the difficulties and high costs associated with accessing medical care. Dr. Guo Jiwei, President of Southwest Hospital, stated that in the future, patients should be able to establish a lasting digital doctor-patient relationship with Southwest Hospital through "one visit, one login." Leveraging smart hospital systems supported significantly by internet hospitals, this approach will provide users with specialized medical services reflecting the quality standards of Southwest Hospital.
In May this year, Ping An Health Internet secured $500 million in Series A financing. Following the completion of this funding round, Ping An Health Internet developed a more in-depth strategic plan for medical services. Wang Tao, Chairman of Ping An Health Internet Co., Ltd., outlined the company’s approach to building a closed-loop medical O2O ecosystem through the “tri-medical linkage” model, integrating hospitals, physicians, and health insurance. The collaboration with Southwest Hospital marks a significant milestone in the implementation of this O2O strategy, aiming to establish China’s largest healthcare service platform.
Beyond medical services themselves, online data sharing and offline business synergy are also crucial to the regional healthcare structure established by Southwest Hospital and Ping An Health Internet.
According to VCBeat (WeChat Official Account: vcbeat), the two parties will join forces to establish the Southwest Ping An Internet Hospital Medical Data Service Platform. Through this platform, they will provide primary healthcare institutions with medical data services, including health records, electronic medical records, intelligent diagnosis, diagnostic knowledge bases, and prescription review. This collaboration aims to support the development of primary healthcare institutions, enhance the overall regional standard of medical care, gradually improve patient trust in primary healthcare facilities, and fundamentally realize the tiered diagnosis and treatment system.
On the other hand, unified storage of chronic disease data will be implemented. These data encompass not only clinical records but also health and service data generated during community-based chronic disease care, as well as data from various devices such as blood pressure monitors and glucometers. By integrating these diverse data sources and establishing standardized data storage and access interfaces, we aim to achieve regional sharing of chronic disease data. This will support different medical institutions in subsequent treatment, follow-up, and reconsultation processes, ultimately providing patients with superior chronic disease management services.