Smart tech transforms China’s medical care sector

Through a small room in Shanghai, a potentially life-saving live broadcast is being streamed between a local hospital in Hunan Province and Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center in Guangzhou. Using a video meeting service provided by a company called Liangyihui, specialists are helping a local doctor determine the best course of action for one of his breast cancer patients.

By facilitating remote group consultations among doctors, Liangyihui helps to share knowledge and medical expertise with doctors in places with less medical resources and expertise. It also provides information services for cancer patients and oncologists through their app, website and WeChat public account. Over 100,000 oncologists have registered with their service to provide patients with information and participate in classes.

By facilitating remote group consultations among doctors, Liangyihui helps to share knowledge and medical expertise with doctors in places with less expertise. /CGTN Photo

As Liangyihui serves as an online platform for knowledge and expertise sharing among medics, some other tech companies are going further in tapping into the medical care sector.

This medical imaging center at Tsinghua University Yuquan Hospital was built in cooperation with Tongxin Yilian, a Beijing-based medical tech company. The center's equipment, which was provided by Tongyin Yilian and is worth several million yuan, has greatly alleviated the hospital's shortage of good diagnostics equipment.

Starting off as something similar to an O2O company, Tongxin Yilin gathered idle hospital resources online for the use of doctors and patients. After years of development, it has created a business model that incorporates a fully-fledged online imaging platform, offline partner imaging centers, and self-owned imaging centers. Through its online hospital, doctors can help patients book checkups and other appointments, perform consultations through text and video and issue electronic prescriptions. Patients, then, can buy drugs online and have them delivered to their doorsteps.

China's healthcare market is expected to experience exponential growth in the coming decades.

The National Health Commission predictsit will reach 16 trillion yuan, or around 2.4 trillion U.S. dollars, by 2030.

At the same time, the market faces unprecedented pressure, with an aging population and an increase in lifestyle-related diseases. The government has stepped up efforts to open up the industry more to more private players, which experts believe will play a vital role in boosting the market's vitality.

(CGTN)