- AllinMD Orthopaedics Hospital connects more than 150,000 registered doctors and 17,000 hospitals with patients
Liu Zhengrong, a former Chinese investor, was diagnosed with cancer in 1996. She found it difficult to sleep at night in hospital due to the suffering of people around her and the experience took her to a dark place.
She later opted for outpatient chemotherapy treatment - and survived.
In 2013, she founded China's first internet hospital to focus on orthopaedics, AllinMD Orthopaedics Hospital. It connects more than 150,000 registered doctors and 17,000 hospitals with patients.
After registered patients upload their profile, the hospital will automatically match doctors with relevant expertise to their case, and follow-up treatment (both online and offline, such as surgery and rehabilitation) can be arranged.
"For 25 years, I focused on investments. In the next 30 years, I'd like to work on orthopaedics, " Liu said in a public speech last year.
The six-year-old internet hospital has just completed a US$100 million round of Series B funding to improve the education and skills of its doctors and to further develop AI applications, as China continues to adopt new technologies to improve its overburdened healthcare services.
The new round of funding was led by medical care-focused fund Sheares Healthcare Group, which is wholly-owned by Singaporean sovereign wealth fund Temasek Holdings, with participation from Tencent Holdings and Trustbridge Partners.
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It is one of the largest deals in China's internet healthcare industry, according to a statement on the WeChat official account of China Renaissance Holdings, which advised on the deal.
"The original aim of building the online orthopaedics hospital was to enable more doctors to receive extra professional education and training, so they can provide better medical services for more patients," said Liu, who is also chief executive of AllinMD, in the statement.
"Quality medical care is a major issue affecting people's lives."
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Liu's internet hospital is not the only one eyeing China's burgeoning health care services market. Due to a shortage of qualified doctors and nurses the government is pushing the adoption of new technologies such as online education, AI, natural language processing and computer vision to improve the efficiency of care services.
Chinese companies from start-ups to tech giants are seizing the opportunity to apply AI solutions to everything from machine reading of CAT scans to processing and analysing mass batches of medical queries.
"If you understand the nature of medical care, you will find that medical care is a very slow industry. It takes time for patients to truly trust you," Liu said, pointing out differences with China's huge e-commerce and digital services industries.
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