- China's largest online health care platform plans to unveil partnerships with 20 companies next week as it looks to tap China's 100 million middle class families
- Ping an Good Doctor narrows first-half loss to 272.5 million yuan from 444.2 million yuan last year
Ping An Healthcare and Technology is set to unveil tie-ups with more than 20 firms including China Mobile and China Everbright Bank, as the mainland's largest online health care platform by users seeks to boost revenue and reduce losses.
The cross-marketing blitz, to be announced next week, will help the five-year-old start-up " better known as Ping An Good Doctor " target higher fee-paying customers whose needs are not met by the state-run medical system, Wang Tao, chairman and chief executive, said in an interview on Tuesday.
"We have many middle class people with the money to spend but are lacking the channels to upgrade their medical services experience due to capacity limitations of the state medical system," he said after the company reported lower losses in the first half. "We hired many of them (state hospital doctors) to be our full-time doctors to serve such needs."
Ping An Good Doctor posted a net loss of 272.5 million yuan (US$38.7 million) for the six months ended June, down from 444.2 million yuan in the year-earlier period.
According to a Bloomberg poll of analysts, the company is expected to almost break-even in 2021.
In June, the company launched "Private Doctor" " a family doctor service " comprising four packages targeting children, adults and seniors, targeting the nation's more than 100 million middle-class families.
With annual fees ranging from 1,099 yuan to 7,999 yuan, reduced by between 38 and 59 per cent to as low as 499 yuan as part of a promotion period, users are entitled to unlimited online consultations, medical appointment services, certain health checks, discounts on medicines and accompanied hospital visit services for seniors.
The new service is an upgraded version of its existing 199 yuan "Health 360" product, which also offers online consultation, facilitation of offline medical treatments and express medicine deliveries.
It aims to address China's uneven and insufficient supply of health care resources, which give rise to long commute and waiting times at clinics and hospitals.
According to a recent Daiwa Capital Markets research report, the company is targeting 10 million users but management has been reluctant to provide a time frame.
We have accumulated over the past four years four core capabilities " artificial intelligence, big data, experienced in-house doctors from top hospitals, and operating efficiencyWang Tao, chairman and CEO of Ping An Good Doctor
"Management expects this new membership product to deliver substantial revenue growth for family doctor services over the second half of this year to 2021, as it anticipates strong user traffic and a high average selling price," Daiwa's analysts Leon Qi and Kevin Jiang wrote.
Assisted by artificial intelligence and big data capabilities, Ping An aims for each private doctor to serve 10,000 users in the long term, compared with a current service capacity of 3,000 users per doctor, they said.
Wang declined to give performance targets.
Asked if the large number of consumers and discounted prices would affect the quality of its services, Wang said the company was equipped to handle the increased demand.
"We have accumulated over the past four years four core capabilities " artificial intelligence, big data, experienced in-house doctors from top hospitals, and operating efficiency," he said.
To cut costs and budget deficits at local health systems, Beijing last year encouraged hospitals to set up their own online platforms to provide outpatient follow-up consultations.
To manage risks of misdiagnoses, it also restricted online hospitals to follow-up consultations and medication dispensing for some common and chronic diseases, and stipulated that first time consultation must take place in offline clinics or hospitals if medication is prescribed.
Wang said as the merits of online medical consultation are proven in the coming years, more diseases and services will be included in the future scope of sanctioned activities.
Ping An Good Doctor, spun off from insurance giant Ping An Insurance (Group) early last year, said that it had 2.2 million monthly paying users out of 62.7 million active users as of June 30.
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