Domei XiaoYi Health Assistant Files IPO Prospectus: Pioneering AI-Powered Healthcare Navigation Platform

On January 4, 2016, Duomei Xiaoyi released the latest version, featuring a wide range of health services and products.

Duomei Xiaoyi is an AI-powered health assistant that was officially launched on May 8, 2015, after four years of research and development. At its inception, the product’s core functionality was purely AI-driven consultation. On November 18 of the same year, Duomei Xiaoyi released a version update that incorporated moderate human intervention and partially closed-loop services (such as appointment registration). To date, the product has amassed a total user base of 220,000.

It is understood that the latest version of Duomei Xiaoyi has added features such as voice interaction, historical query records, and an intelligent timeline, in addition to pure text-based communication. In terms of services, Duomei Xiaoyi has evolved from a single-function robotic doctor focused on consultations into an all-around health service robotic doctor, providing comprehensive health assistant services including medical consultations, appointment registration, medication purchase, accompanied medical visits, cosmetic surgery and dermatology, and beauty, maternal, and infant care.

According to Yu Guo, founder and CEO of Beijing Duomei Shijie Network Technology Co., Ltd., version 2.0 of “Duomei Xiaoyi” was officially launched on January 4, 2016. Duomei Xiaoyi will offer a wider range of health services and product resources, with more than 100 types of health service items available.

The product is named “Duomei Xiaoyi,” reflecting Yu Guo’s expectations for it. She explained that “Duomei Xiaoyi” signifies a “little Yi” embodying “how wonderful,” with “Yi” being a homophone for “medicine.” Duomei Xiaoyi serves as a health assistant for clients, encompassing medical services provided by doctors. The original intention behind developing this product was to help Chinese patients partially address the difficulty of accessing medical care.

Data shows that in 2014, there were a total of 7.8 billion hospital registrations in China, including 1.56 billion advance appointment registrations, 1.1 billion scheduled outpatient visits, and 870 million registrations driven by patients’ pre-consultation needs. Yu Guo stated that such a large volume of pre-consultation inquiries—870 million cases—can only be addressed through artificial intelligence, eliminating the need to waste doctors’ time answering these questions. Although many people have begun to use online platforms to consult about their conditions, the reality is that users are uncertain about the accuracy of the information they find. If patients seek advice from doctors online, most physicians neither have the time nor the willingness to provide free responses, and even if they do respond, immediate replies are unlikely.

Perception System, Cognitive System, and Self-Learning System collectively constitute

Yu Gu believes that for robotic health assistants, there is no difference between serving one customer and serving ten million. Connecting users with downstream health services through robotic health assistants will become the next major trend and represents the direction of market development.

“Duomei Xiaoyi” is highly complex in its design and development, comprising three systems: a perception system, a cognitive system, and a self-learning system. Currently, all three systems leverage cutting-edge technologies at the forefront of artificial intelligence. The perception system is built on the principles and techniques of “deep learning.” There are currently no commercially mature products on the market that apply “deep learning” technology, and there is a particular void in medical applications. Furthermore, the evidence-based medicine deduction algorithms employed by the cognitive system represent an area with substantial room for exploration.

Furthermore, Duomei Xiaoyi’s self-learning system endows it with robust autonomous learning capabilities. It is understood that Duomei Xiaoyi continuously refines its learning processes on a daily basis, becoming increasingly intelligent over time. After years of knowledge accumulation, Xiaoyi has built a knowledge base comprising millions of entries, including medical textbooks, dictionaries, literature, clinical expertise from physicians, and encyclopedias. Its knowledge level is now equivalent to that of a physician with five years of professional experience.

Duomei Xiaoyi Interface

The self-learning capabilities of Duomei Xiaoyi primarily consist of several components: automatically identifying unperceived knowledge points by extracting customer questions that cannot be answered; analyzing knowledge point categories to distinguish between rule-based and data-related issues; for rule-based issues, assisting in the generation and adjustment of computational rules; for data-related issues, automatically retrieving data results that meet specified criteria; and performing cross-verification with relevant third-party systems, supplemented by manual review and confirmation.

Through the aforementioned self-learning system mechanisms, Duomei Xiaoyi can fully ensure the accuracy of its self-learning knowledge base.

It is understood that the product has already applied for and obtained the Chinese Software Copyright Certificate, with patents currently under application.

Revenue Model: Charges can be levied on both B-side and C-side customers.

Regarding the profitability model, Yu Guo stated that although the company is not currently profitable, the team has identified a robust profitability model and plans to achieve profitability by early 2017.

Duomei Xiaoyi’s revenue model consists of two components: on one hand, it opens its API to business clients and shares revenue with B-side service providers; on the other hand, it charges VIP fees to deliver more premium, precise, concierge-style health assistant services when users have higher-end needs.

Yu Guo stated that Duomei Xiaoyi has a broad range of partners, including third-party health service providers such as appointment registration, medication purchase, medical accompaniment, plastic surgery, beauty treatments, and maternal and infant care. The platform can collaborate with mobile device manufacturers to be pre-configured and pre-installed on smartphones of any brand, thereby facilitating use by the wider mobile user base, enhancing user experience, increasing stickiness, and helping device manufacturers tag their users to better understand user attributes.

According to Yu Guo, the five major service modules newly added in the latest product version have each established collaborations with different medical and healthcare institutions.

In terms of appointment registration, there are more than 10 partner institutions, including 114, Tianyi, and Qu Hospital, covering 80% of online appointment slots across China. In the field of plastic surgery and aesthetics, the partner is Gengmei. For maternal and infant care products, partners include Vipshop, Shangpin.com, and Haoyunbang. For medical escort services, Duomei Xiaoyi has collaborated with Anxin Medical Escort. In pharmaceutical retail, partners include Hao Yaoshi and JD Daojia. Yu Guo told VCBeat that as the volume of C-end customers continues to grow, second and third batches of downstream resource integrations will follow.

While generating profits, Duomei Xiaoyi has also identified cost-saving measures suited to its operations. Currently, Duomei Xiaoyi robots handle 70–80% of service requests, with the remaining 20–30% managed by human customer service representatives. This hybrid model, combining robotic services with appropriate human support, ensures round-the-clock availability for users while simultaneously reducing labor costs.

Yu Guo stated that if artificial intelligence capabilities are insufficient, the volume of manual customer service will increase, leading to a significant rise in costs and making it difficult to generate profits.

In an interview with reporters, Yu Guo stated, “The birth of ‘Duomei Xiaoyi’ is a commercial product that aligns with the demands of the times in the development of China’s healthcare industry.”

After graduating from the University of Toronto in Canada in 2010, Yu Guo returned to China to start his own business and has been doing so ever since. The Duomei Xiaoyi team currently consists of 30 members, primarily young professionals born in the 1980s and 1990s, spanning departments such as technology development, product planning and design, medicine, and business operations.

Yu Guo’s Speech at the Duomei Xiaoyi Launch Event

Yu Guo stated that the team at Duomei Xiaoyi has two distinguishing features: First, it possesses strong technical capabilities. The Product Director, a friend of Yu Guo, is a serial entrepreneur who has developed several internet products and secured angel-round financing. The Technical Director previously served as a Senior Engineer at Oracle and Ku6, bringing extensive experience in artificial intelligence and big data system architecture. Second, the company boasts abundant medical resources and has established strategic collaborations with numerous hospitals and medical institutions. Additionally, the Medical Director is a clinician with 15 years of experience, while the CFO previously managed equity investments at JD Finance.

It is reported that by the end of 2015, Duomei Vision had completed tens of millions of RMB in angel and pre-A round financing. Yu Guo revealed that Duomei Vision would officially launch its Series A financing after New Year’s Day 2016.

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