Whether it is entrepreneurs or VC/PE, the target is relatively concentrated in the general population of mobile health. For entrepreneurs, the general population of mobile health care low barrier to entry, the industry is generally optimistic and has not yet appeared to occupy a dominant market position of the product, mobile health care start-up teams are mostly concentrated in this sub-sector. For VC/PE, compared to the previous relative concentration in mobile medical software, VC/PE is increasingly favoring hardware. Mobile medical hardware can provide users with more accurate data monitoring, supporting the corresponding software can provide a better user experience, which is also the main development trend of mobile medical.
On the whole, mHealth for the general public is the hotspot for entrepreneurship and investment, and mHealth hardware is the hotspot of the hotspots.
Development
China's healthcare reform began in the 1980s with the reform of information technology. 2011 onwards, with the rapid development of mobile technology, the popularity of smart terminals. 2012 to 2013, the catalyst of large-scale Internet vendors of mobile Internet, triggering the continued development of mobile technology, mobile healthcare applications began to appear on a large scale, and the capital of the mobile healthcare project, the market is still a small market. The market is still a small-scale market. Due to various barriers such as policy, technology and other reasons such as the development time is still short, China's mobile healthcare is still in the primary stage, it is difficult to quickly scale up in the short term. However, from the market outlook, in 2014 and 2015, due to the intervention of pre-capital, some enterprises began to have the spare capacity to carefully design a sustainable business model framework, which also provides a development paradigm for the later. This stage belongs to the industry consolidation stage, the mainstream vendor group formation, such as the pre-invested 5U, Chunyu, good doctor and other mobile medical institutions began to gradually accumulate users. It is expected that in 2021, the market will get high speed development, the whole industry tends to mature.
Demand
The rapid development of the emerging industry is based on market demand, China has the world's largest and fastest-growing mobile user base, and its consumption pattern is diversified, which provides many optional market segments for the development of mHealth. China is undergoing healthcare policy reform, and the government, as the payer of mHealth, is making large-scale investments in the accessibility, quality and efficiency of healthcare services to continuously improve the level of healthcare services. With both forces ****ing together, China's mHealth service market has a promising future.
On the other hand, China has entered the stage of deep aging in 2010, i.e., the population over 65 years old is more than 14% of the total population, and it is expected that after 2035, China will enter the super-aging society together with the UK and other European countries, i.e., the population over 65 years old is more than 20% of the total population. Healthcare demand will surge under such circumstances. Chinese society has been facing the problem of unbalanced distribution and shortage of medical resources, and the contradictory conflict between the growth of medical demand and insufficient supply has also created space for the in-depth development of mHealth.
From the experience of mHealth development in the U.S., the patient-side demand of mHealth includes chronic disease management and health management, while the doctor-side demand includes internal hospital communication and patient communication. The opportunities and challenges currently faced by the dual-side include: the long-term lack of physical healthcare resources, the pressure on healthcare payments and healthcare reform, the endogenous penetration power of the Internet and the development of electronic and medical technologies; the complex nature of the healthcare industry itself, the lack of a mature business model and the preference for the traditional model of medical care in the clinic, and so on.
Business Model Exploration in the Primary Stage
1. Impact of Interest Groups in the Industrial Chain on Business Models
The development of the mobile Internet industry requires the maturity of both technology and business models. Appropriate technology development drives the development of mHealth, but is not the dominant factor. The barriers to entry in the medical industry are thick, and the game between the market and the government is serious, in which the professional barriers of the industrial chain and the strong stickiness of the traditional medical concepts, laws and regulations are the most important administrative and regulatory factors.
China's pharmaceutical industry chain from the upstream raw materials, Chinese herbal medicines to the terminal retail stores medical institutions, the corresponding government departments will carry out appropriate control. From drug price management, drug bidding policy, medical insurance system to drug approval, there are also corresponding restrictions. These restrictions make China's pharmaceutical industry forever filled with government and market, market and market game.
The profit chain of mHealth industry is mainly affected by three aspects: the payer government, the product decision maker hospitals and doctors, and the product supplier drug and device manufacturers. Product decision makers and product suppliers are subject to government control, and the products of product suppliers have to reach doctors. The data and information services are centered on users such as doctors and patients.
A successful business model should meet the demands of those involved in the interest chain, create value for consumers, and at the same time be able to provide consumers with good value for money. However, the healthcare industry itself is very highly specialized and relatively complex to manage, with weak bargaining power for consumers, and basically priced by the government and medical institutions. In this case, the emergence of mobile health care, so that the Internet and health care have a good combination, which in itself is a perfect tendency.
Users of mHealth often have different demands for mHealth. For example, patients want to communicate better with doctors and hospitals through mHealth to understand their own health status, and to make early judgments and diagnoses about their illnesses. On the other hand, hospitals, doctors and insurance companies want to use mHealth for internal communication and management to improve efficiency, while insurance companies want to use mHealth for early reimbursement of user expenses.
2. The role of user groups in determining the business model
China has a large population base, and patients have practical problems such as difficulties in accessing medical care, high costs, and opaque access to medical care. According to the survey, almost all users interviewed said they could accept mHealth, especially when mHealth could save their visiting time and improve the efficiency of visiting the doctor and other practical problems. As of January 2014, China's mobile Internet users have now reached 838 million, accounting for 28% of the global population. Such user soil has become a huge potential for the development of mHealth, providing a basis for the segmented user group categorization of mHealth. At the same time, the growth of China's mHealth market will become the future of the world's countries scrambling to follow suit.
3. Analyzing Business Models by Charging Models
When exploring China's own mHealth industry model, five charging models in the United States provide useful reference:
Charging to Pharmaceutical Enterprises:
Epocrates is the world's first publicly traded mHealth company, which provides medical care with reference to mobile clinical information, and on the other hand, it provides pharmaceutical companies with precise advertising and questionnaire services. The latter constitutes 75% of its revenue.
Charging doctors: Zocdoc is a platform that recommends doctors to patients. Through the platform, patients can easily choose to book an appointment with a doctor, and doctors can get more patients, especially those covered by insurance. Physician users pay ZocDoc $250 per month, and this revenue can be upwards of $10 million.
To hospitals: Vocera, a mobile communications solution for hospitals that enables doctors and nurses to use and transmit HIPPA-compliant information to and from patients. For the protection of patient information security, in-hospital instant messengers must be HIPPA compliant, making Vocera's products somewhat proprietary only.
Charging insurers:WellDoc is a mobile technology company focused on chronic disease management, with a product that is a cell phone + cloud-based diabetes management platform. Patients can use their cell phones to record and store data. It is currently reimbursed by two health insurance companies that provide health insurance to patients.WellDoc also partners with pharmaceutical companies to utilize their pharmaceutical ghostwriting sales services.
Fee to consumers: consumer-oriented health mobile apps that provide mobile sleep monitoring and personalized sleep coaching through wearable hardware that monitors physiological parameters.
The above charging models can be categorized as B2B and B2C, with the former charging medical institutions, doctors, pharmaceutical companies, and insurance companies, and the latter earning money by charging users service fees and payments from device sales, mostly through a combination of models.
China's mobile medical business model:
User pays: for example, Good Doctor and Dr. Chunyu adopt the model of charging users
Transfer payment: i.e., the payer and the user are two groups. They are usually emotionally or profit-related in the industry chain. For example, Apricot Grove has shifted from charging doctors to exploring the path of charging drug companies. Many patient communities have also shifted their charging model to organizations and manufacturers in the pharmaceutical research industry chain.
Circular subsidy business model: such as Ding Xiangyuan, the formation of multi-point **** vibration, the industry chain to do long enough, a point of loss or strategic loss, the use of other market strategies, converted into other aspects of business value.
In summary, China's current mobile medical business model most likely to charge four groups: hospitals, doctors and nurses, pharmaceutical companies, patients. Patients pay for hardware and service products, hospitals pay for HIS and FIS systems, healthcare organizations pay for products provided to them by enterprises, and doctors and nurses pay for academic references provided to them by mHealth platforms or apps. The strength of payers' willingness to pay depends on whether mHealth enterprises can introduce attractive mHealth solutions, realize financial returns on investment within a certain period of time in terms of cost, quality, and benefits, generate value-added benefits, and whether they can gain support in the capital market. When all of the above conditions are met, the willingness of payers to pay is strong to a certain extent, and the payment reaches a certain scale and number, it can be said that this business model has gone through. Under a solid business model, mHealth can really provide products to make up for market vacancies, innovate services, and meet the deep needs of users.