Yi Zhongtian once said: “anyone can be offended, doctors can not be offended.” Although there is a certain joking, but this sentence is not only saying the importance of doctors, but also emphasizing the importance of medical treatment. That every living thing in the world needs a doctor is a sign of how vast the medical market is.
Life is more or less connected with medical care, and the increasing population base brings more possibilities for the development of the medical market. The world population has surpassed 7.4 billion in 2018, an increase of 78.52 million from last year, according to world Population Statistics. China remains the world’s most populous country with a population of 1.405 billion, accounting for 18.82% of the world’s total. It can be said that the medical market is an ever-expanding existence that will not be eliminated.
Based on this, many enterprises and capital have entered the medical market, intent to share the soup. In addition to BATJ, giants in various fields have also begun to lay out their business in the medical field. Even Amazon, as an e-commerce giant, has joined in. But now, the medical market pattern has been basically determined, the market has become saturated, and the medical market is basically controlled by industry giants. Under this circumstance, wedoctor, which has been in the market for 8 years, has to be careful in the Internet medical market, not to mention whether Amazon still has the opportunity to seize the market.
Under a prosperous, Internet medical market intractable disease
There is no doubt that the medical market has a broad space for development. The change of market demand and the popularity of the Internet have opened up a new medical market. Some traditional hospitals have opened up the connection with online medical treatment and brought rich user resources with their powerful “reserve army”. In addition, there are some innovative enterprises unwilling to miss the medical market, entry competition, the whole market is very lively.
Especially under the support of national policies, the layout of the Internet medical market by various forces is continuous. The whole Internet medical market is booming. But as the saying goes, extreme happiness begets sorrow, good and bad are interdependent, but sometimes the good side will suppress the bad side, but when the bad side accumulated to a degree, they will break out. That was the case with the Internet and the sharing economy, and it is now the case with Internet healthcare.
For Internet medical treatment, last year was like a watershed. Before 2017, the Internet medical market was in a miasma state, guided by capital and the temptation of the market, at that time, the number of Internet medical enterprises on the market soared to about 5,000. Of course, the consequences of such uncontrolled inflation will be borne by the entire medical market.
One of the most obvious current situation is that each enterprise in order to cut a figure in the market, began to implement large-scale burning activities, the industry gradually fell into a vicious circle of burning money. The final result is that the capital chain is broken, the enterprise can not continue. This situation not only slows down the development process of the Internet medical market, but also brings a lot of difficulties to the enterprises due to the large-scale expenditure of subsidies. Among them, profit has always been a difficult problem for the Internet medical industry to solve.
Moreover, in addition to the distrust of Internet health care, there are also concerns about information leakage when using Internet health care. After all, while Internet medical services provide people with convenience, information security problems also continue due to the electronization of data. Last September, an article titled “More than 700 million pieces of citizen information have been leaked, and more than 80 million pieces of citizen information have been sold” sent shockwaves through the medical market. The occurrence of this incident makes people deeply doubt whether Internet medical care has the ability to protect users’ personal information from being leaked out.
In short, the scale of the Internet medical market is huge, I believe that under this temptation, there will still be many enterprises and capital trying to enter the office. Although the current development of the Internet medical care to overturn the traditional medical care is a bit of a dream, but can not deny its benefits to the medical industry. Now, in the Internet medical market, the most people remember to number pingan Good doctor, Micro doctor, Chunyu Doctor, Dingxiang Doctor, Doctor 160 network and so on. And recently, the news that Wechat Doctor, which is backed by Tencent, will be listed has caused no small disturbance in the Internet medical market.
Competition is fierce, and the road ahead for micro doctors to enter the unicorn industry is still full of thorns
Since its establishment, WeDoctor has obtained four rounds of financing, the most recent was on May 9 this year, which was led by AIA and NWS group in a pre-IPO round of 500 million DOLLARS. After this round of financing, Wedoctor’s valuation reached 5.5 billion dollars.
As a micro doctor with eight years of “medical experience”, it has a certain status and discourse power in the Internet medical market. In addition, in the midst of a loss in the market, it achieved a comprehensive profit in 2016, making it worthy of being the “first person” in the Internet medical market. In addition, with the support of Tencent, Wedoctor has quickly established itself in the market. However, under such favorable circumstances, the development of micro medicine in the market is not as smooth as it seems.
In the Internet healthcare market, while WeDoctor is still paving the way for a public listing, ping An Good Doctor, a loss-making company, has successfully listed in Hong Kong. Relevant data show that at present, pingan Good Doctor has more than 200 million registered users and 32.9 million monthly active users, ranking the top in the market user scale, while Wedoctor has 172 million users registered, which seems to be overtaken by Pingan Good Doctor in the market. In addition to Ping An Good Doctor, there are some enterprises that are seeking to go public in the market, such as Chunyu Doctor, Dingxiang Garden, Good Doctor online and so on.
In addition, although at the beginning of 2017, Wedoctor announced that it had achieved full profit in 2016, problems such as difficult access to medical insurance and unclear profit model still lead to a large problem for enterprises to achieve sustainable profit. It is understood that the revenue of micro medicine mainly comes from the output of technical services and family doctor services for hospitals and other related enterprises. But in the case of healthcare companies, the relatively small revenues from these businesses, coupled with the huge expense of expanding the business, make it difficult to achieve sustained profitability.
Up to now, Wedoctor has continuously expanded its business, launching Internet hospitals, general practice clinics, health malls, wedoctor cloud and commercial insurance, etc., building a closed-loop system. Because these businesses involve a wide range of businesses, and the development process of each business line is different, it is inevitable to hamper the development process of the enterprise. Although there are four major businesses of micro medical care, micro medicine, micro medical cloud and micro medical insurance, there are still complicated and lengthy business lines. In addition, the segmented listing means that It will take more energy for Wedoctor to list the four sectors one by one at the right time and place.
In terms of the market situation, the development of micro medicine as a whole looks good. Wedoctor is the only Chinese Internet healthcare company to be included in a list of the world’s most valuable technology companies released by PitchBook, a global data research institute based in Silicon Valley. But whatever the name, problems in the market still hold it back.
In order to break the dilemma, how to go about the “road of seeking change” of micro medicine?
According to the analysis and discussion of the development trend of China’s Internet medical market by Sutu Research Institute, in 2009, the size of China’s Internet medical market was only 200 million yuan, three years later, it rose to 6.71 billion yuan, and in 2016, it exploded to 22.3 billion yuan. It is expected that by 2020, the size of the Internet medical market is expected to break through 90 billion yuan. With the support of market demand and policy, the development of Internet medical market will be faster and faster.
Nowadays, the Internet medical market has entered the stage of medical resource expansion and scene landing from the stage of massive traffic acquisition and user acquisition at the beginning. Strictly speaking, there is no real “boss” of the industry in the Internet medical market at present, and the fighting strength among enterprises is basically six of one and half a dozen of the other. In order to change the status quo and become irreplaceable, micro doctors who have entered the market for many years must rely on themselves in addition to relying on the luck of 1%.
For Internet medical enterprises, in order to ensure the security and density of user information and reassure users, it is necessary to strengthen the defense capability of enterprise information system. “It’s an information age, and the more private personal information we fill in can easily be leaked.” In Internet medical treatment, similar problems are not rare. In terms of information system defense capability, the medical industry is far less powerful than the financial industry. Enterprises can learn from the advanced network attack defense technology in the financial industry to strengthen themselves. It can also cooperate with professional software operators to further enhance data storage security.
No matter which industry, enterprises want to stand out in the industry, the most crucial is to take a different road. In the Internet medical market, whether Ping An Good Doctor has just been listed, or wedoctor, Chunyu Doctor, Wuji160.com are in need of listing, their operation models are basically similar. When it comes to Internet medical enterprises, they are mostly in the aspects of registration and light treatment. Based on this, Wedoctor launched AI for Western medicine and AI for Traditional Chinese medicine to strengthen itself by learning a large amount of high-quality data. Now, weDoctor has made breakthroughs in many specialized fields. Eric Schmidt once said, “The biggest application opportunity of ARTIFICIAL intelligence is in healthcare, and the biggest application scenario of healthcare is in China.” Wedoctor’s application of AI is at a key point in the market.
Moreover, in order to strengthen its combat power in the market, Wedoctor began to build a new MODEL of HMO. The recent partnership with AIA is a preparation for this. In the future development, Micro Medicine will gradually build a new medical and health service system of “online + offline, general practice + specialty” to bring users a full range of medical services.
In addition, complicated and jumbled business lines, in addition to the profitability of enterprises, but also reduce the efficiency of enterprise operation, slow down the process of enterprise development. Wedoctor can operate the four major businesses of wedoctor, wemedicine, Wedoctor cloud and Wedoctor insurance independently. In addition to data sharing, wedoctor can separate each part and perform its respective duties, so that the development of the businesses will be clearer.
In a word, with increasing demand and changing times, Internet medical treatment will develop more rapidly in the future. And with the gradual recovery of people’s trust in Internet medical treatment, the scale of the market will further expand. Now, for Wedoctor, the most important thing is how to express themselves differently in the market and launch their existence that is different from other enterprises. Only in this way can Wedoctor continue to maintain energy in the next battle and stand proudly in the market, becoming a benchmarking existence.
Article/Liu Kuang public account, ID: Liukuang110