CallDoctor Files IPO Prospectus: Empowering Small Hospitals with On-Demand Specialist Access

After two years of sustained momentum, internet healthcare is showing a trend toward deeper development, with more physicians and hospital executives joining the entrepreneurial wave. This issue of VCBeat features the story of a hospital administrator from a military medical university who embarked on an entrepreneurial journey.

Over the past two years, most internet healthcare projects have focused on directly addressing patients’ pain points in medical consultations. The underlying logic has largely been to optimize the care journey across pre-consultation, during-consultation, and post-consultation stages, with relatively little impact on hospitals’ own industrial structures. This is not due to a lack of intent, but rather because hospitals present high barriers that ordinary internet-based initiatives cannot easily overcome.The CEO Who Emerged from the Military 

The person on the far right is Lin Peixin, who has just taken off his military uniform.

The protagonist of our report, Lin Peixin (Mr. Lin), graduated from the Third Military Medical University (hereinafter referred to as TMMU) and subsequently joined the university’s administrative office as a manager. TMMU operates three affiliated hospitals—Southwest Hospital, Xinqiao Hospital, and Daping Hospital—which are renowned throughout Southwest China and across the country, with annual revenues exceeding RMB 10 billion.

Mr. Lin pursued studies in Clinical Medicine and Public Health Administration, earning a master’s degree. He currently works in a department primarily responsible for the medical management of three affiliated hospitals. During his tenure, he has conducted extensive explorations in hospital management reform. Compared with physicians, he adopts a more macroscopic perspective, focusing on the overall strategic landscape of the hospital—identifying its strengths and weaknesses, pinpointing issues within its management structure, and devising solutions to address them.

Meanwhile, due to his professional connections and Sir Lin’s sociable nature, he has engaged with a wide range of hospitals. Privately, he has consistently maintained an ongoing “side business”: helping smaller hospitals recruit renowned physicians.

“For years, I have been continuously approached by both private and public hospitals—including many top-tier Grade 3A public institutions—seeking my assistance in connecting them with specialist physicians. Numerous patients, through friends and personal networks, have asked me to help secure appointments with experts or hospital beds; among them are many local government officials. Patients would rather leverage personal connections, incur social debts, and travel long distances to seek care at our major hospitals than receive treatment locally, primarily due to a lack of trust in primary-care facilities. However, the number of people I can assist through such means is very limited,” Mr. Lin told VCBeat.

Mr. Lin had been contemplating how to leverage his professional expertise and resource advantages to start a business. “In 2012, I wanted to establish a physician brokerage firm in Chongqing, but the policy on physician practice was not yet open there at the time.” In 2013, when the national policy allowing physicians to practice at multiple sites was introduced, Mr. Lin’s entrepreneurial direction became clear.

The explosive growth of internet healthcare in 2014 revealed to him a path for scaling up his existing “business.” Mr. Lin identified an entry point that addressed the pain points of hospitals, doctors, and patients alike, complete with a clear revenue model. At that time, when neither Uber nor Didi Doctor existed, he helped dozens of hospitals contact hundreds of physicians via telephone. Mr. Lin’s vision was to migrate these existing rigid demands from telephone-based services to the internet, thereby addressing broader and more substantial needs.

In July 2015, he began assembling the founding team. In August, Sir Lin officially established San Yi Information Technology Co., Ltd. in Shenzhen, initiating the development of the “Call a Doctor” product, whose core function is to match hospitals at Tier 3 and below with physicians who meet their medical needs. However, San Yi’s ambitions extend beyond this scope.Addressing Pain Points Should Not Start Directly with PatientsMr. Lin is well aware that patients lack the ability to accurately describe their conditions and evaluate physicians. The optimal approach is for patients to be admitted to the nearest hospital; if the facility cannot provide adequate diagnosis or treatment, the hospital should arrange for the most suitable specialist to provide on-site support, rather than transferring the patient and subjecting them to the difficulties of securing appointments and waiting for inpatient beds. This approach effectively facilitates tiered diagnosis and treatment.

“Call a Doctor” is characterized primarily by the establishment of a hospital-based order dispatch system, thereby prioritizing solutions for the buyer’s market.

Hospitals can more easily engage physicians from Grade 3A hospitals. On one hand, this helps retain patients locally, thereby increasing the hospital’s operational revenue, while patients benefit from the highest medical insurance reimbursement rates by receiving care locally. On the other hand, it contributes to enhancing the hospital’s medical technical capabilities, thus attracting a larger patient volume.

Guided by this logic, Mr. Lin’s first step in his entrepreneurial venture was to establish connections with hospitals. Leveraging years of prior collaboration with hospitals across China, he readily secured his initial cohort of 102 seed hospitals, primarily located in Chongqing, Beijing, and Guangdong. These institutions had previously had their needs addressed through Mr. Lin’s direct communication, thereby fostering relationships built on mutual trust. Subsequently, he rapidly partnered with 1,028 attending physicians and above from Grade A tertiary hospitals, most of whom had also engaged in previous business interactions. In the main urban districts of Chongqing, it is now possible for specialists to arrive within two hours of a hospital placing an order.

Within two months of the company’s establishment, as of October 20, the hospital had successfully fulfilled 58 orders for outpatient visits, surgeries, and consultations placed via telephone. This highlights a key distinction between Mr. Lin and many other internet entrepreneurs: before the product was even launched, substantial product validation and successful case studies had already been achieved through offline operations.Understanding “Call a Doctor”It is now time to discuss what kind of product “Call a Doctor” actually is. After addressing the payer and provider sides, the remaining task is to establish connectivity. This scenario closely resembles the on-demand ride-hailing model, where hospitals post requests and physicians compete to accept them. However, given that healthcare is a highly regulated industry, the criteria for physicians accepting these requests are exceptionally stringent.

This is the hospital order dispatch page. Note that not all doctors can claim these orders. When issuing an order, the hospital specifies requirements such as the required medical specialty, physician rank, location, and time. Only physicians who meet these criteria will see the order.

After the physician successfully accepts the case, both parties enter the pre-consultation communication phase, which can be conducted either online or via telephone. The primary objective of this phase is for the physician to fully acquire the necessary patient information prior to on-site collaboration, thereby determining the diagnosis and treatment plan and informing the hospital of the preparations required in advance. This constitutes professional communication between peers.

The overarching logic of the product is to streamline collaboration between hospitals and physicians. The first version of the “Call a Doctor” app is scheduled for launch on major Android app platforms in November.Distinction from CompetitorsCurrently, there are numerous models for collaboration between hospitals and physicians on the market, including physician groups operating within or outside the public healthcare system, platforms featuring renowned surgeons performing procedures, and a substantial number of physician brokerage services.

“Call a Doctor” follows a fundamentally different path. First, in terms of its nature, it is a platform serving hospitals and physicians, where both parties can freely post and accept orders without any subordinate relationship to the platform, which provides safeguards for users. Second, it protects the professional privacy of physician users; personal information of both parties is only visible after cooperation is confirmed. Third, by effectively leveraging the advantages of the internet, this model can be rapidly scaled across China.

Patient access will not be enabled in the initial phase, as patients generally lack the expertise to evaluate physicians. The requirements put forth by hospitals are essentially designed to meet patient needs. Collaboration and communication between hospitals and physicians within the same professional field represent the most precise and efficient approach to serving patients and addressing their pain points.

Furthermore, regarding the doctor-patient relationship and insurance issues, which are of widespread concern, Sir Lin has chosen a rather distinctive approach. When most physician groups collaborate with hospitals, including for various visiting surgical procedures ("flying knife" surgeries), the hospital assumes liability for medical malpractice; in contrast, the platform that engages the physicians bears such responsibility.

Amid the widespread public discourse on doctor-patient conflicts, Sir Lin’s approach appears remarkably bold. Over the past several years, a key aspect of his work has been to annually organize the evaluation of new clinical technologies across China and manage medical dispute resolution at affiliated hospitals, thereby accumulating extensive resources of medical experts from various specialties nationwide and gaining substantial experience in handling medical disputes.

“To put it more clearly, ‘medical malpractice is a very low-probability event, and society tends to exaggerate its prevalence,’” Mr. Lin told VCBeat. Therefore, the solution he adopted was to partner with professional institutions to establish an in-house insurance fund. Mr. Lin believes this approach also alleviates the concerns of hospitals and physicians.

Therefore, the platform’s response is as follows: In the event of a medical incident, the company’s insurance and legal teams, along with a third-party medical appraisal committee, will promptly arrive on-site to thoroughly investigate the details of the incident. They will cooperate with the healthcare facility in communicating and negotiating with the patient and their family to minimize the impact of the incident. If it is determined that the incident was caused by physician error, the platform will assume liability for compensation.

What sets Mr. Lin apart from many other entrepreneurs in the internet healthcare sector is his background as a hospital administrator, which gives him a deeper understanding of every operational link within hospitals. His classmates and fellow alumni are spread across China, with many already serving as hospital directors or senior management. When he embarked on his entrepreneurial journey, his mentor even placed considerable pressure on him, as many seniors hoped that he, being young and vigorous, would leverage internet-based approaches to drive hospital optimization.

VCBeat previously interviewed Mr. Wang Weidong, former president of Xinqiao Hospital. As a senior leader in a military hospital, he grew the hospital’s annual revenue from hundreds of millions to over RMB 3 billion. Since stepping down, Mr. Wang has been invited by various emerging technology firms and internet companies to participate in academic forums. With a deep understanding of hospital challenges and high expectations for the internet sector, he offered extensive advice to entrepreneurs like Sir Lin, emphasizing one core principle: respect the operational logic of hospitals, which requires promotion by professionals with substantial industry expertise.

In addition, the reporter interviewed Professor Chen Junguo, a doctoral supervisor at the Medical Education Research Office of the Third Military Medical University. He expressed strong support for hospital management’s initiatives in internet-based healthcare, particularly noting that such efforts could yield significant results in enhancing physicians’ professional competence and addressing the current imbalance in medical resource distribution. From an educational perspective, Professor Chen also emphasized his hope that future medical students will make better use of the internet to pursue more promising career paths, thereby fostering greater public confidence in the healthcare industry. Regarding Mr. Lin’s project, Professor Chen spoke highly of the value of “Call-a-Doctor” services in balancing medical resources and expressed great optimism about the project’s prospects.Profit Model and Financing StatusFor Sir Lin, profitability itself is not the issue; the challenge lies in leveraging the internet to achieve rapid scale. He had already resolved the profitability question many years ago.

What is rather unusual is that while everyone was concerned about doctor-patient issues, Sir Lin included his own insurance as one of the profit points, demonstrating his confidence in risk control for doctor-patient relationships.

Although hailing from the hospital sector, Mr. Lin places significant emphasis on internet-centric strategies. His plan is to ensure an optimal experience for hospitals and physicians, building upon the existing revenue streams of current products. In the medium term, he intends to expand into the patient-facing market to capture greater profit opportunities.

Regarding financing, Mr. Lin and his team initially adopted a self-funded approach, primarily allocating resources to technology development, team building, and resource expansion. Currently, Mr. Lin is also in discussions with multiple institutions regarding potential collaborations.

Text | Fei Libo