By Wang Shirui (Founder and CEO of MediLink)
With the continuous development of Internet technology, Internet healthcare has ushered in a new period of vigorous development driven by the normalization of epidemic prevention and control as well as the continuous support of national policies. As a new medical model, the rapid development of the Internet medical platform at the same time, the quality of service and management has also brought new challenges.
On the one hand, the Internet platform extends medical services from the hospital to outside the hospital, from offline purely "one-to-one" management to continuous "one-to-many" management, which not only allows medical resources to be more fully utilized, but also improves the efficiency, breadth, and depth of medical services. The company's website has been updated with the latest information about the company's services, and the company has been able to provide a full range of services to its customers.
On the other hand, chronic disease management has risen to the level of national strategy, reducing the premature mortality of chronic diseases and controlling the burden of chronic diseases is the goal and responsibility of the whole society ****. As an emerging industry, Internet hospitals are still in their early stages, and need to be promoted by industry, academia, and research to build up momentum for the industry's development.
First of all, the Internet health care began to enter the deep water, more and more doctors are not only on the Internet platform to receive consultation, more in-depth to the whole process of disease management, to achieve the ultimate outcome for the patient is responsible.
At the first Internet Chronic Disease Management Competition sponsored by the Chinese Physicians Association and co-sponsored by the Medical Association this year, we collected thousands of Internet chronic disease management cases from across the country in four disciplines: oncology, infection, respiratory, and endocrinology. One of the cases was an online follow-up of a patient with HIV combined with hepatitis B infection by a doctor from the Department of Infection of the Fifth People's Hospital in Ganzhou, Jiangxi Province. With obvious abnormal liver function indicators, the patient was able to successfully prevent HIV-related opportunistic infections while effectively avoiding cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma through follow-up, medication, dietary counseling, and mental health guidance on the Medlink platform.
This case was awarded first place in the infection category of the competition. In his case summary, this physician highlighted two major advantages that the Internet platform played in the management of this patient.
One was addressing the issue of medication accessibility. "Especially when (the antiviral drug) dotiravir is not available in our major hospitals and pharmacies in Ganzhou City, purchasing medication through the Medlink platform can solve the patient's needs as well as strengthen the supervision of the patient's treatment adherence." The second is to realize efficient connectivity between doctors and patients. "Because HIV/HBV co-infected patients need long-term management, and offline hospitals have many patients, can not be specialized, effective management, and the Internet hospital to make up for this shortcoming, can be one-on-one doctor-patient communication and exchange, greatly improving the patient's experience of medical treatment, improve the patient's compliance with treatment, so that the patient's health to get a strong protection. "
Another prominent phenomenon in the development of the industry is that emerging technologies have begun to y empower medical and health services, smart devices, digital therapies are emerging. Some of the data that used to require patients to return to the hospital for follow-up can be recovered, and now can be collected in real time through wearable devices, wherever the patient can provide timely feedback to the doctor. Some of the diseases that used to require medication to alleviate can now be effectively intervened in the patient's daily behavior through an app on the phone, reducing or even potentially eliminating the patient's dependence on medication.
Realizing the connection between patients and data plays a critical role in this process. Healthcare data is necessary, but currently lacking, for the industry to thrive, and Internet technology provides new channels for data collection. Data ultimately comes from patients, and connectivity platforms like Medlink are able to receive timely data feedback from patients on new medicines, new tests, new behavioral interventions, and other treatments. In other words, the Internet platform for doctors and researchers to carry out medical experiments, opened another door in addition to the laboratory.
At the inauguration ceremony of the Academic Committee of MEDLINK in June this year, Professor Cheng Shujun, the leading expert of our Academic Committee, a renowned expert in the etiology of tumors, and an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering, said something that inspired me - people's understanding of life and diseases is still in the primary stage, and a very important reason is that the data we have is not yet available. One important reason is that the data we have is limited, and the cases we observe are limited. With the advent of the information age, people will certainly be able to see, from a wider perspective, many phenomena and unseen data in the development of life sciences and the evolution of human beings that have not been seen before. The revelation of these phenomena and data will certainly promote the development of medical science, and even a major revolution.
From 2019, when the government work report first proposed the development of "Internet + medical health" to now, "Internet + medical health" has appeared in the government work report for three consecutive years. At the same time, we note that this year's government work report proposed for the first time to "promote standardized development". At the Boao Forum for Asia annual meeting in April, the relevant leaders of the National Health Commission also reiterated that the current policy level is first to encourage and support the "Internet + medical" services, and at the same time to do a good job of standardization, do a good job in two dimensions.
This means that along with the Internet healthcare gradually moving towards the deep water, standardization will become the "golden key" to unlock the further development of the industry. Frankly speaking, in the process of the development of Internet healthcare for so many years, there has been a lot of places where there is no breakthrough, and one of the key bottlenecks is that, when the industry is driven by the demand for epidemic prevention and control to complete some of the new infrastructure, some of the new scenarios, a lot of practitioners do not know how to efficiently and reasonably use these medical resources. From last year to now, we have seen the number of Internet hospitals across the country jump from a few hundred to more than 1,600, but CCTV in a program not long ago pointed directly to the current dilemma of the development of Internet hospitals - built but not used.
As a graduate of Huaxi who studied medicine for eight years, this reminds me of the development of Huaxi: an entrepreneurial hospital that took more than 40 years to gradually rise from a remote area, which used very many creative solutions. One of the most famous methods is that a hospital should start with the construction of disciplines, that is, before we build the hospital and carry out the disciplines, we first ask ourselves what can we really do in this discipline.
So now, when we have a very large number of Internet and healthcare resources, we have come back to the idea that for Internet hospitals to really develop, they must have a real, standardized, authoritative approach to disease management, which we call clinical pathways. I once compared this work to "sitting on the bench", and we have been thinking about "sitting on the bench" since a few years ago. I am encouraged that some of our work has begun to bear fruit this year.
In May this year, by the Peking Union Medical College Hospital Endocrinology Professor Xiao Xinhua, Beijing Hospital Endocrinology Professor Guo Lixin and more than a dozen other domestic experts, and the Internet Hospital of Medical Union *** with the development of the Internet hospital diabetes online management of Chinese experts *** Knowledge in the Chinese Frontiers of Medicine published in the journal. This is the first Internet hospital diabetes online management expert *** knowledge released in China, including with the help of smart glucose meter, smart blood pressure meter, smart bracelet and other smart devices for patients to carry out a full range of data monitoring, breaking the original offline time and geographical barriers; health care workers can also use intelligent information technology, the use of fragmented time more convenient for patients to carry out the whole life cycle management.
In July, the first "Expert Guidance on Internet Management of Adverse Reactions Associated with Common Drug Therapy for Patients with Liver Cancer" was published in the core journal Liver Cancer E-Journal. This guideline screens 17 types of drug treatment-related adverse reactions in liver cancer patients that are suitable for Internet management, which fills the gaps in existing guidelines and *** knowledge for patient education interventions, and is highly evaluated by experts such as Prof. Cai Jianqiang, deputy director of the National Cancer Center and vice president of the Cancer Hospital of the Chinese Academy of Medical Sciences. At the end of October, at the 4th China Cancer Summit Forum, the comic version of the Guidance Manual on Common Adverse Reactions to Oncology Drugs, which was prepared by the Guidance, was also officially released by MEDLINE as an academic supporter, together with Prof. Cai Jianqiang and a number of experts in the field of oncology.
In the future, the research results of MEDLINK in the field of AIDS, chronic kidney disease, and other diseases will come out one after another. We firmly believe that if we really want to develop Internet health care, we must be solid in the construction of the discipline. This matter is not easy, a new carrier or a new resource of discipline construction is very complex, need to use the top of the mind, the top of the medical cognition, but we can not rush, more dare not rush.
The Federation of Medical Associations (FMA) has been in existence for 7 years, has crossed many challenges, and carries many expectations. Academician Cheng Shujun encouraged us that from the point of view of using information to promote the medical revolution, Medlink should have a lot of room for development in the future, and he hoped that we could make use of the Internet, the development of informatics, and the use of big data on health to promote people's understanding of diseases and the development of human health.
This coincides with the new mission we put forward when we upgraded our organizational structure in April this year - "to extend the life expectancy of all humans by one year". In order to fulfill this mission, we must adhere to the strategic direction of serious healthcare. The essence of medical treatment is to extend the life span of human beings, and the quality of life and dignity of patients are determined by the quality of disease control and management.
We know that moving into the deep waters of total disease management means deeper service models, higher technical thresholds, more difficult integration, and ultimately responsibility for patient outcomes. What we urgently need to explore is how to do intermingling with traditional medicine and authoritative cognition after numerous breakthroughs in Internet healthcare resources, and how to gather high-quality medical supplies, testing supplies, screening supplies, nutritional supplies, and other resources, and place them in the corresponding positions in the management process. This is not destined to be a fast track to success, and we need to stick to our original intention and work hand in hand with our partners and the industry as a whole***.
Fortunately, our strategy and perseverance have been recognized and supported by our top partners in medicine and business. Our Academic Committee is led by Academician Cheng Shujun and Professor Liu Lisheng, former President of the World Hypertension League and a renowned cardiovascular internal medicine expert, and the first batch of experts also includes dozens of subject leaders and expert professors who have been researching for many years in various disease areas, covering a wide range of disciplines such as oncology, endocrinology, infections, cardiovascular, ophthalmology, and so on. We have received support from Sequoia, Tencent, CLP Data, CIC Caijing, China Biopharmaceutical and other capital partners since 2014; Senmei Medical, which we invested in last year, is working to establish a Chinese model for digital therapies, and in less than two years has already gained the official endorsement of more than 100 academic hospitals.
We are committed to building a digital therapy model in China in less than two years, and have already received official recognition from over 100 academic hospitals. Under the guidance of the "Healthy China" strategy, we are looking forward to working with more industry partners*** to promote China's healthcare industry to realize the transformation of "disease prevention and disease management" into "health care", one step at a time. Disease management" as the center. In the future, we also hope to unite the academic strength of many parties, to share the past experience of the medical association in the construction of online management system for patients, the standardized process of out-of-hospital management, and the construction of disciplines, and to discuss with all walks of life, to promote and facilitate the standardized development of the Internet healthcare industry, and to better empower doctors and serve patients with the advantages of the Internet hospital's convenience, accessibility, intelligence, and so on.
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