True Mobile Healthcare Unleashes Productivity and Empowers Doctors and Nurses to Practice Independently

The advent of smartphones marked the robust arrival of the mobile health era. On January 9, 2007, former Apple CEO Steve Jobs unveiled the first-generation iPhone, marking the birth of Apple’s inaugural smartphone. It was officially released on June 29 of the same year, a milestone that signaled the widespread adoption of the mobile internet and continuously improving real-time interactive experiences. That same year, the world’s first true mobile health services company was established in the United States.

In the year when the Apple iPhone was born and spearheaded a new wave of technological fervor, the global financial crisis erupted. Asset bubbles burst, Wall Street lost its mystique, the market shifted from excessive liquidity to “cash is king,” entrepreneurs faced widespread anxiety, and industries across the board—including in China—suffered severe distress. Nevertheless, in 2007, China’s life insurance, health insurance, and healthcare consumer markets began to sustain rapid counter-cyclical growth. Driven by an instinct for value investing and curiosity, I began to research and monitor the healthcare sector from an investment perspective. Through subsequent practice, I came to realize that healthcare is the ultimate outlet for social wealth: the wealth individuals accumulate over their lifetimes is ultimately spent on healthcare. A historic development opportunity for the healthcare industry had arrived. The medical and insurance sectors, with their closely intertwined interests, would become sustained hotspots in the capital markets, and mobile internet technologies would see increasingly extensive and effective application in the healthcare field.

Healthcare services are a premium consumer good.

From a personal perspective, healthcare services are a premium consumer product—universally needed and affordable. The deep integration of mobile internet technology will more efficiently address information asymmetry in the healthcare industry, making pricing of healthcare services easier and more precise. The disintermediation effect of the internet is rendering contractual relationships in healthcare simpler, more direct, and more effective. As the moral pedestal traditionally associated with medicine gradually fades, healthcare services are inevitably becoming a premium consumer experience embraced by the public. Market expectations for the quality of healthcare services will continue to rise, although high-end services do not necessarily entail high fees. With rising household incomes and the new administration’s strategic emphasis on “Healthy China”—a priority prominently reflected in the 13th Five-Year Plan—public attention to citizens’ health has reached unprecedented levels. This shift can be understood as a transition in the foundational goal of public health insurance: from merely “preventing people from suffering miserably due to illness” to “enabling citizens to enjoy a healthier life with greater dignity.” Mobile health will play a pivotal and transformative role in this evolution.

The core of healthcare reform will be to unleash productivity. We need not be overly concerned about the mechanisms and efficiency of a “land-reform-style” healthcare overhaul led by entrenched interests. To date, no country has achieved truly successful healthcare reform. Mainland China currently has a population of 1.367 billion. This enormous demographic base, combined with the application of mobile internet and artificial intelligence technologies, along with market-driven forces, gives China’s healthcare reform a late-mover advantage. Since the Chinese government has set the policy direction for healthcare reform around “ensuring basic coverage and strengthening primary care” and “marketization,” and given that the fiscal capacity previously sustained by land-based revenues is no longer viable, meeting the demands of an aging population and the public’s pursuit of higher-quality medical services can only be addressed by liberating doctors and nurses—the key productive elements in the healthcare industry. This is a fundamental livelihood issue that no political party or leader can evade. It is bold yet reasonable to predict that freeing doctors and nurses through mobile health and AI, and enabling them to practice independently, will play a historic and remarkably effective role in the new wave of healthcare reform, akin to the household responsibility system introduced in rural China in the early 1980s. Market-oriented mechanisms will simultaneously advance property-rights reforms for existing medical resources and promote the efficient development of new resources, optimize the effective allocation of medical resources, genuinely address the longstanding problems of difficult and expensive access to medical care, and foster harmony between patients and providers. Therefore, the development prospects of mobile health are boundless. The power of the market is infinite. Market forces and mobile internet technology will drive healthcare reform forward, subtly and pervasively.

Mobile healthcare must continue to help patients truly resolve their health issues. In recent years, China’s healthcare industry experienced a period of irrational prosperity driven by capital and mobile internet, but it is now gradually returning to stability and calmness. This hurricane, which came quickly and left just as fast, created a powerful shockwave in the healthcare sector. It not only awakened the market but also educated the initially ambitious outsiders—often referred to as "barbarians"—that having money and understanding the internet alone is insufficient for successfully running mobile healthcare; one must genuinely understand the essence of healthcare. Just as the core purpose of a business is to generate profits for shareholders, the essence of healthcare lies in continuously solving problems for patients. No matter how advanced technology becomes, healthcare will always require face-to-face interactions between medical professionals and patients.

Some argue that China’s healthcare industry is riddled with pain points, implying that solutions addressing these issues present numerous business opportunities. It is hardly novel for domestic mobile health companies to “borrow” existing models from abroad; aligning with such benchmarked models makes founders’ fundraising pitches more persuasive to investors. For every U.S. mobile health company—such as HealthTap, ZocDoc, Teladoc, Figure1, and Kaiser Permanente—there are comparable competitors in China. Mobile health technologies were once hailed as a powerful tool for transforming the traditional healthcare sector. However, after years of intense competition, many mobile health firms have failed to breach the formidable barriers of traditional hospitals. They remain confined to the periphery, competing in non-core medical service areas such as lightweight consultations, registration, appointment scheduling, payments, follow-up care, and post-discharge patient management. As a result, their value creation has been limited, and their impact has fallen far short of expectations.

In the past two years, mobile health companies competed by burning through cash at an alarming rate. Now that the hype has cooled and rationality has returned, the focus has shifted to investment returns and the sustainability of business models. Given that healthcare inherently involves a complex transactional structure with multiple stakeholders, mobile health solutions must go beyond superficially leveraging limited resources within hospital walls. Instead, superior user experience and loyalty are the most critical evaluation metrics. It is essential to fully respect all stakeholders and construct a mutually beneficial, win-win transactional framework, while consistently helping patients solve their actual health problems.

We need to exercise greater patience and nurture the development of mobile health. The institutional inertia within China’s traditional healthcare service system is profound, and the distortions in medical humanism cannot be easily shaken or completely transformed overnight. The rhetoric of newcomers casually claiming to disrupt healthcare or frequently attempting to reconstruct the ecosystem has long become a laughingstock. Mobile health and traditional healthcare do not possess an inherent, zero-sum antagonism; rather, both share the common goal of enhancing patient experience and improving diagnostic and therapeutic outcomes.

Building a Customer-Centric Healthcare Safety and Quality Service System

Nowadays, online mobile health companies that have achieved a certain scale are expanding into the offline sector by establishing physical clinics and other facilities, vying to secure market share, build ecosystems, and craft their own compelling narratives. Most other mobile health companies, lacking capital infusion and failing to deliver products or services that truly address core issues, will ultimately become mere statistics in the startup failure rate.

Mobile internet technology has repeatedly demonstrated its transformative power in upgrading and revolutionizing other traditional industries. However, in the healthcare sector, its impact remains limited for now, as medical regulatory frameworks and technical standards are still being refined. Nevertheless, its application prospects remain promising, as no one doubts the extraordinary driving force of technological innovation. Technological solutions are merely means to an end; they must evolve in response to customers’ changing needs to maintain their vitality. We need to exercise greater patience and nurture this development.

Only by adhering to the original intention of designing a mobile health business model that achieves multi-party win-win outcomes can one go far. No innovation in healthcare business models can escape the traditional constraints of China’s healthcare industry. As an explorer and practitioner of innovative healthcare service models, I led the investment and establishment of the first high-end international general hospital in 2011, starting from planning and design. From hospital preparation to opening, and then to normal operational management, the joys and sorrows of running a hospital over the years have been quite enlightening. We understand that the safety and quality service systems and service models of traditional Chinese hospitals no longer meet the demands of the times. In a sense, traditional Chinese hospitals are inefficient and bureaucratic intermediaries, with patient-centricity often being merely a slogan. Healthcare is no small matter; it concerns human lives. The value creation of homogeneous services confined within hospital walls is indeed limited. Exploring how to provide and access safe and effective medical services more simply, and building a customer-centric healthcare safety and quality service system, is the responsibility of our generation.

A medical infrastructure service platform that empowers doctors and nurses to practice independently benefits individuals, practitioners, and society alike. Leveraging accumulated experience and a deep understanding of healthcare, Honghua Medical, as an enterprise operating a self-contained, closed-loop medical service ecosystem, has adopted a core business model focused on the operation of a nationwide chain of community clinics. Simultaneously, it utilizes the Honghua Mobile Health Platform to liberate doctors and nurses by providing essential medical support services, thereby facilitating their independent practice. This approach achieves seamless online-to-offline integration and forms a complete business loop, delivering one-stop comprehensive medical and home nursing services to patients, resolving health issues at their doorstep, and making healthcare simpler. In the era of mobile internet, we believe that premium healthcare is not defined by high fees, but by high-quality, cost-effective services. Therefore, Honghua Medical has undertaken a series of innovations and initiatives in its cultural values, medical philosophy, business model, corporate governance, asset securitization, product offerings, and the development of its closed-loop business ecosystem. While striving to enhance customer satisfaction, unlock the productivity of medical professionals, and improve their well-being, Honghua Medical also addresses the diverse concerns of hospitals, government agencies, insurance companies, medical research institutions, and other stakeholders across the industry chain.

China’s healthcare industry is in a period of fragmentation and intense competition, akin to the Warring States era, where the entrenched medical system demands new ideas. Mobile health will become a lifestyle for people’s healthcare, serving as a model for the sustainable development and innovative growth of medical technology. In today’s fiercely competitive and rapidly changing world, the continuous transformation and optimization of the healthcare sector resemble a prolonged marathon rather than a fleeting moment of glory. How to appropriately leverage the technological advantages of mobile health tests the wisdom of innovators in the medical industry both domestically and internationally. When applying any technology to the life-critical field of healthcare, it is essential to adhere to the fundamental principles of medicine and remain true to the original mission.

(This article is the recommended preface to the Chinese edition of Mobile Health: The Dawn of the Era of Intelligent Healthcare, authored by Donna Malvey and Donna J. Slovensky [USA], published by China Machine Press.)