中国电子医疗市场预计迎来增长

Digital healthcare services, from electronic patient records to remote healthcare, have been slowly increasing their share of the Chinese market. The technologies are already widely used in developed countries, but the sheer size and scale of the market in China leaves huge room for growth.

Wu Jun is on a mission to stay healthy. That is because he was diagnosed with type one diabetes in 2007.

"At the time, I weighed about 80 kilograms. By the year's end, it dropped to 60 kilograms. I was hopeless. I was only 30 years old at the time. I thought, how do I carry on with my life? I had so many things left undone. My daughter had just been born," Diabetes patient Wu said.

To supplement his traditional treatment, Wu Jun sought help from a new form of health assistance: an online doctor who is on call 24/7, and keeps track of his glucose levels in real time through Bluetooth-connected monitoring devices.

Wu Jun's e-hospital is called We Tang, short for "facing diabetes with a smile" in Chinese.

It is one of a growing number of online healthcare service companies hoping to carve out a niche in a country with underfunded rural healthcare centers and overburdened city hospitals.

A recent report from the Boston Consulting Group says China's digital healthcare sector generated 20 billion RMB (US$2.9 billion) in 2014. That number is expected to grow to about US$100 billion by 2020, mostly coming from service sectors.

Xia Xiaoyan, managing director of The Boston Consulting Group, is the lead author of the research report.

"Digital healthcare revolutionizes every party involved in the healthcare industry chain. Patients can enjoy better quality health service anywhere anytime. Doctors can have wider access to medical information, and their value can also be better represented in this digital age," Xia said.

The founder and CEO of Wei Tang, Feng Yanfei, says another particular interest is that every piece of data leaves a mark in the digital world.

"The data generated on the platform is very valuable resource for medical researches. Take our company for example. Our diabetes patients' medication records, their daily activity records and their glucose records can be used to test the efficacy of a drug. The data can also be used to develop new drugs," Feng said.

Using their own records for medical research, patients like Wu Jun are certainly hoping that one day they can really face their illnesses with a smile.