Key Choice Post-Diagnosis Submits IPO Filing Amid Surge in Digital Follow-Up Care Market

Recently, a number of mobile health startups specializing in follow-up care and patient monitoring, including Maidou Suifang, Tiexin Yisheng, and Yi Suizhen, have successively announced the completion of their Series A financing rounds, emerging as a standout trend in the industry.

Whether referred to as follow-up visits or by any other name, there is a more precise concept: the post-consultation domain. In fact, this recent trend in the capital market may indicate that the model centered on lightweight pre-consultation inquiries is gradually falling out of favor, while the online post-consultation market—though seemingly more challenging to operate—has gained greater attention due to its ability to firmly capture demand.

The Post-Diagnosis Market Is Gradually Heating Up

Recently, a set of news items on VCBeat caught the author’s attention, roughly including the following:

◆ MaiDou Follow-up announced that it has completed a $10 million Series A financing round, led by China Investment and Finance Fund, on the occasion of its first anniversary. Since its launch in November 2014, MaiDou Follow-up has accumulated over 6,000 physician users, positioning itself to serve doctors and improve their work efficiency.

◆Zhongkang Shangde (Beijing) Co., Ltd. announced that it will secure $10 million in financing. The company’s flagship product is “Tie Xin Yi Sheng” (Caring Doctor), a mobile app for health management services based on vertical social networking, which serves as a tool for physicians to conduct patient follow-ups and ongoing consultations.

◆ Yi Suizhen, a mobile cloud-based follow-up platform for oncology, has secured RMB 20 million in Series A financing. According to insiders, the platform currently has tens of thousands of registered patients and over 10,000 doctors, with more than 1,000 daily active physicians. Yi Suizhen focuses exclusively on the oncology niche, providing follow-up care services to hospitals, physicians, and patients.

Although these signals are somewhat fragmented, the aggregated message is clear: post-consultation activities and needs—such as follow-up visits and post-diagnosis care that occur after doctors and patients complete offline clinical encounters—have become a key focus for investors in the mobile health industry.

In fact, whether referring to follow-up visits, longitudinal follow-ups, or post-treatment care, these concepts are more aptly and accurately categorized under the “post-consultation market.” Within this market, some players specialize in providing physicians with scientific tools for post-consultation management, while others focus on addressing patients’ needs for post-consultation counseling by connecting doctors and patients, while also offering research-oriented functionalities such as follow-up data collection. In essence, the common characteristic of these startups is leveraging mobile internet technologies to build doctor–patient communication platforms for the post-consultation and post-hospitalization phases, helping physicians accumulate target patient populations and continuously collect clinical data, while enabling patients to access ongoing post-consultation services more conveniently.

Almond Doctor and Yihu Doctor, both gaining increasing recognition within the industry, also focus primarily on the post-consultation market. Both companies were founded by seasoned entrepreneurs, with the key distinction lying in their founders’ backgrounds: one has a medical background, while the other comes from the internet sector. The efforts of these two enterprises have significantly contributed to the growing prominence and widespread adoption of the post-consultation care concept, playing a substantial role in raising awareness. Public data shows that Almond Doctor already has tens of thousands of registered physicians, while Yihu Doctor’s registered physician base has reached the 100,000 level.

“What Can the ‘Uber of Healthcare’ Teach Us?”

In fact, although the post-consultation market and the pre-consultation/light consultation sector represent different stages in the healthcare delivery process, the competitive relationship between them outweighs their cooperative one. Currently, there is a global debate over whether telemedicine, or internet-based healthcare, should commence at which specific node. This debate is not merely technical but also involves jurisprudential considerations and the selection of solution frameworks.

A compelling testament to the post-consultation market’s favor among capital investors is the recent successful initial public offering (IPO) of Teladoc, the largest online healthcare platform in the United States. In fact, the more than decade-long, stumbling journey to IPO for this online healthcare platform, founded in the early 21st century, was largely attributable to its legal and regulatory disputes with the U.S. federal government and various state authorities. The company can be regarded as the “Uber” of the mobile health sector, continually challenging existing industry regulations and order. Ultimately, what helped it gain recognition within the medical community was its de facto acceptance of a conceptual distinction established by the Texas Medical Board, where its headquarters in Dallas is located: “Only physicians who have previously had face-to-face contact with a patient are qualified to consult with that patient via telecommunication technologies.”

In fact, this concept can be regarded as the core definition of telemedicine in Obama’s new healthcare reform bill, which may explain why the maverick Teladoc ultimately gained favor on Wall Street—it embraced this definition.

This concept has also inspired domestic post-diagnosis healthcare enterprises. For instance, Ma Haiping, founder of Yihu Doctor, has stated on multiple public occasions that Yihu Doctor provides services exclusively to patients after outpatient visits or hospital discharge.

Light Consultations Are Dying? Post-Consultation Services Are on the Rise!

This should not be viewed as mere sales rhetoric—in fact, from the author’s perspective, a cohort of mobile health companies that initially rose to prominence through “lightweight consultations” is gradually distancing itself from this concept.

“Light consultations may seem appealing at first glance. Opening the app, you’ll find numerous specialists, renowned physicians you’ve long admired, and doctors from prestigious hospitals where appointments are notoriously difficult to secure. However, this initial enthusiasm often fades within minutes or hours, as you realize that these doctors cannot address your specific health concerns. Their utmost effort typically consists of urging you to seek an in-person outpatient visit, without which they cannot provide any actionable advice... They may offer some general precautions, but fail to resolve your actual problem,” wrote a seasoned journalist and observer in the mobile healthcare industry.
“In fact, the first wave of mobile health companies that offered lightweight online consultations already identified this issue. As a result, you will see that the industry’s leading players no longer promote this concept; they have either shifted their focus to offline services, opened clinics, or retained lightweight consultations merely as a branding tool while ceasing further resource investment,” said an insider in the mobile healthcare industry. “Companies still clinging to this concept either lack a proper understanding of the industry or are putting on a show for investors who are unfamiliar with it.”

The primary reason why light consultations encounter such difficulties is that, from a medical perspective, they cannot provide qualitative and quantitative diagnoses for patients' conditions; from a business perspective, they fail to identify, let alone pinpoint, patient needs.

This concept, like many once-viral internet buzzwords, is dying out.

In contrast, the efforts of companies such as Xingren Doctor, Maidou, and Yi Suizhen began offline, which appears to align more closely with the definition of O2O (Online-to-Offline): without an offline presence, there is no online component.

In fact, integrating offline and online operations is clearly more challenging than simply establishing internet-based connections. The latter is straightforward, easily replicable, and can generate impressive data and appealing performance metrics. However, without diligently developing offline resources and merely reselling existing ones—a transaction anyone can attempt but no one can sustainably succeed in, given the dominance of BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent)—such an approach is doomed to fail.

The author believes that the post-consultation market will prove its value over a long period in the future—perhaps 20 years or more. We cannot rely solely on the internet for diagnosis and qualitative/quantitative assessment. Most doctors still work within public healthcare institutions and are not in a hurry to leave their current environment; rather, they need better tools to connect with patients. These tools can not only address post-consultation inquiries but also achieve follow-up and research goals that were unattainable for their predecessors. If a renowned specialist were willing to provide a free consultation in exchange for your participation in follow-up visits and research over a certain period (while also treating your condition and providing medical advice), how many patients would be willing to make such an exchange?

For physicians, post-consultation healthcare enterprises not only provide free and efficient tools for managing patient followers and follow-up software, but also generate substantial income. Data shows that it is not unusual for a single online post-consultation service via Yihu Doctor to cost as much as RMB 300–500. This is because if patients were to receive an entirely equivalent service offline, the cost could range from RMB 3,000 to 5,000.

By Jellyfish Head, with 10 years of internet management experience and 5 years in media, always focused on writing and having traveled half the globe. Currently a practitioner and in-depth observer in the mobile healthcare industry, committed to promoting industry progress, providing deep analysis of industrial patterns, and occasionally revealing insider information.

This article is published by VCBeat with authorization from Jellyfish Head. The views expressed are those of the author alone and do not represent the position of VCBeat.