AliHealth, a subsidiary of Chinese e-commerce giant Alibaba, announced on Monday that it has injected RMB 225 million (USD 34.6 million) into Wanliyun, a cloud platform for medical imaging, taking 25% of its stake.
Wanliyun’s parent company Beijing Wandong Medical Equipment also made an announcement on Monday confirming this information.
According to the announcement, AliHealth and Wanliyun will set up a third-party imaging center to provide remote medical image diagnosis and related services for patients, physicians and hospitals.
Founded in 2009, Wanliyun is a medical cloud platform focusing on remote medical imaging services including X-rays, CT scans and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Physicians can conduct a remote image examination with patients through this platform and patients can ask physicians on this platform for a diagnosis by sending them the medical images they get from other hospitals.
Wanliyun and AliHealth plan to launch B2B, C2B and C2C medical imaging services. The B2B service refers to Wanliyun’s plans to build a “remote imaging center” to provide cloud services including information management, examination and consultation for basic medical institutions. Wanliyun will also set up a professional “third-party image center” for large hospitals.
The C2B and C2C business models mean that patients can use the AliHealth app to apply for a second diagnosis of their medical images from professionals or physicians who have already registered on the app.
This is not the first time Alibaba has set foot in the online medical and pharmaceutical industry. In January, AliHealth worked with Yao123.com, a website backed by the China National Pharmaceutical Group, to launch a platform to help patients find the medicine they need. In April 2014, Aliyun cooperated with DHC Software and the Xi ‘an International Medical Center to set up China’s first smart “hospital in the cloud”.
（Top photo from Baidu Images.)
