Chunyu Doctor Founder Zhang Rui Declares the Onset of Mobile Healthcare Battle at Beijing Health Big Data Summit

On January 16, the 2016 China Smart Healthcare Development Forum and Medical Health Big Data Summit was grandly held at the Nanyueyuan Hotel in Beijing. The event was hosted by the Internet Healthcare Entrepreneurship Alliance, organized by Beijing Gaoshibo Cultural Communication Co., Ltd., and exclusively sponsored by Daotian Technology Co., Ltd. The forum received support from the Smart Healthcare Branch of the China National Health Industry Enterprise Management Association and the Sports and Health Science Research Center of Tsinghua University. It was jointly covered by media partners including Contemporary Physicians, Medical Circle, Health News Network, Jinghua Times, Sohu.com, Sina.com, and VCBeat.

More than 500 participants attended the forum, including government officials such as Dou Xizhao, Secretary of the Party Committee and Secretary of the Commission for Discipline Inspection of the former National Health and Family Planning Commission (NHFPC) and President of the China Association of Health Industry and Enterprise Management; Wang Caiyou, Deputy Director of the Statistical Information Center of the NHFPC; Dai Tao, Deputy Director of the Medical and Health Science and Technology Development Research Center of the NHFPC and Chairman of the Medical Information Branch of the Chinese Medical Association; Liu Dangjun, Executive Vice President and Secretary-General of the Smart Healthcare Branch of the China Association of Health Industry and Enterprise Management; and Lou Chao, Executive Deputy Secretary-General of the Smart Healthcare Branch of the China Association of Health Industry and Enterprise Management. Also in attendance were experts and scholars such as Professor Li Qi, Director of the Peking University Smart City Research Center; Professor Zhang Bing, Director of the Tsinghua University Sports and Health Science Research Center; and Professor Huang Anpeng from the School of Electronics Engineering and Computer Science at Peking University. Mobile healthcare entrepreneurs present included Zhang Rui, Founder of Chunyu Yisheng (Spring Rain Doctor); Zhang Bo, Chairman of Datian Technology; Zhang Yusheng, Founder of Apricot Forest; Chen Qirui, Founder of DXY.cn (Medical World); Sun Hongtao, Founder of Dajia Yilian; and Li Datao, Founder of VCBeat. A large number of physicians and media representatives also participated.

At the summit, numerous high-profile guests shared their insightful perspectives. As a leading enterprise in the mobile health sector, Zhang Rui, founder of Chunyu Yisheng (Spring Rain Doctor), shared his views on the landscape of the mobile health industry in 2016. Zhang stated bluntly that a fierce battle for doctors would unfold over the next year, and that the war in mobile health had only just begun.

Zhang Rui has expressed clear opposition to the currently popular internet notion of “disrupting healthcare.” He argues that a more appropriate concept is “restructuring healthcare,” which involves leveraging internet-based approaches to reconfigure key components—including hospitals, physicians, patients, pharmaceuticals, and health insurance—thereby shortening transaction pathways across the entire healthcare process and enabling better optimization and integration of patient flows, financial flows, and information flows within the healthcare system.

The core of healthcare restructuring lies neither in hospitals nor in patients, but in physicians. Zhang Rui believes that physicians are the core resource of the entire healthcare system, and how to maximize their potential is the most critical issue in reshaping the healthcare system.

Currently, doctors are confronted with two major challenges: institutional constraints and professional development. This is precisely where internet healthcare can make a significant impact. Zhang Rui asserts that the digital transformation of physicians’ professional lives will become the trend in 2016.

To unlock the value of doctors, the most critical resource, Zhang Rui announced that the Chunyu platform would enable over 100 physicians to earn annual salaries exceeding one million yuan in 2016. Zhang revealed that many doctors on the Chunyu platform had already approached this six-figure threshold in 2015, making the target for the current year readily achievable.

In the second half of 2015, some negative public opinion circulated about Chunyu, such as rumors of its bankruptcy and debates over its business model. Zhang Rui believed that this war of words was merely a gentle prelude to the real battle that would begin in 2016.

In 2015, the mobile health market was still an untapped frontier, with companies remaining small in scale and focused on carving out their own territories, leaving no time for head-to-head competition.

However, Zhang Rui believes that the major battle in mobile healthcare will truly begin in 2016. The entire industry will shift from carving out untapped markets in 2015 to competing for existing market share, with the focus of competition centering on the most core resource in the healthcare sector—physicians.

Zhang Rui confidently asserted that the industry would enter a phase of heavy spending to capture market share in 2016, with subsidy wars for physicians and the scramble for physician resources becoming the focal points of competition.

Will the mobile health industry in 2016 shift from the “hundred flowers blooming” landscape of 2015 to head-to-head battles and subsidy wars akin to those between Didi and Kuaidi in previous years? Will it usher in a dramatic era of coopetition in the mobile health sector? All this remains uncertain, and VCBeat will witness with you the eventful year of 2016.