Internet Health Management Exploration Series II: A Bioinformatician's Internet Mindset

This article continues from:Internet Health Management Exploration Series I: Designing Health Management Like a Product

1. Opportunities and Directions
Our former company operated out of a street-facing storefront on the ground floor of a residential building, surrounded by hotpot restaurants and car washes. Channel development failed, resulting in narrow sales avenues; the high price of genetic testing led to exceptionally low conversion rates; and the lack of service facilities and a dedicated team made it impossible to deliver follow-up services. In light of these issues, I proposed discontinuing the development of our own genetic testing products and even ceasing to make the sale of such products our core business. So, how should the company move forward?

At that time, I had little understanding of “Internet thinking.” Perhaps because I had already mastered FrontPage, Flash, and Photoshop to build websites as early as elementary school—even winning a national award—my intuition told me that creating a health management website could offer a breakthrough.

By analogy with my own online life, most internet users have not established a conditioned reflex of “health–XX internet product.”



Offline, middle-aged and elderly individuals around me almost invariably mention Beijing Television’s *Yangshengtang* (Health Hall) when discussing health topics. Online, most users turn to Baidu for health information; however, this does not indicate that users have established a “health–Baidu” conditioned reflex at the conscious level. Rather, it is a “search–Baidu” conditioned reflex. Since users have yet to find their preferred “Lanxiang” for internet-based health management, this implies greater opportunities for health management companies to develop in this direction.

At humanity’s current level of technological development, the internet cannot directly help users improve their health; even plugging a hundred Ethernet cables into one’s body would not work. Addressing specific health issues still relies on offline medical and healthcare resources. I agree with Li Tiantian, CEO of DXY, that online platforms cannot guarantee medical quality and patient safety, as certain aspects of healthcare services are inherently immobile. Consequently, the internet continues to serve primarily as an information provider. This also explains why Baidu’s pay-per-click pharmaceutical advertising has thrived on PC platforms. The human brain has not evolved to rapidly process large-scale data like a computer, nor to distinguish noise from signal.



Healthcare needs can be categorized into high-acuity and low-acuity demands based on users’ health conditions. Disease treatment constitutes a high-acuity need, as serious illnesses invariably require hospital care. Pre-consultation services help alleviate patient anxiety; therefore, on Haodafu Online, there is still demand for pediatric specialist telephone consultations priced at RMB 500 for 15 minutes.

Wellness and health maintenance constitute a low-priority need. Traditional health management companies typically hire practitioners to provide health consultations to users. This approach commonly suffers from two issues. First, the majority of health consultants lack professional expertise due to low entry barriers; for instance, a designer specializing in sock patterns can obtain a public nutritionist certification after just three months of training. Second, while these companies mostly offer paid services, the content of their services is often poorly structured and substantively hollow.

"The Funnel Model" is a classic sales management framework. Relying solely on traditional channel strategies to expand market reach inevitably limits the width of the funnel’s opening, thereby capturing fewer target users. While the payment stage undoubtedly leads to user attrition, if the product itself addresses a pseudo-need or fails to solve any real need, the funnel is effectively clogged. Regardless of whether you design flashy, ultra-cool VVIP memberships or prestigious Supreme Diamond Black Gold Cards, customers who still convert through such a funnel are either foolish or simply "wealthy and capricious."

In fact, in addition to the [Surface Need] of health improvement, users also have a [Deep Need] for peace of mind. In daily life, you may resolve to buy a book, only to never turn a single page. I aim to create a product that provides users with this sense of reassurance. This will serve as a breakthrough point to help the company achieve digital transformation and improve the landscape of its genetic testing business.



Applying bioinformatics thinking to health management, I term this concept “Health Management Informatics.” By processing disorganized basic health data through computational methods, we deliver a set of lightweight, actionable recommendations via the internet to help users improve their health.

2. Lean Startup: Minimal Genome
Having identified the opportunity and established a clear direction, the remaining task is execution. The first step is to secure internal support within the company. The advantage of a small company is that it suffices to win over the boss. However, persuading a boss with no background in internet or informatics to invest in and support the project is a challenging endeavor.



With the completion of whole-genome sequencing for many organisms, research into minimal genomes has emerged, focusing on the minimum number of genes required for an organism to live independently. The core spirit of lean startup, as I understand it, is to rapidly develop a “minimum viable genome” that addresses market needs. Changing a boss’s mindset follows the same principle: quickly creating a minimalist prototype to demonstrate your concept can facilitate smoother project advancement. Since only [Compliant Nutritionists] could produce basic health data, my initial minimum viable product was an intelligent meal-planning program.



Conventional meal-planning software typically designs nutritional regimens based on Body Mass Index (BMI), managing energy intake solely according to height and weight. While this approach is relatively scientific for weight management, it fails to account for individual health conditions. For instance, if a patient with hypertension, a patient with diabetes, and a healthy individual share the same height and weight, a BMI-based model would generate identical meal plans for all three. Clearly, when catering to individuals with diverse health needs, BMI-based meal-planning models cannot provide reasonable dietary recommendations.

My colleague, [Gentle Nutritionist], and I designed a new intelligent meal-planning algorithm model and implemented it in software. This program functions like a nutritionist, providing healthy dietary recommendations tailored to users’ diverse health needs. After editing the calculation results in Microsoft Word, we pushed them via WeChat to users who had undergone genetic testing, receiving positive feedback.



However, this is currently just a standalone command-line program; I hope to leverage the internet to help more users with lightweight health management.

3. My Internet-Driven Genetic Engineering Mindset
The Internet serves as both the new functional genome that transforms traditional industries and a selective culture medium that enables companies to grow rapidly or perish quickly. Registering for a corporate Weibo account, applying for a WeChat Official Account, and designing an official company website are by no means equivalent to infusing a business with Internet DNA.



In genetic engineering, new vectors are constructed by cutting, modifying, editing, and splicing target genes. In the past, humans primarily relied on their eyes and ears to connect with external information. Today, smartphones, as an extension of human sensory organs, have fundamentally transformed the way humans acquire external information. In the future, it may indeed become possible for humans to directly connect their brains to the internet via data cables, as depicted in the anime Ghost in the Shell. Exogenous genes from the internet have facilitated the evolution of human behavioral patterns. Throughout human evolution, whether in terms of ideological shifts or the evolution of behavioral patterns, controversy and adaptation have always been present.

Why Do Many Professionals in Traditional Industries Disdain or Fail to Grasp Internet Thinking?From 2004 to 2009, society was still debating “how to save adolescents addicted to the internet.” Self-proclaimed experts denounced World of Warcraft (WoW) as a form of “mental poison,” while some academics even employed electroshock therapy to “treat” internet addiction. Today, many individuals in traditional industries still view the internet merely as a tool. In reality, the internet has become as essential to human survival and development as water, food, and air. Perhaps the former “internet-addicted adolescents” now look at these stubborn conservatives who have failed to evolve with the internet much like humans looking at monkeys.

If anyone still believes that the internet industry and traditional industries remain strictly separate, they are being naïve and foolish. Even street vendors are aware of how WeChat undercut telecom operators’ SMS businesses. Within an ecosystem, there are two types of species. Initially, Species B was scarce and required few resources for survival and growth. At that time, Species A looked down on Species B, and the entire ecosystem remained harmonious. As Species B reproduced more rapidly and its competitiveness strengthened, intense competition for resources emerged within the B population. However, one day, Species B realized that internal competition alone could not resolve its resource constraints for survival and development. Noting that Species A was both outdated and in possession of substantial high-quality resources, Species B launched a large-scale cross-industry incursion.

What kind of company can be said to have truly integrated Internet DNA? If you are thirsty, you will pour a glass of water from the kettle in your home. If you want to send a short message to a friend, you will use WeChat. A company that truly possesses Internet DNA must ensure that when users have XX needs, they choose the company’s XX Internet products or XX Internet services.

If we aspire to do something that changes the world, such as becoming the go-to choice for billions of users whenever they have XX needs, what drives us forward must be the creation of valuable products for our users, rather than the mere pursuit of profit.

(This article is exclusively published on VCBeat with authorization from Tuo Ying. Please cite the source and the VCBeat WeChat ID: VCBEAT when reposting.)