Anhao Times has always kept its presence low-key in the medical industry. Its prominence has risen as the company announced in April this year that it has finished a Series A round of financing worth over RMB 50 million (USD 7.7 million) from Longling Capital, F&H Capital and Capital Nuts.
Anhao Times was founded in October 2013, but in April 2015 it clearly redefined the direction of its future expansion. Initially, the company planned to provide all services in the medical industry to users; after one and half years’ exploration in the field, it decided that there were already many outstanding service providers in the field, and Anhao Times did not have enough of an edge over these companies. In 2015, the company turned its eyes to communities.
“I call this transformation in 2015 my second try in doing a startup,” Shi Jinbiao, the CEO of Anhao Times, told AllChinaTech on Thursday.
Shi made the transformation in 2015 because he sees great potential in the family doctor market. In April 2015, China’s National Health and Family Planning Commission launched a policy planning to guarantee each family with a family doctor by 2020.
Focusing on communities
Anhao Times positions itself as a platform aiming to offer medical and health services to patients and families in communities, towns and villages. It cooperates with the third-party service providers, including insurance companies, health management platforms and experts, to offer quality services to its users.
“You can never cover all medical services if you do it alone,” said Shi. “The medical market is so huge. You need to cooperate with others.”
The company is already in cooperation with many companies in different fields including Chinese leading online medical service provider We Doctor. It also will cooperate with insurance companies to provide insurance services. This year, it will offer the insurance on the platform by cooperating with Germany’s insurance company Munich Re Group.
In addition, the company has a stake in a 12-year-old medical training company. By utilizing this resource and cooperating with the Chinese Medical Doctor Association, it offers training services to doctors who register on the platform free of charge so as to improve the service quality.
Currently the company has its branches in several provinces including southern Guangdong, central Hubei, Henan and northern Jilin. To date, it has had 16,000 doctors and 600,000 users registering on the platform.
Products
“We have three major products: apps for doctors, apps for users and a PC terminal for remote consultation,” said Shi.
The app for doctors helps improve community doctors’ work efficiency and service quality. Community doctors can use the app to finish basic tasks, including providing health education to community residents, and providing follow-up services to patients with ongoing conditions like diabetes.
Additionally, doctors on the app can offer transfer treatment services. They can transfer patients that are beyond their service ability to one of Anhao Times’s partners like We Doctor or to other professional medical doctors. Doctors also can manage the user’s health condition by remotely monitoring their health data and sending advice.
For users, usually the elderly staying at home, they can receive the services provided by doctors. Aside from this, they can connect their account with that of their family members, so that all families, especially those young people far from home, can manage their parents’ health together.
The PC terminal for remote consultation enables patients to get easier access to superior medical services provided by large hospitals and experts. Usually, community medical services only can meet basic requirements like treating a cold and selling basic medication. With remote consultation services, patients have no need to travel to a large hospital far away.
What’s next
“On the whole, we haven’t made a profit yet,” said Shi. “But we have some revenue in the PC terminal service and the doctor training service.”
The company is in the process of planning the monetization of its products. In the future, the basic services provided by doctors on the platform will still be free. But for those services provided by experts, patients need to pay. Experts will need to divide the income with the platform.
Now the company not only has cooperation with large hospitals, it also has built a team specializing in finding patients for experts in different medical fields.
In addition, the company will introduce as many third-party service providers as possible on the platform, including insurance companies (like the above-mentioned German’s Munich Re Group) and medical device retailers (like those selling glucose meters).
(Top photo from http://www.healthpolicy.cn.)
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