WeDoctor Group Launches Team-Based Medical Model to Address China's 'Difficulty in Accessing Healthcare'

The concept of “Internet Plus” proposed by Premier Li Keqiang at this year’s Two Sessions has continued to gain momentum, and how to realize the integration of “Internet Plus Healthcare” has become a focal point of public attention.

On March 28, the Centennial Anniversary of the National Medical Journal of China and the High-Tech Medicine Development and Internet Healthcare Summit Forum was held in Shanghai. More than 350 attendees, including academicians from the Chinese Academy of Sciences and the Chinese Academy of Engineering, presidents of renowned hospitals, and top industry experts, engaged in in-depth discussions on the latest frontiers in medicine and internet healthcare.

At the conference, Guahao.com unveiled “We Doctor Group.” VCBeat, as an attending media outlet, participated in the event throughout and conducted an interview with Liao Jieyuan, CEO of Guahao.com.

VCBeat believes that a major problem in China’s current healthcare system is the “difficulty in accessing medical care,” which stems from patients’ exclusive trust in “large hospitals” and “renowned experts.” With this release, Guahao.com’s “Weiyi Group” directly addresses this dilemma, aiming to leverage team-based advantages to solve the healthcare challenge of “difficulty in accessing medical care.”“WeDoctor” and “WeDoctor Group”Simply put, “WeDoctor” is the mobile entry point for Guahao.com, available in two versions—one for patients and one for physicians. It aims to help patients find suitable doctors and assist physicians in optimizing post-consultation patient management. “WeDoctor Group,” on the other hand, is a collaborative network of physicians built upon the WeDoctor platform. Its purpose is to address the dilemma where “senior doctors lack time, while junior doctors lack brand recognition.” By promoting vertical collaboration among physicians across regions, centered on specific diseases (specialties), it seeks to enhance medical service capabilities, foster patient trust in physicians, enable patients to seek care closer to home, and thereby truly realize tiered diagnosis and treatment.

“WeDoctor,” as the mobile internet portal of Guahao.com, has shifted its service focus from tiered triage, appointment registration, out-of-hospital waiting, inquiry of examination and test reports, prescription queries, and in-clinic payment to online consultations, post-diagnosis follow-up, online reconsultations, and patient management, thereby becoming an effective tool and platform for physicians to manage their patients.

In other words, the WeDoctor platform will facilitate the establishment of “authentic doctor-patient relationships” grounded in face-to-face consultations, enabling primary care physicians to gradually assume the role of “family doctors” akin to those in the United States. This approach will strengthen trust and bonds between primary care physicians and patients. Common illnesses and health issues can be managed by these family doctors, who will also coordinate consultations and referrals for more serious or complex conditions.WeDoctor Patient App“How was Micro Medical Group founded and how does it operate?”According to Liao Jieyuan, CEO of Guahao.com, influential and well-known physicians or specialists on the Weiyi provider platform can initiate the formation of collaborative groups. Physicians across China in the same specialty, including village doctors and community health workers at the primary care level, may apply to join. Within these collaborative groups, experts regularly share their experience, case studies, and diagnostic approaches with members. Each member can provide patient care in their capacity as part of the expert team, with all group members jointly serving patients. When primary care physicians encounter patients with common conditions, they can manage them independently; for complex cases, they can initiate video conferences via Weiyi to seek online consultations from other members of the expert group. If a condition is confirmed to be complex, patients can be referred to higher-level hospitals. Video technology is a powerful tool for online follow-up visits, and Guahao.com holds distinct advantages in this area. VCBeat has noted that the founder of Webex, a renowned video conferencing company, was once an angel investor in Guahao.com.WeDoctor Doctor AppWhat Drives Renowned Physicians to Join WeDoctor Group?Liao Jieyuan stated that, building upon the existing practice workflows of physicians, WeDoctor Group has addressed three key pain points: first, those faced by specialists; second, those encountered by primary care physicians; and third, those experienced by the general public. Resolving these three pain points constitutes the primary motivation for physicians to join WeDoctor Group.

Meanwhile, to attract more physicians to join the platform, Guahao.com selected an initial cohort of 5,000 specialists from its pool of over 100,000 experts. In each regional medical center, WeDoctor facilitates the formation of cross-regional, same-specialty expert teams led by these authoritative specialists. Each leading specialist may mentor a collaborative group comprising 30 to 50 physicians, with all communication, consultation, case discussions, and referrals conducted through the WeDoctor platform.

Currently, the effect of guiding the public to seek medical care rationally merely by adjusting the reimbursement ratios of medical insurance is not ideal. The most crucial factor is to ensure that the public believes they can find trustworthy doctors who can solve their problems nearby. Liao Jieyuan stated that Guahao.com once conducted a small-scale experiment in Shanghai, where 15% of specialists from tertiary hospitals were exclusively allocated to community health centers. After a three-month pilot period, the outpatient volume at these community centers increased by 69%. If certain resources, expertise, and brand reputation are decentralized to the primary care level, the trust patients place in primary care physicians and the service capacity of these physicians can be significantly enhanced.

It is reported that Zhang Xiaolong of Tencent, after using WeDoctor, remarked with deep appreciation that the core competency of WeChat lies in fostering authentic social interactions, while the essence of WeDoctor is establishing genuine doctor-patient relationships. Liao Jieyuan firmly believes that all medical practices must be grounded in trust, with the priority being to build trust between doctors and patients. Only on this premise can subsequent services be guaranteed.

At the launch ceremony of “WeDoctor Group,” hospital leaders from institutions including Shanghai Huashan Hospital, Shanghai General Hospital, West China Hospital, and Zhongnan Hospital eagerly requested immediate collaboration with WeDoctor Group to jointly provide comprehensive online-to-offline healthcare services for patients. Liao Jieyuan revealed to VCBeat that the company plans to establish 5,000 expert teams by the end of this year, delivering online medical services to patients across different regions of China.Submission:Liu Qian's Short Commentary: WeDoctor's Low-Key Boldness2014 marked the inaugural year of mobile healthcare. Guahao.com emerged as the biggest dark horse of the previous year. This once unsung workhorse, which had long provided services to hospitals without compensation, was suddenly elevated to a prized asset by Tencent, offering a profound lesson on the strategic value of appointment registration portals. Just as everyone was preoccupied with speculation over how the tech giant would deploy its $100 million investment, Guahao.com recently launched a new product called Weiyi Group.

How should we interpret the strategic intent behind this move by a company that originally built its business on appointment registration services?

Guahao.com began by providing hospital appointment registration platforms. Operating with a low profile and decisive execution, it built a mobile healthcare platform within just three years that serves 50 million patients and 150,000 doctors across more than 1,100 leading hospitals. Leveraging its deep understanding of the medical system and its vast repository of doctor-patient data, Guahao.com subsequently launched the WeDoctor app, which integrates appointment scheduling, electronic medical records, payment services, and doctor-patient communication. This move aims to consolidate fragmented transactional interactions into cohesive, high-stickiness doctor-patient relationships, ultimately monetizing these strong connections through pharmaceutical e-commerce and commercial health insurance offerings.
We use a metaphor to understand the positioning and differentiation between the appointment registration business and the WeDoctor business: Appointment registration serves as the "head" and the brand face, responsible for visibility; the WeDoctor-centric app acts as the "waist," connecting the upper and lower segments; while the lower body relies on the two "legs" of pharmaceutical e-commerce and health insurance. Therefore, once the "head" is well-groomed, the strength of the "waist" becomes the key determinant of whether the stride is powerful.

Many healthcare startups focusing on doctor-patient relationships are currently grappling with a key challenge: how to enhance the depth of genuine doctor-patient interactions and increase the participation rate of high-quality physicians. WeDoctor, built upon the foundation of Guahao.com, offers a comprehensive suite of features. Although it has not yet disclosed specific operational data since its launch last September, Guahao.com must find a turning point for its doctor-patient platform before any major policy breakthroughs occur, in order to further solidify its leadership position. Their strategy involves leveraging mobile internet to create a virtual physician collaboration network. By using specialists from large hospitals as figureheads, they recruit grassroots or junior doctors who have available time but lack widespread recognition, thereby attracting patients and providing them with in-depth services. This approach aligns with China’s national tiered diagnosis and treatment strategy. It enables the formation of a virtual physician community that can generate revenue by serving as a platform for pharmaceutical companies’ e-marketing efforts. Moreover, it addresses the mismatch where renowned doctors lack time while available doctors lack perceived expertise, thereby establishing meaningful doctor-patient interactions. This helps retain patients acquired through appointment registration referrals, strengthening WeDoctor’s core business viability.

Guahao.com reportedly aims to establish 5,000 specialist-led virtual teams within one year, with each specialist influencing and educating 30–50 primary-care physicians. As a leading player in China’s internet healthcare sector, Guahao.com possesses advantages in IT technology and process-oriented services. A key challenge for the company lies in leveraging Weiyi’s virtual physician groups to facilitate cross-regional and interdisciplinary collaboration in the future.