One Startup's Journey To Make better Healthcare Approach In China

Westerners have a tough time understanding how dire healthcare approach in China remains, even after various rounds of reforms and pilot projects over the last 8 years. Incidents of patient-on-doctor violence, price gouging for prescription medicines and the sale of un-necessary diagnostic processes all have accumulated to eviscerate the trust Chinese families have in the country’s healthcare system. With these realities in mind, it should come as no surprise that a number of startups are attempting to offer Chinese families with access to – even if only in virtual form – 2^nd opinions from doctors outside of China, physicians seen by the Chinese people as more trustworthy than those they can talk to locally.

Startups in this space face 5 core challenges. First, they require being capable to reliably access patients in China without carrying a high client acquisition cost. Second, these portals typically require a motivated partner in the country China, ideally a Chinese hospital. However, not every hospital in the country China is thrilled to offer telemedicine referrals outside of its specialty departments, particularly when the consultations are taking place via a third party in a foreign country. Third, any tele-health platform linking Chinese patients with foreign doctors has to make such a consultation worth the time of the physician. Fourth, price points for these consultations have to depict the costs inherent in identifying patients whose conditions are not likely to be adequately treated in the country China, but who can pay entirely out of pocket at rates that will permit the platform and the foreign physician to both make money. Fifth, in order to have a chance at scaling, these kinds of platforms typically require developing institutional relationships in a foreign market. Ideally, these relationships are positioned to large hospital groups as an initial way of gaining exposure to the Chinese healthcare economy. Provided the amount of interest from American, European and Australian hospital operators around growth chances in China, developing these collaborative relationships is more possible today than ever before.