Hangzhou Yiyao Information Technology Secures Hundreds of Millions in Investment from CDH Investments to Advance Intelligent Medication Management System

Recently, Hangzhou Yiyao Information Technology Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as “Hangzhou Yiyao”) announced that it had secured hundreds of millions of yuan in funding from CDH Investments.

Hangzhou Yiyao, established in 2011, is a professional operational service provider specializing in clinical rational medication solutions. Leveraging its independently developed open knowledge base and system management platform for rational drug use, the company conducts collection and analysis of clinical medication information, intervention management, and statistical evaluation. It provides rational medication support services to health administrative departments, medical institutions, clinicians, pharmacists, and patients, thereby enhancing the safety, cost-effectiveness, and efficacy of medication use.

It is understood that Hangzhou Yiyao's Rational Drug Use Knowledge Base was established under the leadership of senior frontline clinical pharmacy professionals in the industry, with participation from over 300 hospitals at the secondary level and above. Grounded in frontline practical experience, it covers usage rules and clinical expertise for more than 18,000 standard medications across 190,000 products, ensuring that drug-use knowledge aligns more closely with clinical needs.

Key Points of Rational Drug Use: Medication Management in Public Hospitals and the Restoration of Pharmacists' Value

Dr. Lv Liangzhong, Chief Knowledge Officer at Hangzhou Yiyao, stated, “Pharmacists in China have failed to fulfill their due responsibilities in the management of rational drug use; the key to promoting rational drug use lies in strengthening medication management in public hospitals and restoring the value of pharmacists.”

Rational drug use refers to the formulation of medication regimens based on disease types, patient conditions, and pharmacological principles, with the aim of achieving safe, effective, and economical treatment. Currently, irrational drug use is prevalent in China, resulting in a high incidence of adverse drug reactions (ADRs). Statistics indicate that over 2.5 million people are hospitalized annually in China due to severe ADRs, and it is estimated that irrational drug use accounts for nearly 30% of all medication practices. Furthermore, pharmaceutical expenses and the proportion of drug costs remain high: in 2013, the average outpatient expenditure per visit in China was RMB 206.4, with drug costs comprising 49.3% of this amount.

In hospital management, physicians are responsible for diagnosis and selecting treatment plans, while pharmacists are tasked with ensuring the rationality of medication use. Nurses assist physicians and pharmacists during the implementation phase. In this process, pharmacists must fully leverage their professional role. Dr. Lv Liangzhong stated that currently, many hospital pharmacists merely dispense medications, rarely utilizing their expertise to effectively evaluate drug usage, let alone educating patients on proper medication practices. This reflects a misalignment in the role positioning of pharmacists. Pharmacists should clearly communicate critical information—such as timing, dosage, frequency, intervals, and contraindications—to patients at the moment of handing over the medication. The responsibility for ensuring rational drug use should rest with pharmacists.

How Can Pharmacists Demonstrate Their Professional Value? Lv Liangzhong believes this issue can be addressed through a three-step approach. First, to ensure rational drug use, pharmacists must evaluate physicians’ medication decisions, rather than simply dispensing medications as prescribed. By analyzing medication regimens to safeguard safety and efficacy, pharmacists uphold professional integrity and protect patient well-being. Second, pharmacists should assess the appropriateness of in-hospital medication administration, instead of allowing ward nurses to directly administer drugs to patients without oversight. Third, patients require guidance from pharmacists during medication use, necessitating comprehensive patient education on proper drug usage.

However, for pharmacists to provide these services to physicians, nurses, and patients, there must be clear and well-defined standards for rational drug use. For the same medication, pharmacists adhere to the package insert as their standard, whereas physicians follow clinical practice guidelines; these two standards differ in their points of reference.

“To evaluate the rationality of medication use, pharmacists require a standard for rational drug use, supported by clinical medication experience, as a basis and guide. This is precisely what my current work entails.”

After 26 years of working at a provincial-level Grade A tertiary hospital, Lv Liangzhong gave up his position as the director of the pharmacy department, left the hospital, and joined Hangzhou Yiyao full-time.

Rational Drug Use, Benefits for All

To establish standards for rational drug use, Dr. Lv Liangzhong led his team in developing the Yiyao Knowledge Base for Rational Drug Use. “Grounded in frontline practical experience, our medication knowledge is more closely aligned with and better suited to clinical needs. Meanwhile, the knowledge base employs intelligent inference engine technology to decouple the logical description of the knowledge base from the intelligent engine software. All rules are entirely described by professional pharmacists in natural language, making them easy to understand and flexible to operate. The specialized process of building and adjusting these rules does not require the involvement of IT personnel, enabling pharmacists to program independently. With a profound understanding of the needs of clinical pharmacists and hospital pharmaceutical administration, Dr. Lv Liangzhong is responsible for the methodological design of the Hangzhou Yiyao system and the product planning of the knowledge rule base for rational drug use.”

(Dr. Lv Liangzhong, Chief Knowledge Officer of Hangzhou Yiyao)

Yizhuo Rational Drug Use Management System provides hospitals with functions such as clinical medication risk alerts, clinical medication analysis and evaluation, and prescription review. Clinical pharmacists can perform real-time intervention and management of clinical medication by adjusting the medication knowledge base according to the hospital’s actual needs. This establishes a rational drug use management process characterized by a complete PDCA cycle: setting review rules and analytical methods (Plan), conducting real-time reviews (Do), performing analysis (Check), and implementing interventions based on analytical results (Action). Through the Yizhuo Rational Drug Use System, hospitals can fully ensure medication compliance and rationality.

The Yiyao Rational Drug Use System is adaptable to hospitals with varying operational contexts. We provide a foundational knowledge base comprising 190,000 medication rules for pharmaceutical products, which sufficiently meets the daily medication management needs of hospitals. Additionally, hospitals can develop custom rules tailored to their specific institutional practices. Meanwhile, Hangzhou Yiyao cultivates personalized user knowledge systems based on each hospital’s usage patterns, enabling these insights to be shared with other users.

Hangzhou Yiyao currently serves over 300 clients. After achieving rapid growth in Zhejiang Province, the company has expanded its operations to Fujian, Sichuan, Guangdong, Anhui, Jiangxi, Xinjiang, and other provinces. Looking ahead, Lv Liangzhong hopes that beyond hospitals, a broader range of institutions will benefit from Hangzhou Yiyao’s Rational Drug Use Management System: “Our users are not limited to hospitals; government agencies and insurance institutions will also be beneficiaries. Through our platform, knowledge systems across various hospitals are shared, enabling the National Health and Family Planning Commission to better monitor prescription practices and medication use at individual hospitals, thereby ensuring safe, effective, and cost-efficient drug use. Meanwhile, insurance institutions can leverage the knowledge base to rationalize medication expenditures and prevent excessive drug usage. Ultimately, this ensures that patients receive appropriate medication and incur reasonable healthcare costs.”

CDH Investments’ Innovation and Growth Fund focuses on investing in the healthcare industry. He Xin, Senior Partner at CDH Investments, stated, “Internal hospital management needs and external policy drivers have made rational drug use a critical pain point. Enhancing the safety, efficacy, and cost-effectiveness of medication is of great significance to the entire healthcare system.”

Dr. He Xin discussed the rationale behind CDH Investments’ investment in Hangzhou Yiyao: Currently, both hospital management and pharmacy departments are eager to enhance the capability and efficiency of rational drug use management through information technology. Meanwhile, physicians also require IT-enabled tools when prescribing to reduce error rates, improve medication safety, and mitigate doctor-patient conflicts. Hangzhou Yiyao’s system design and methodology are industry-leading; it is currently the only open rational drug use system that allows hospital clients to independently add and maintain medication rules, and the only system capable of real-time intervention or prohibition of irrational prescriptions by physicians. In the future, through the deployment and operation of Yiyao’s rational drug use system in hospitals, there is promising potential to gradually enter the third-party Pharmacy Benefit Management (PBM) sector, which holds significant growth prospects. Furthermore, what CDH Investments values most is Hangzhou Yiyao’s founding team, which combines pharmaceutical expertise, sales and promotion capabilities, and experience in the healthcare IT industry.

Regarding the introduction of CDH Investments, Zhou Xiaoyue, founder of Hangzhou Yiyao, stated: “CDH Investments’ Innovation and Growth Fund has accumulated extensive experience in the healthcare investment sector over many years. As a specialized healthcare fund, it has not only demonstrated professionalism throughout the investment process but also provided significant support in addressing core issues such as the company’s strategic direction and customer expansion through its resources and expertise. For instance, with the introduction and assistance of CDH, the construction of a unified regional platform for rational drug use management has already commenced at more than ten public hospitals under the jurisdiction of the Wuhu Municipal Health and Family Planning Commission in Anhui Province. We are confident that, with the continued support of CDH Investments, Hangzhou Yiyao will make substantial progress and achieve significant growth in the broad market for pharmacy benefit management.”

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