DXY Releases China's First Hospital Brand Communication Top 100 Ranking

On April 14, 2016, the 2016 China Healthcare Industry Brand Communication Summit, hosted by DXY, opened in Hangzhou. The three-day conference brought together top experts from the healthcare, media, and public relations sectors, as well as leading professionals from the healthcare industry, to explore pathways for brand communication in the era of omni-channel marketing. On the opening night, DXY, in partnership with Newrank, released China’s first Top 100 Hospital Brand Communication List—“2015 Top 100 Hospital Brand Communication List”—and held a grand awards ceremony. Additionally, China’s first public opinion monitoring service tailored for hospitals was launched.

Zhang Jin, CEO of DXY, stated that DXY aims to leverage the internet to restructure offline medical institutions through its open DXY Clinics initiative. “We hope to help more physicians build their own brands and establish their own clinics, assist existing medical institutions in enhancing service quality and standards, and facilitate integration with third-party partners. We also aspire to lower the barriers to accessing open healthcare services through our explorations, a trend we are already witnessing,” said Zhang.



The First Hospital Brand Communication Ranking

In recent years, hospital rankings released by various institutions have been based on metrics such as physicians’ scientific research achievements, grant acquisitions, the number of academicians, and the volume and citation counts of published papers, while others have ranked hospitals by scale, bed count, surgical volume, and operating revenue. However, there has consistently been a lack of a ranking focused specifically on hospital brand communication.

With the rapid advancement of information technology, healthcare services have entered the era of digital marketing. Under the new healthcare reform, medical institutions’ brand communication needs to place greater emphasis on mobilizing patient communities, mastering discourse power in both traditional public media and self-media, and seeking breakthroughs in areas such as academic branding and public opinion monitoring and management.

Ms. Shuai Yuhuan, Vice President of DXY, stated that while corporate brand building is now widely recognized, hospital brand building is only gradually gaining attention among healthcare professionals, and the level of emphasis remains far from sufficient. With 16 years of deep engagement in the healthcare industry, DXY’s annual initiatives—such as the Ranking of Best Employers among Chinese Medical Institutions and the Report on Chinese Physicians’ Compensation—have garnered widespread attention within the industry. For this initiative, DXY has chosen to collaborate with Newrank, leveraging its advantages in big data and algorithms to ensure the fairness and objectivity of the rankings. This marks the first hospital ranking list in China to be based entirely on big data algorithms.

“2015 Top 100 Hospital Brand Communication Rankings” comprises one master list and four sub-lists. The master list is the “2015 Top 100 Hospital Brand Communication Rankings,” while the four sub-lists are the Annual Outstanding WeChat Ranking, Annual Weibo Influence Ranking, Online Communication Popularity Ranking, and Brand Communication Effectiveness Ranking. Each ranking is further subdivided into public hospitals and private/foreign-funded hospitals. In terms of overall brand communication strength, West China Hospital of Sichuan University, Peking Union Medical College Hospital, and Peking University Third Hospital secured the top three positions among public hospitals. Among private and foreign-funded hospitals, Amcare, Shenzhen Yuandong Women’s and Children’s Hospital, and Wuhan Asia Heart Hospital took first, second, and third place, respectively. (Detailed rankings attached below)

Public Opinion Monitoring for Hospitals

Dingxiangyuan has also launched China’s first public opinion monitoring service tailored for hospitals—the Dingxiangyuan Intelligence Service Platform. Built on the WeChat ecosystem, this platform enables users to set keywords and receive article alerts directly within WeChat. As a service exclusively designed for hospitals, it is the first of its kind in China, offering a higher level of professional specialization. Reportedly, its monitoring coverage now extends to over 20,000 WeChat accounts in the pharmaceutical and healthcare industries, as well as more than 400 industry websites.

Driven by national healthcare reform policies and the rapid rise of new media, the medical industry has undergone significant transformations. In just a few years, both public and private hospitals have come to recognize the power of hospital brand communication. Leveraging tools such as WeChat and Weibo, public opinion monitoring, and health science popularization, some hospital brands are steadily gaining prominence. However, compared with the deep-rooted emphasis on corporate brand building, attention paid to hospital brand development remains insufficient. Ms. Shuai Yuhuan, Vice President of DXY, stated that the launch of this hospital brand communication ranking aims to encourage the entire industry to place greater importance on shaping and disseminating hospital brands, implementing brand strategies akin to those of corporations, and transforming their institutions into recognized brand hospitals.

2015 Top 100 Hospital Brand Communication Rankings