Chunyu Doctor Celebrates Fifth Anniversary with Open Platform Strategy: Embracing 'Openness, Connection, and Win-Win'

As one of China’s first mobile health enterprises, Chunyu Yisheng (Spring Rain Doctor) has completed its fifth year of operation. Over the past five years, Chunyu Yisheng has evolved from initial lightweight online consultations to an “Air Hospital” model and further to personalized private physician services, with each step demonstrating how mobile health continues to push beyond new boundaries. Currently, the number of physicians registered in real time on the Chunyu Yisheng platform has exceeded 498,000 and is approaching the 500,000 mark, while the number of registered consumer-end users has surpassed 92 million. Data indicate that mobile internet, as a new entry point for diagnostic and therapeutic services and health management, has gained increasing acceptance among both patients and healthcare providers.

The surge in doctors’ demand for multi-site practice opportunities, coupled with the public’s vast need for medical consultation and treatment, has enabled Chunyu Doctor to accumulate robust capabilities in matching supply and demand for online consultation services and in data processing over the past five years. As a result, Chunyu Doctor has fully opened up its core business—the online consultation platform.

What Is an Open Online Medical Consultation Platform?

The Chunyu Doctor Online Consultation Open Platform comprises three modules: access interfaces, medical resources, and artificial intelligence. The access interfaces facilitate the integration of various applications, while Chunyu Doctor allocates and distributes medical resources. Artificial intelligence is employed to augment the supply of medical services. Furthermore, Chunyu Doctor has designed three service scenarios: the first is “Ask and Answer Anytime,” offering 24/7 service with rapid responses within three minutes; the second is “Quick Ask, Quick Answer,” featuring ultra-fast responses such as within one minute; and the third is “One Question, One Answer,” providing patients with professional and comprehensive explanations. Through these diverse scenario designs, Chunyu aims to meet the varied needs of its users.

In the near future, in addition to downloading the Chunyu Doctor app, users will be able to access Chunyu Doctor’s online services through various internet platforms, including factory-installed mobile phone settings, websites, and WeChat. By aggregating medical resources via the internet and then distributing and connecting them through digital channels, Chunyu Doctor aims to meet users’ healthcare needs.

So, what is the purpose of Chunyu Doctor’s launch of its open platform? Zhang Rui highlighted three keywords: Openness · Connection · Win-Win.

"Openness" is the Key to Unlocking a Platform's Power

The dividends of the mobile internet era for apps are fading, as evidenced by two aspects:

First, the growth rate of new smartphone users in China is declining;

Second, super apps, such as Baidu, are exerting increasingly strong dominance over users’ time and even their mindshare.

Zhang Rui believes that Chunyu’s most critical capability lies in mobilizing physicians’ fragmented time to systematically deliver high-quality, highly reliable, and cost-effective services to users—namely, online consultations. This is also the primary objective behind Chunyu Doctor’s open-platform strategy: against the backdrop of diminishing app-driven growth dividends, Chunyu Doctor aims to unlock and leverage its capacity to aggregate physicians’ time.

Zhang Rui predicts that once the dividends from mobile apps dissipate, the next major opportunity will lie in the Internet of Everything (IoE), which represents the most significant trend over the next five to ten years. Chunyu Doctor aims to extend its online consultation services and its capability to aggregate physicians to enterprises and manufacturers in the market. In the future, users may not need to download the Chunyu Doctor app to access online consultation products.

For example, in the future, online consultation services could be embedded into beverage barcodes. By scanning the QR code on a drink with their smartphone, users could instantly access an online consultation with a nutritionist to ask: Does this water contain sugar? What is its trace element profile? As a diabetic patient, can I safely drink this water? The technology, environment, user demand, and even paying parties are all in place; the next step requires some companies to bravely take this leap.

Chunyu’s online consultation platform has a roster of 500,000 physicians. Chunyu Doctor aims to unleash this substantial resource, which is a core original intention behind Chunyu’s development of an open platform. This also aligns with the first keyword emphasized by Zhang Rui: “openness.”

“Connectivity” is the Maximization of Internet Value

The efficient connectivity brought by the internet is a significant social dividend, and such connectivity is particularly crucial in the healthcare sector.

China records approximately 7 billion outpatient visits annually, equivalent to 20 million offline outpatient consultations per day. On Baidu, health- and medical-related searches exceed 100 million daily. Currently, the public’s initial response to illness is to seek relevant information online, marking a shift from offline to online entry points.

Could Online Medical Consultations Become the Second Major Internet Gateway After Search Engines? Zhang Rui stated that future healthcare demands in China will be served through three major gateways: first, physical outpatient clinics; second, search engines; and third, online medical consultations. However, Chunyu Doctor alone cannot achieve this goal; therefore, Chunyu Doctor will mobilize resources across society to develop and strengthen the online consultation sector.

The internet has gradually evolved from connecting people with information to connecting people with services. The connections on the Chunyu platform are not merely between individuals and knowledge; Chunyu Doctor facilitates point-to-point connections among users, and even connects users with the wider world. This model of connectivity better aligns with the humanized and personalized nature of medical care.

The essence of healthcare challenges lies in supply. Training physicians is a long-term, arduous, and high-cost process. While Chunyu Doctor leverages doctors’ fragmented time to increase healthcare supply, it further aims to utilize the data accumulated through online medical services to train effective and efficient medical artificial intelligence (AI), thereby enhancing China’s healthcare supply via AI in the future. Zhang Rui stated that future connectivity in the healthcare sector will not merely link individual patients with individual doctors, but rather connect the entire world through the AI systems developed behind these physicians.

“Win-win” is our shared goal.

Chunyu’s platform boasts 500,000 physicians and a large patient base. Zhang Rui aims for Chunyu not only to generate revenue independently but also to create shared value with its partners. Through the Chunyu Open Platform, Chunyu has packaged its online consultation services into SDKs or H5 pages, deploying them across partners’ existing platforms, including online, offline, mobile, and PC channels.

Zhang Rui stated: First, Chunyu does not seek traffic; second, Chunyu does not poach users from its partners. Chunyu Doctor has integrated an online consultation feature into the existing product architecture of its partners, thereby enhancing users’ online healthcare experience. Chunyu aims to collaborate with its partners to excel in this endeavor.

Current online consultation products can only provide medical advice, not cure diseases, as users ultimately need to purchase medications or undergo surgical procedures at hospitals to resolve their health issues. Data from the Chunyu Yisheng platform shows that among users of online consultations, 50% require further medication to address their conditions, 20% need to visit hospitals for additional tests and examinations to confirm a diagnosis, and 30% can recover on their own.

Fifty percent of users require further medication, and 20% need in-person medical consultations; these 70% of users hold substantial commercial value. For Chunyu Doctor, expanding into offline services through initiatives such as opening clinics represents a beneficial endeavor. Furthermore, Chunyu aims to refer users requiring further treatment and medication to capable partners. For instance, prior to launching its open consultation platform, Chunyu Doctor had already established collaborations with many well-known pharmaceutical e-commerce companies.

"Win-win" signifies not only an enhancement in user experience but also an advancement in business models. With Chunyu Doctor’s online consultation services and its ability to aggregate physicians’ time, the company aims to unlock these resources and share with partners the value that online consultations bring to future lifestyles and society, thereby delivering a superior experience for users.

From the early days of queuing at hospitals for medical consultations, to later turning to “Baidu” for medical advice and information, to the current era of online consultations, and ultimately to the future of artificial intelligence, Zhang Rui has outlined the evolutionary path of mobile healthcare as well as the transformation of healthcare service models. Against the backdrop of diminishing app-driven growth opportunities, Chunyu Doctor plans to open up its core online consultation capabilities and service platform to seize the next major opportunity in the Internet of Everything.