An App That Keeps The Doctor At Bay in China
“Ping An Good Doctor”, the medical platform that uses AI, has been garnering much attention and users in China — with over 2 billion users since it launched three years ago. What is the reason behind its rapid growth?
During SoftBank World 2018 held over July 19th-20th this year, one of the guest speakers, Mr. Wang Tao — CEO of Ping An Good Doctor — revealed that over the past three years, his company’s app has provided online health checks for over 300 million people in China. In fact, the number of checkups per day can reach up to 370,000.
The company provides its services via a dedicated smartphone application. Users download the app and inquire about their health condition or illness via chat or phone call, making use of an online video chat function for consultation. The condition is evaluated and diagnosed on the spot. If hospital treatment is needed, an appointment is made with a hospital, and if just home medication will do a prescription is issued. Within the city center, the medication can be delivered within an hour. Various processes can be accurately and quickly completed with the most efficiency using AI.
A core feature of Ping An GD as an AI-based family doctor is the ability to handle 5 times the number of patients than a traditional hospital. As of July, Ping An GD has over 2 billion users and collaborates with over 5,000 medical institutions, 10,000 pharmacies and a network of over 20,000 doctors.
So, just how user-friendly is it? According to current app users, “It’s convenient as you can get consultation 24-hours a day. For example late at night, my child suddenly started vomiting so I had a short consultation then and a diagnosis at the hospital the next morning.” Also, waiting times at hospitals are reduced as more people make appointments for their hospital visits. “It used to be a given that one would have to wait around three hours to see the hospital doctor,” said one patient.
There are free and charged consultation services — for renowned doctors, a 15-min video consultation will cost from 2.6 to 18 dollars. The free services offer a prescription without thoroughly going through all the symptoms. Some doctors are accused of the briefness of the consult, but overall, it’s recognized that hospital waiting times are cut short and instant medical prescriptions are a huge plus.
Using Ping An GD as a platform, plans are in place to solve China’s social problem of poor inland villages by revolutionizing the medical scene. As of January 2018, the “Village Good Doctor support project” was launched with the support of over 10,000 village doctors. There are over 1,000 smart diagnosis stations in Chinese territory. The latest announcement concerned the speed delivery of medication and the improvement of medical facilities. A “Village Doctors Version” of the app has been launched. This will help promote the Chinese government’s progress towards a health technology nation as stated in its 2030 China Health Plan. Ping An GD could hold the key towards driving this growth.
Moving Forward
Ping An Healthcare and Tech, which run Ping An GD, was launched in 2014 by Chinese financial conglomerate Ping An Insurance Group. The following year, Ping An GD was released, and in April that year 0.5 billion dollars was raised and the value of the company exceeded 3 billion dollars. It was a unicorn venture. In May 2018, it became a listed company on the Hong Kong Stock Exchange raising 120 billion dollars.
According to the latest investment report, the first half of 2018 saw EC contributing 55% to operating revenue. The rest consisted of around 22% consumer medical care (beauty, dental, health checks etc), 17% from the main family doctor service and lastly the sale of health data and advertisements.
But even this multi-revenue structure of Ping An GD failed to fully monetize its business. In the first half of 2018, the operating revenue was around 0.11 billion yuan, which was 150% more than the same period the year before but it was a net loss of 0.44 billion yuan. According to an interview carried by a Chinese economic media report, the 21st Century Economic Report (published Aug 22), CEO Wang Tao said that “By right, the medical business should be grown slowly for 10, 20 years for it to mature into a long-term business. But we will revolutionize our company in order to expand to the overseas market.”
On one hand, Ping An GD has a different role to play. Salesmen under its parent company Ping An Insurance Group recommend the Ping An GD application to potential customers and using data collected from the app, they recommend products to them. The app is also a sales tool. Ping An GD may be loss making by itself, but it plays a big role in contributing to the business of the group.
Ping An GD, in its overseas growth attempt, has announced a tie-up with taxi dispatch service Grab, known as the Uber of Southeast Asia. It aims to provide the same medical platform service to Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, and Indonesia.
Business Rivals
While Ping An GD currently has a top share in China’s medical platform, other players include “We Doctor”, “Spring Rain Doctor”, “Trusted Doctors”, etc. “We Doctor”, which has Tencent as an investor, has 160 million users — fast closing in on Ping An GD, and also has plans to list in Hong Kong in the near future.
Currently, Ping An Insurance Group provides a common account for insurance, finance, and payments, giving Ping An GD an edge over its competitors. But We Doctor can tap on Tencent’s We Chat and We Chat Pay — certainly a player that can’t be ignored. and payments, giving Ping An GD an edge over its competitors. But We Doctor can tap on Tencent’s We Chat and We Chat Pay — certainly a player that can’t be ignored.
Text: Ching Li Tor
Original text (Japanese): Team Roboteer
