Kan Zhongyi: Returning to Traditional Chinese Medicine with a Medical-Grade Digital Platform

"Kan Zhongyi" is an application designed to address sub-health issues, providing users with access to Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioners and offering comprehensive tracking of treatment outcomes. Its founder, Luo Feng, told VCBeat that "Kan Zhongyi" aims to create a TCM product that truly meets medical-grade standards, with the internet serving merely as a means and platform for disseminating TCM.

Luo Feng comes from a family with a long tradition of practicing Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM). He grew up in the backyard of his family’s herbal pharmacy. As Luo Feng himself put it, “Back then, I fell asleep to the scent of TCM herbs, and my toys were even dried geckos used in traditional remedies.” He graduated from Beihang University while concurrently pursuing a second degree at Beijing University of Chinese Medicine. After graduation, his family hoped he would take over their Sheng Ren Ji Fang TCM Clinic. “I was somewhat rebellious at the time; I deliberately did the opposite of what my family asked me to do. I had a passion for the internet, so most of my jobs after graduation were related to the internet sector.”

In 2015, internet-based startups in the field of Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) began to emerge. When Luo Feng and his friends decided to launch their venture, projects such as Dongri TCM and Yi TCM had already been operating for some time. “Among these internet-driven TCM startups, I place greater emphasis on the essential ‘medical’ nature of TCM.”

Leveraging the Internet to Establish "Doctor-Patient" Relationships in Traditional Chinese Medicine

As an offline traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) medical institution, Sheng Ren Ji Fang holds TCM operational qualifications and operates under the regulatory framework for TCM medical institutions. Most of its physicians come from formal medical institutions affiliated with the National Health and Family Planning Commission. Currently, nearly 300 licensed TCM practitioners in Beijing are affiliated with this institution.

At the outset of his venture, Luo Feng leveraged this advantage to set the goal of developing medical-grade products for “TCM consultations.” In his view, existing tui na and massage products on the market are not in the same category as TCM consultation services. “We are targeting the more specialized and higher-barrier TCM medical market.”

In China, most users are unable to distinguish between traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) medical treatments and massage-based wellness services. Luo Feng explained that TCM wellness services were granted a special license by the former Ministry of Health, known as the Social Wellness License. This license imposes strict limitations on practitioners and their techniques, summarized by one rule: no breaking of the skin. In contrast, deeper TCM therapies such as acupuncture require a medical practice qualification issued by the National Health and Family Planning Commission.

“In 2014, the market size for traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) physiotherapy in Beijing was only around RMB 4–5 billion. In contrast, the wellness and healthcare market reached RMB 7–8 billion, nearly twice the size of the TCM physiotherapy market. The segment encroaching on the TCM physiotherapy market was not Western medicine, but rather health-focused massage services, which are most similar to it,” Luo Feng told VCBeat. He pointed out that the current challenge facing Western medicine lies in strained doctor-patient relationships caused by scarce medical resources, whereas the issue confronting TCM is the “non-existent doctor-patient relationship” resulting from a large number of underutilized TCM practitioners.

Luo Feng introduced that in 2014, there were 19,000 registered licensed TCM practitioners in Beijing, but only 4,000 were actually practicing. Most young TCM practitioners, despite holding practicing physician certificates, were reluctant to work in their field due to high employment pressure and low income.

The goal of Kan Zhongyi is to connect TCM resources with individuals seeking TCM physical therapy, leveraging the rapid dissemination capabilities of the internet to help TCM practitioners acquire more patients.

Before developing this product, the Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) team conducted a random street interview. Among the 100 passersby interviewed, 70 responded to the team’s prepared questions. “Only 20 of them had ever consulted a TCM practitioner. The rest, who had never experienced TCM, consistently spoke negatively about it. I find it puzzling: how did they conclude that TCM is ineffective without ever having tried it?”

Luo Feng believes that many people misunderstand traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), dismissing it as ineffective without ever having tried it. To address this, Luo Feng’s approach is to “simply let you give it a try.”

“For traditional Chinese medicine (TCM), if 10 patients visit a regular outpatient clinic, approximately six of them will return for follow-up or repeated consultations,” Luo Feng told VCBeat. He explained that if six out of 10 patients come back, then 60 out of 100 would do the same. Therefore, to increase the number of TCM patients, it is only necessary to boost the visibility of TCM and encourage more people to try it.

Products under the “See a TCM Practitioner” category use appointment booking for TCM consultations as the entry point to build a mobile platform for traditional Chinese medicine diagnosis and treatment.

Currently, the Kan Zhongyi platform has amassed over 4,600 paying users, with an average of more than 200 transactions completed daily. “Once a user becomes a paying customer, they will make repeat purchases; each user utilizes our product at least twice a week,” introduced Luo Feng. The Kan Zhongyi product was launched on July 20. Subsidies were provided to users in August, but these were discontinued in September, by which time the product had already achieved break-even.

“To my surprise, the conversion rate for Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) remains high on internet platforms.” In Luo Feng’s view, the internet serves as a tool for the rapid dissemination of TCM.

Not 020: Home Visits Are a Traditional Practice in TCM

“Although it also combines traditional services with the internet, Luo Feng believes that TCM consultation is not an O2O product. ‘TCM has a long-standing tradition of home visits for treatment; we are simply returning to this tradition and preserving the original nature of the process of seeking medical advice and treatment.’”

The key difference between the doctor-patient relationship and ordinary consumer transactions lies in the fact that seeking medical care is an inelastic demand. Influenced by factors such as geography and individual psychology, it has low substitutability, which constitutes a unique characteristic of internet-based home healthcare services. Luo Feng believes that reviving the traditional practice of house calls in Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) addresses a significant need. Home visits and providing treatment at patients’ homes are, in fact, important diagnostic methods in TCM. “In ancient times, TCM practitioners conducting house calls could assess the humidity levels in a patient’s home simply by observing their furniture, and evaluate indoor ventilation by smelling the air. Even today, I prefer making house calls because examining the contents of a patient’s refrigerator allows me to gauge their sub-health status.”

All licensed TCM practitioners on the platform provide traditional diagnostic services based on inspection, auscultation and olfaction, inquiry, and pulse-taking. They also offer lifestyle recommendations tailored to individual circumstances; for instance, if a patient’s living space is excessively humid, the practitioner may advise increasing ventilation by opening windows more frequently.

Luo Feng stated that the platform has been gradually onboarding more internal medicine physicians with prescription privileges. Currently, the TCM consultation platform has aggregated over 300 traditional Chinese medicine practitioners, who are already earning monthly incomes exceeding RMB 10,000 through basic diagnostic and treatment services. With the addition of herbal decoctions and course-based treatment packages, their income would reach a significantly higher level.

Kan Zhongyi’s physician recruitment process is highly rigorous. Each physician must pass credential verification, technical assessments, theoretical examinations, pilot user trials, and regional testing before signing a contract. Additionally, the platform has established a customer service mechanism whereby follow-up visits with both the physician and the patient are completed within two hours after each consultation.

Currently, users primarily access the "Kan Zhongyi" (See a TCM Doctor) service by searching for its official WeChat account and entering the H5 page to make appointments. Its dedicated mobile app is also set to launch soon. Upon logging in, users first complete a questionnaire to receive a report on their body constitution. They can then choose from five therapeutic modalities—tui na (therapeutic massage), cupping, acupuncture, gua sha (scraping therapy), and moxibustion—and book an appointment with a suitable Traditional Chinese Medicine (TCM) practitioner. Physicians review the patient’s body constitution report to assess whether the symptoms are appropriate for treatment, thereby deciding whether to accept the appointment request.

The platform also features a standardized user management system. Upon completion of the entire consultation service, users can provide online evaluations of the physician’s performance. Additionally, the company conducts telephone follow-ups with 100% of users, covering aspects such as the physician’s treatment techniques, interpersonal communication, and recommendations.

In the future, the company will provide its services to individual users and enterprises, enter communities to promote private physician and wellness doctor services, and gradually launch its platform in other cities with a strong traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) culture.

In the office of Kan Zhongyi, employees all wear T-shirts printed with the “Kan Zhongyi” logo. The three Chinese characters for “Kan Zhongyi” are rendered in the Tengfei Xiangyun typeface. Luo Feng noted that this font closely resembles oracle bone script and the handwriting found on ancient medical prescriptions, thereby better conveying the strong “traditional Chinese medicine” essence of the product.

Currently, the Kan Zhongyi team consists of 18 members. It secured an angel-round investment of RMB 8 million from the “Top Academy” incubator and is currently seeking Series A financing.