Ping An's 'Healthcare Dream': Building an Integrated Medical Ecosystem Anchored by Ping An Good Doctor

With 80 million users, partnerships with thousands of offline medical institutions, and the administration of medical insurance services in 100 cities, Ping An Group, as an insurance giant, possesses inherent resources in the healthcare sector. Unlike the “buy, buy, buy” strategy adopted by the three tech giants BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent), Ping An has largely chosen to build its healthcare ecosystem in-house.

Among the vast army of internet healthcare providers, Ping An is one of the few operators adopting an asset-heavy model. In its ongoing construction of a medical empire, the Ping An Good Doctor app will onboard thousands of full-time physicians, while establishing tens of thousands of offline clinics and renowned specialist centers. Its integrated “three-network” system—comprising the Medical Network, Pharmaceutical Network, and Information Network—leverages commercial insurance as the payer for healthcare products. This ecosystem not only serves Ping An’s internal needs but also integrates a broader range of external resources.

Ping An Chairman Ma Mingzheng envisions the company managing users’ finances with one hand and their health with the other. While financial management is Ping An’s core strength, health management remains an area that major healthcare companies are actively exploring and refining. One year on, how well has Ping An developed its health management capabilities? What new strategies lie ahead?

Healthcare is one of Ping An's two core strategic pillars for the future.

Ping An has clearly stated that healthcare and medical services are one of the company’s two core strategic pillars for the future.

In 2016, at Ping An Insurance’s first morning meeting of the year, Ma Mingzhe delivered an internal address titled “The Era of 3.0.” Ma stated that internet finance in the 3.0 era would deepen its development toward mobileization, specialization, social integration, and scenario-based applications, with service and user experience becoming key to market competition, and traditional industries integrating more closely with the internet. For the first time, Ma revealed that “Ping An One Account” and “Medical Insurance One Account,” which are as strategically important as Lufax, would be core initiatives for Ping An to vigorously advance in the coming year, with the same goal of building open, comprehensive service platforms.

Asset management and healthcare have been established as Ping An’s two core strategic pillars. Within this framework, asset management centers on Ping An One Account Pass, while health management is anchored by electronic health records and the Health Steward mobile platform. “Medical Insurance One Account Pass” is an intelligent medical insurance management and service system developed by Ping An for medical insurance systems across China. By integrating with local medical insurance platforms, it enhances user experience and service efficiency. Currently, the “Medical Insurance One Account Pass” has signed cooperation agreements with over 100 cities.



Li Yuanxiang, Deputy General Manager of Ping An Group and Chief Executive Officer of Insurance Business, previously stated at Ping An’s Open Day, “The healthcare industry is closely related to Ping An’s core business and aligns with the trend in the financial sector transitioning from sales-driven to service-driven models.” Moreover, the outlook for the healthcare industry is optimistic. The State Council’s “Several Opinions on Promoting the Development of the Health Service Industry” proposed that by 2020, a health service system covering the entire life cycle would be basically established, with the total scale of the health service industry reaching over RMB 8 trillion.

The Four-Part Series on Healthcare

While elevating healthcare to the core strategic level of the group, Ping An has defined its four-pillar strategy in the medical and health sector: healthcare services, social health insurance, commercial health insurance, and Health Cloud.



Healthcare services are divided into online and offline channels. The online portal is the Ping An Good Doctor APP, through which Ping An is committed to building a one-stop, end-to-end, O2O health management and medical service platform. Offline services connect with private clinics, testing centers, physical examination centers, partner hospitals, pharmacies, and other facilities. Ping An Healthcare has also launched the “10,000 Clinics” initiative, a 10-year plan with an investment of RMB 50 billion. It is reported that to accelerate clinic development, Ping An Good Doctor has clearly outlined plans for joint ventures and collaborations.

Currently, Ping An Healthcare has established a Center of Excellence for Renowned Physicians in Shenzhen. Its flagship store in Xuhui, Shanghai, is also set to open soon. In the second half of the year, pilot programs will be launched in eight provincial capital cities across China to build a medical O2O ecosystem.

Both Public Medical Insurance and Commercial Insurance Serve as Payers: In the realm of public medical insurance, Ping An is positioned to become a smart and efficient managed healthcare service provider, delivering intelligent management, services, and security solutions for social insurance. In the commercial insurance sector, Ping An will leverage its professional expertise in insurance operations to strengthen risk control, expand services, integrate payment systems, and optimize coverage, thereby establishing itself as a professional and innovative health insurance provider.

Health Cloud is the data service platform currently being built by Ping An, which aims to become a precise and professional operator of medical data services.

Furthermore, Ping An has strategically positioned itself in the aforementioned four business sectors through investments. In the health examination sector, Ping An invested in Meinian Onehealth and Ciming Health Checkup; in the internet insurance sector, it invested in Datebao; in the chronic disease management sector, it invested in Zhangshang Tangyi, an internet platform for diabetes management; and in the pharmaceutical e-commerce sector, it invested in Yaogelii, an O2O company.

According to VCBeat, the aforementioned four-part framework constitutes an organic whole characterized by mutual reinforcement and co-development: the healthcare service platform provides services to medical insurance enrollees, helping commercial insurers enhance their product competitiveness; the basic medical insurance system supplies medical resources to the healthcare service platform and supports innovation in commercial insurance products as well as improvements in risk control capabilities; commercial insurers and the healthcare service platform engage in bidirectional customer referral; and the Health Cloud provides information support.

Ping An Good Doctor, which claims a valuation of $3 billion to $4 billion

Ping An Good Doctor is a critically important segment within Ping An Healthcare’s ecosystem, serving not only as its online portal but also as a key component in Ping An’s implementation of the HMO model.



Following its name change in January 2015, Ping An Good Doctor adjusted its functionalities, streamlining the previous five modules—Diseases, Consult Top Specialists, Community Browse, News Feed, and Health Assessment—into three core features: “Family Doctor,” “Consultation Hall,” and “Health Community.”

At the launch event marking Ping An Good Doctor’s debut, Ping An announced that it would use online consultation services provided by family doctors and specialists as its entry point, leveraging big data mining, analysis, and application to deliver personalized daily health management and medical information services to customers. Its online consultation services are similar to those offered by other comparable platforms, with the standout feature being Ping An Good Doctor’s full-time physicians, who are available to provide real-time online services.

In line with Ping An Good Doctor’s previous strategic plan, a three-tier physician resource system was established to deliver services tailored to users’ varying needs. This system comprises full-time family physicians, part-time physicians from Grade 3A hospitals, and contracted external physicians, who provide private physician services, care for complex and critical conditions, and health consultation services, respectively. Ping An Healthcare aims to reach target numbers of 1,000, 5,000, and 50,000 physicians in these three categories on its platform.

It is reported that Ping An has promised certain equity incentives to full-time doctors in a bid to attract more dedicated physicians to join its platform. According to statistics from VCBeat, the current number of full-time doctors on the Ping An Good Doctor platform is fewer than 200, falling significantly short of its previously stated year-end target of 1,000.

Currently, the Ping An Good Doctor app has undergone two major functional changes: first, a Health Mall section has been added; second, the “Family Doctor” and “Renowned Doctors’ Clinic” features have been consolidated under the “Online Consultation” section, with the functionality of the Family Doctor service being de-emphasized. Firstly, family doctors are required to possess the competencies of general practitioners, yet China faces an objective shortage of such professionals, posing significant challenges for Ping An Good Doctor in delivering this service. Secondly, determining the service standards, quality metrics, and pricing structures for family doctor services remains a substantial challenge.

If users wish to consult part-time doctors or contracted external physicians on Ping An Good Doctor, they must search for the doctor’s name on the homepage and submit relevant disease information before initiating a consultation.

The Health Circle feature functions similarly to Weibo, comprising three sections: “Following” (akin to Weibo’s followed users), “Circles” (comparable to Weibo’s categorized topics), and “Discover” (a hybrid of Weibo’s trending topics and WeChat Moments). In the “Discover” section, posts by doctors and users are aggregated together, and the comment sections are rife with various advertisements and promotional content, indicating that user experience needs improvement. In December 2015, Ping An Good Doctor launched the “Step for Gold” campaign, offering cash rewards for step-counting activities, thereby further enhancing user stickiness.

Notably, the Ping An Health Card on the Ping An Mall achieved sales exceeding RMB 100 million within approximately three months of its launch. The “Ping An Good Doctor Health Card” is sold through both offline channels and the mobile app’s online store. Offline sales primarily leverage Ping An’s insurance distribution network, while online purchases can be made via the e-commerce section of the “Ping An Good Doctor” app. Services covered by the Ping An Health Card include family doctor consultations, appointments with renowned specialists, genetic testing, and health check-ups.

Reports indicate that Ping An Healthcare is currently valued at an estimated $3–4 billion and is planning a Series A financing round. The equity stake offered in this round accounts for approximately 10%, with the funds raised expected to amount to $300–400 million.

Ping An's HMO Model

As is well known, a core participant in the HMO model is insurance, and Ping An, which originated as an insurer, enjoys inherent advantages.

Ping An Health Insurance leverages a decade of network resources developed in China’s high-end medical market. When needed, it provides users with uninterrupted 24/7 services—including outpatient appointment scheduling, medical care recommendations, and accompanied consultation and nursing care—at more than 2,000 public hospitals across over 100 cities. Its medical network covers Mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Macau, and Thailand. Beyond these regions, it primarily relies on the medical networks of UnitedHealthcare and ACM. Through this network, users can access medical services at 500,000 healthcare providers across more than 140 countries and regions on five continents worldwide.

Domestic professional health insurance companies have consistently operated at a loss, and Ping An is no exception. In expanding into the healthcare sector, one of Ping An’s key strategic considerations is to achieve profitability in its health insurance products by establishing an HMO (Health Maintenance Organization) model.

In an exclusive media interview before her departure, Lu Min, Wang Tao’s predecessor, stated that the health insurance industry in China is still a “sunrise industry.” Although challenging, it currently represents a “value depression” in the Chinese health insurance market, with enormous future potential. Lu Min noted, “It generally takes 8–10 years for health insurance companies to reach profitability.”

With the HMO model proven viable, health insurance companies must be able to achieve cost containment in collaboration with internet healthcare service providers; additionally, users must have the habit and willingness to seek medical consultations via online platforms. Ping An Good Doctor serves as a core platform delivering internet healthcare services within Ping An’s HMO model.

However, the actual sales volume of Ping An Health Insurance products on the Ping An Good Doctor platform remains unclear. The effectiveness of mutual user traffic diversion between the health insurance products and the Ping An Good Doctor platform is also yet to be determined.

In August 2015, Ping An Health Insurance’s first internet-based insurance product, “Anti-Cancer Guardian,” went on sale via the Ping An Good Doctor app platform. According to VCBeat, this product was not initially designed with profitability as the primary consideration; rather, it served as a customer acquisition strategy for Ping An Health Insurance. Ping An aimed to attract more consumers to try its services by moderately lowering premiums. The rules of the internet game dictate absorbing a certain amount of losses in the early stages and cultivating user habits through subsidies and other means. Moreover, this will be a protracted battle.

Restart the “Three-Network Integration” Platform

In the early years, Ma Mingzhe intended to integrate Ping An Group’s medical network, pharmaceutical network, and information network to build the business landscape of Ping An Healthcare through an internet-based model.

A relevant executive at Ping An once publicly stated that “MedNet” provides medical services by establishing its own or contracted network of hospitals and physicians, and builds a membership-based system; “PharmaNet” reduces drug operation costs by holding a controlling stake in an entity engaged in pharmaceutical procurement and sales, utilizing online wholesale and retail as marketing channels, and leverages the MedNet and InfoNet platforms for professional prescription management to provide medication management and delivery services for patients with chronic diseases. “InfoNet” establishes electronic health records for customers through membership-based marketing.

In August 2010, after Ping An acquired an 80% stake in Yihaodian, Yihaodian’s pharmaceutical e-commerce B2C platform, Yaowang.com, also came under Ping An’s control. Yaowang.com was subsequently renamed Ping An Yaowang, while Ping An 1 Medical Network was launched around the same time. Ping An Medical Network provided a vast amount of professional health information, including content on diseases and healthcare, with the vision of becoming a one-stop website for health information services. In 2012, after Walmart took a controlling stake in Yihaodian, Ping An’s “three-network integration” plan was shelved. Currently, the link to Ping An Medical Network (http://www.yiwang.cn) is no longer accessible.

As Ping An launched its healthcare strategy last year, the “integration of three networks” was revived. Its approach is nearly identical to the earlier plan. The most significant change is that the “medical network” has shifted from a PC-based website to the Ping An Good Doctor app.

“Ping An Good Doctor” supports physicians’ professional diagnosis and treatment with a database system that includes: a core disease diagnosis repository built on clinical diagnostic information and empirical case samples; a drug database centered on matching medications with diseases via its pharmaceutical network; and an information repository anchored by users’ electronic health records. It is reported that Ping An has already established several major knowledge bases, including a drug knowledge base, a medical device knowledge base, and a prescription standards library. Collectively, these various standards libraries encompass 100,000 distinct rules.

Among these three major databases, the information repository centered on users' electronic health records serves as the core of this network.

Wang Tao once stated to the media that user profiles aggregate user behaviors across a wide range of scenarios, integrating information on users’ dietary patterns and habits, as well as data from chronic disease monitoring. This includes metrics such as blood pressure trends, temperature fluctuations, and sleep duration, typically captured via smart devices. The aim is to cultivate a user “habit” of turning to “Ping An Good Doctor” whenever health issues or questions arise, thereby enhancing user stickiness to the platform. This approach aligns with Ping An Good Doctor’s slogan: “For medical consultations, go to Ping An Good Doctor.”

In June 2014, Ping An fully acquired Kuaiyijie, a B2B platform holding an Internet Drug Transaction Service License. It is reported that its B2C platform is also under development. Ping An plans to provide drug sales and home delivery services centered on medical prescriptions and health management, leveraging its B2C retail network, direct-from-manufacturer sales channels, and O2O physical terminal networks. Meanwhile, Ping An Healthcare previously established a strategic partnership with Samsung Electronics. Through in-depth collaboration between Good Doctor Online (Ping An Good Doctor) and S-Health, the two companies are jointly entering the digital health management market. Good Doctor Online’s family doctor services are also planned to be integrated into Samsung’s upcoming latest smartphones, the Galaxy S6 and S6 edge, offering daily health management consultations to Samsung mobile users.