(2018-03-25) How Tencents Medical Ecosystem Is Shaping The Future Of Chinas Healthcare

How TenCent’s medical ecosystem is shaping the future of China’s healthcare · TechNode

China also doesn’t have enough doctors: While the OECD average is 3.19 doctors for every 1,000 people, China only has 2.22 doctors and assisting physicians for every 1,000 people.

In 2014, Tencent launched WeChat Intelligent Healthcare (微信智慧医疗). The platform allows users to book appointments, make payments, and more at hospitals and other medical facilities through WeChat public accounts. As of 2017, over 38,000 medical facilities in China have WeChat accounts (in Chinese). 60% of those provide online consultation and guahao, and 35% support medical bill payment by WeChat pay

Another service that could soon be found on WeChat is WeSure, a medical insurance underwritten by Tencent and insurer Taikang.

Tencent launched in 2017 the AI Medical Innovation System or AIMIS (觅影 miying in Chinese), an AI-powered diagnostic medical imaging service. The internet giant has so far established AIMIS labs in over 10 hospitals across the country. They have also signed agreements to deploy AIMIS to close to 100 hospitals around China

Tencent is also investing heavily in local and international health and medical startups offering a gamut of innovations, from wearable tech to genomics.

Only one—out of all the health and medical startups that Tencent has thrown money at—has received Tencent naming rights. Tencent Doctorwork (企鹅医生 in Chinese) is a joint venture between Tencent, GAW Capital, Medlinker and Sequoia China, which operates offline medical facilities called Tencent Clinics.

Tencent isn’t the only internet company making in-roads into the medical industry. Rival Alibaba has been offering guahao and medical bill payment on Alipay.