Beware, BAT—Ping An Good Doctor Enters the Mobile Healthcare Arena with a Bold New Play

[VCBeat Note: We have long focused on the mobile health initiatives of BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent). Now, it is time to shift our perspective. With Ping An joining the fray, the former “Three Kingdoms” landscape has evolved into a “Big Four.” Recently, VCBeat interviewed Ping An Healthcare, with a particular focus on its flagship app, Ping An Good Doctor. Behind this product lies Ping An’s strategic integration of policies, hospitals, physicians, pharmacies, the broader medical community, and insurance. VCBeat believes that the entry of more tech giants will further accelerate the transformation of global healthcare through mobile health.]

Caution, Ping An is here!

If 2014 was a milestone year for mobile health, then 2015, with the industry tailwinds drawing nearer, was clearly poised to go full throttle. In the face of China’s healthcare market—the most challenging yet alluring prize—both established giants and new entrants have struggled to maintain their composure in the race to claim their share.

The current landscape of mobile healthcare is transitioning from a phase of rapid territorial expansion to one of intense competition among major players. Tech giants such as Tencent and Alibaba are making bold moves, while JD.com, Baidu, and Xiaomi are closely watching for opportunities, alongside numerous startups entering the market.

As early as June 2011, Tmall launched its pharmaceutical section, although it did not officially open until February 2012 due to regulatory constraints surrounding the Internet Drug Transaction License. At the beginning of 2014, Alibaba invested $171 million (approximately RMB 1.037 billion) to acquire a 54.3% stake in CITIC 21st Century, primarily to secure the “Internet Drug Transaction Service Qualification Certificate.” Alibaba then leveraged Alipay to launch the Ali Health app, entering the pharmaceutical product sales market. Meanwhile, the ambitious “Future Hospital” initiative was rapidly piloted across multiple hospitals nationwide, enabling patients to complete entire processes—including appointment registration, examinations, payments, medication pickup, and access to test reports—directly within Alipay.

Meanwhile, Tencent, its rival, also staged a lavish “buying spree” last year. Last June, Tencent and JD.com jointly participated in the Series B financing of Binke Purui with an investment of $23 million, positioning themselves in the wearable devices and healthcare services sector. Subsequently, Tencent made bold investments of $70 million in DXY.cn and $100 million in Guahao.com, aiming to leverage these platforms as medical resources and build a more sticky healthcare ecosystem through WeChat.

As for insurance companies, they are often defined as the payers of internet healthcare projects. But Ping An clearly does not want to be defined in this way. In September 2014, Ping An quietly launched an internet healthcare APP—Ping An Health Manager. From public testing to the official launch of features, the entry of this insurance giant seemed somewhat low-key. However, if you carefully study the architecture of this APP, it becomes clear that Ping An is aiming to become the king of the medical empire.

One Million Registrations in 3 Months, Equaling What Competitors Achieve in Years

In late September 2014, Ping An, which had previously made no moves in the healthcare sector, launched its health and medical app, “Ping An Health Manager,” for public beta testing. The app featured five functional modules: Ask About Diseases, Consult Top Specialists, Community Forum, Health News, and Health Assessment. By connecting users with renowned specialists, the app emphasized instant online consultations with top-tier specialists from Grade 3A hospitals and one-on-one family doctor services.

Ping An Healthcare told VCBeat that the “Ping An Health Manager” had nearly reached one million registered app users within 100 days of its launch. In mid-January, the app was officially renamed “Ping An Good Doctor,” joining “Ping An Good Home” and “Ping An Good Car” as part of Ping An’s “Good” internet segment. The company’s grand financial ecosystem covering healthcare, food, housing, and transportation under the Ping An umbrella is finally becoming increasingly complete and clear.

Ping An Good Doctor may at first glance appear to be Ping An’s version of “Chunyu Yisheng,” but to think so would clearly underestimate Ma Mingzhe’s strategic vision.

Well-prepared, Ping An Good Doctor has comprehensively upgraded the features and operational model of its app compared to similar products on the market. Let’s see how Ping An defines a “light consultation” product:
Product Strategy: The Arrival of the "Tuhao"

Ping An has entered the mobile healthcare sector, accomplishing two tasks that are difficult or even impossible for others to undertake. First, it has employed 300 full-time professional physicians, representing a level of investment that can only be described as lavish. Second, it has secured insurance backing, a feat likely achievable only by Ping An’s industry peers.

300 Full-Time Physicians + Free Consultations:Ping An has established a dedicated medical information platform for its products, employing full-time medical staff from various departments to provide round-the-clock user services, rather than adopting a part-time physician collaboration model. Covering dozens of specialties—including general practice, internal medicine, pediatrics, and obstetrics and gynecology—300 full-time professional doctors are available around the clock to address user inquiries. Unlike asynchronous message replies, Ping An Good Doctor’s one-on-one real-time consultations via text, images, and voice significantly reduce users’ online waiting time. Crucially, Ping An Good Doctor offers completely free medical consultations, aiming to maximize user traffic in the shortest possible time, which places considerable pressure on competing paid services.

4,000+ Expert Resources + Insurance Endorsement:In addition to full-time consulting physicians, Ping An has contracted 500 experts at the level of associate chief physician or above from Grade A tertiary hospitals in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou to join its “Famous Doctors Hall.” These specialists will gradually open their virtual clinics for online consultations while providing priority appointment rights for offline outpatient visits and surgical treatments. It is projected that by the end of 2015, the number of contracted renowned physicians from Grade A tertiary hospitals on “Ping An Good Doctor” will reach 4,000, basically covering high-quality medical resources across all clinical specialties in China. Meanwhile, Ping An has leveraged its group’s core business to endorse the product’s credibility; currently, all online services are underwritten by Ping An, providing basic protection for users in the event of any medical disputes. Judging from the existing model, “Ping An Good Doctor” has chosen to enter the market through an extended medical service chain, complemented by free services. To some extent, the entry of the powerful Ping An Group signals that the window of opportunity in the light consultation sector is beginning to narrow.

Internet DNA: Led by Former Alibaba Senior Vice President

Ping An’s foray into the healthcare sector is certainly not a contest of financial might. A more critical step for Ping An has been to infuse its healthcare operations with robust internet DNA. The most significant personnel change at Ping An Health Insurance in 2013—when Wang Tao, former Senior Vice President of Alibaba Group, was appointed Chairman of Ping An Health Insurance—began to outline the company’s medical blueprint.

Wang Tao, who has a technical background, was admitted to the Youth Program at Nanjing University at the age of 14. At 22, he earned a master’s degree in computer science in the United States and subsequently joined Microsoft as a Software Development Manager, where he led and participated in key R&D projects for the Windows Media, Pocket PC, and MS Speech divisions. He returned to China during the first wave of the internet boom in the early 2000s, joining Kingsoft Software to partner with Lei Jun. As Chief Technology Officer, he led the team in developing “Jianxia Qingyuan” (Love Sword), China’s first independently developed large-scale online game. The title became the best-selling online game of that year, firmly establishing Kingsoft’s prominent position in China’s online gaming industry.

In 2004, at the invitation of Jack Ma, Wang Tao joined Alibaba as Senior Vice President and General Manager of Alibaba Software. By focusing on integrating e-commerce and enterprise management needs for small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), he helped Alibaba Software become the leader in China’s software-as-a-service (SaaS) sector within just one year, earning him the title “Father of China’s SaaS Industry.”

Wang Tao’s arrival has opened up new avenues for Ping An to break through in the internet era. His mission is to “help Ping An Healthcare transform and create a new type of integrated internet-based health management platform.”

Health insurance, which had been lukewarm within the Ping An Group, has become the primary battleground for its internet transformation. This is understandable; due to an immature market and high loss ratios, health insurance—ideally the best entry point for the group’s expansion into the healthcare sector—has been underwhelming in both scale and profitability. Ma Mingzheng is optimistic that the internet-driven expertise brought by Wang Tao will bring new changes to this traditional business. He aims to leverage the internet to build a new healthcare industry chain, establish a medical service network, integrate domestic medical information, move away from the previous focus on high-end health insurance, and become a provider of daily health management solutions for a broader user base.

Global Healthcare Resource Support

For a traditional insurance company, internet DNA is undoubtedly the icing on the cake; however, Ping An’s most critical resources are actually its deep-rooted hospital and physician networks cultivated through years of health insurance operations, along with the brand reputation accumulated over time.

Whether Alibaba or Tencent, both are essentially pursuing the same objective: seizing healthcare resources. With the industry boom on the horizon, market dominance will belong to those who control the most core resources. In this regard, Ping An leverages the strong endorsement of its parent group to provide maximum credibility and guarantee support. Meanwhile, building upon the hospital network and management expertise established through years of health insurance operations, Ping An handles even the most challenging healthcare resources with ease—whether by establishing in-house medical teams or expanding its collaborative medical network.

In a market where speed is paramount, Ping An Good Doctor leverages the network resources cultivated by Ping An Health Insurance over a decade in China’s high-end medical sector. In addition to online consultations with renowned physicians, it provides users with uninterrupted 24/7 access to outpatient appointment scheduling, medical referral recommendations, and accompanied consultation and care services at more than 2,000 public hospitals across over 100 cities.

Ping An Health Insurance’s self-built medical network currently covers mainland China, Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore, Macau, and Thailand. Beyond these regions, it primarily leverages the medical networks of UnitedHealth Group and ACM. Through this network, users can access care at 500,000 healthcare providers across more than 140 countries and regions on five continents worldwide.

Undoubtedly, Ping An Good Doctor has significant ambitions in entering the mobile healthcare sector, directly penetrating its core and covering multiple value-chain segments, including health management, self-diagnosis, physician search, appointment waiting, diagnosis and treatment, rehabilitation, and pharmaceuticals.

In addition to integrating with hospital networks for cumbersome processes such as appointment scheduling, registration, and follow-up visits, medications prescribed by outpatient physicians will be delivered to patients’ homes through Ping An Good Doctor’s network of contracted pharmacies across China.

Furthermore, Ping An Good Doctor has extended its key on-site consultants from its previous health insurance business to serve as offline support for its mobile healthcare services. When a user’s condition requires hospitalization following diagnosis, Ping An Good Doctor’s medical care consultants, stationed at major Grade A tertiary hospitals in large and medium-sized cities across China, will accompany the patient throughout the entire process of examinations, surgery, and hospitalization, assisting with administrative tasks such as billing, medication dispensing, and insurance claims.

If judged solely by product launch timing, Ping An Good Doctor indeed did not gain a first-mover advantage. However, its mastery and utilization of core resources—hospitals and physicians—laid the foundation for Ping An’s entry into the mobile healthcare sector and constitute its most distinctive and competitive strength. By adopting an asset-heavy model to enter the mobile healthcare market, Ping An Good Doctor has, in fact, progressed with agility and confidence.

Having examined the application scenarios of Ping An Good Doctor, and considering the trends in China’s healthcare reform policies, it is evident that Ping An has struck a highly accurate strategic rhythm. As domestic healthcare reform enters a critical phase, key developments include the expansion of multi-site practice for physicians, broader pilots separating prescribing from dispensing, the imminent breakthrough in online sales of prescription drugs, the opening of medical institutions to social capital, and the emergence of commercial health insurance as a vital force within the national medical insurance system. These comprehensive policy tailwinds create substantial commercial potential for Ping An’s future growth in the healthcare sector.

VCBeat has learned that Ping An Healthcare’s current priority is to rapidly deploy medical resources and maximize its user base. Thereafter, whether by introducing commercial partners or by integrating with the Group’s internal medical, insurance, financial, and payment businesses and resources, it will become the premier front-end traffic gateway.