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5 years, 4 months ago

Increasing MedTech’s future growth and value

HealthPad
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Medical Technology
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commentary
digitalization
global healthcare systems
healthcare expenditure
MedTech
  • Over the past decade MedTech valuations  have outperformed the market without changing its business model
  • The healthcare ecosystem is rapidly changing and MedTech is facing significant headwinds which require change
  • MedTech’s future growth and value will be derived from data and smart analytics rather than manufacturing
  • MedTech leaders will be required to leverage both physical and digital assets

 

Increasing MedTech’s future growth and value
 
 
Over the past decade, the medical device (MedTech) industry has enjoyed relatively high valuations and outperformed broader market indices without changing its manufacturing business model. Some MedTech leaders suggest that because the industry’s product offerings are essential, demand for them is increasing as populations grow and age, so unlike other industries, MedTech is immune to market swings and its asset value will continue to increase. As a consequence of this mindset, MedTech has been reluctant to change and slow to develop digitization strategies. Notwithstanding, digitization is an in-coming tide and positioned to impose a step-change on the industry. Future MedTech leaders will need to derive increased growth and value from digitization and emerging markets while improving the efficiency of their legacy manufacturing business and meeting quarterly earnings’ targets.

According to a 2018 report by the consulting firm Ernst & Young,“Stagnant R&D investment, low revenue growth and slow adoption of digital and data technologies suggest that entrenched MedTech companies are overly focused on short-term growth, even as the threat of large tech conglomerates entering the space grows larger, which, in addition to the changing global healthcare ecosystem, threatens future revenue growth".
 
In this Commentary
 
This Commentary suggests that to create future growth and value, MedTech will have to (i) leverage data generated by medical devices, patients, payers and healthcare providers to develop clinical insights and trend analysis, which are expected to significantly improve patient outcomes and reduce costs, and (ii) substantially increase its share of the large and rapidly growing emerging markets. We suggest that there is a significant relationship between MedTech’s digital capacity and competences and its ability to increase its share of emerging Asian markets. But first we briefly describe the MedTech industry and its traditional markets and draw attention to some concerns, which include the relative low rates of top-line growth, stagnant R&D and share buybacks, M&A slowdown, giant tech companies entering the healthcare market, and challenges to recruit and retain millennials with natural digital skills and abilities.
 
The medical device industry
 
The MedTech industry designs, manufactures and markets more than 0.5m different products to diagnose, monitor and treat patients. These include wearable devices such as insulin pumps and blood glucose monitors, implanted devices such as pacemakers and metal plates, and stationary devices that range from instruments to sophisticated scanning machines. Medical devices can be instrumental in helping healthcare providers achieve enhanced patient outcomes, reduced healthcare costs, improved efficiency and new ways of engaging and empowering patients. The principal business model employed by the industry is to manufacture innovative products relatively cheaply and sell them expensively in wealthy developed regions of the world; predominantly North America, Europe and Japan; which although representing only 13% of the world’s population account for 86% of the global MedTech market share. This premium pricing model is predicated upon doctors’ and health providers’ belief that MedTech products are of superior quality and safety. Notwithstanding, as eye-watering healthcare costs escalate, providers and regulators demand better evidence of clinical and economic value to justify the pricing and use of MedTech products.  Over the next five years, the global MedTech industry is expected to grow at a compound annual growth rate of between 4% and 5.6% and reach global sales of some US$595bn by 2024.
 
Concern # 1: Reduced growth rates
 
Since the worse post-war recession ended in 2009, MedTech asset valuations have outperformed the market. Notwithstanding, of increasing concern is the slowdown of the industry’s revenue growth rates to single digits. The industry's aggregate revenue grew to US$379bn in 2017, an annual average industry growth rate of 4%, which now appears to be the new normal, and is significantly lower than the average annual growth rate of 15%, which the industry enjoyed between 2000-2007. The reduction in top-line growth rates is largely attributed to the world’s growing and aging population and the consequent growth in the incidence rates of chronic conditions, which increases the burden on overstretched healthcare budgets and intensifies pressure on MedTech’s to reduce their prices.
 
Population growth and aging
 
The aging population is driven by improvements in life expectancy. People are living longer and reaching older ages as fertility decreases and quality healthcare increases. People are having fewer children later in life. Some 8.5% of the global population (617m) have ages 65 and over. This is projected to rise to nearly 17% by 2050 (1.6bn). The number of Americans aged 65 and older is projected to more than double from 46m today to over 98m by 2060 – from 15% to 24% of the total US population. Around 18% of the UK population were aged 65 years or over in 2017, compared with 16% in 2007. This is projected to grow to 21% by 2027.
 
 Concern # 2: Stagnate R&D spend and share buybacks
 
In addition to relatively low revenue growth rates, MedTech R&D spend has stagnated over the past decade despite the need for companies to develop new and innovative product offerings, which drive top-line sales. Over the same period, MedTech returned more cash to shareholders in the form of share buybacks and dividends (US$16.4bn) than it spent on R&D.

To the extent that share buybacks extract, rather than create value why are they popular? One suggestion is that because share incentive plans represent a significant portion of executive compensation, share buybacks make it easier for executives to meet earning-per-share (eps) targets by reducing the number of shares, in the 1970s, share buybacks were effectively banned in the US amid concerns that executives might use them to manipulate share prices. However, in 1982 the US Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) lightened its definition of stock manipulation, and share buybacks became popular again.
 

 

Concern # 3: High asset values slow M&A activity

Over the past decade, as markets became more uncertain, monetary policy tightened, technologies advanced and global economic growth slowed MedTech’s, buoyed by the dramatic fall in the cost of capital, increased their mergers and acquisitions (M&A) activity. This optimised portfolios, increased scale, reduced competition and improved profits. Notwithstanding, MedTech’s current high asset valuations make M&A transactions challenging to underwrite, and so, M&A activity has slowed.
 

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Is the digital transformation of MedTech companies a choice or a necessity?
 
Concern # 4: Giant techs entering market
 
Giant technology companies such as Apple, Amazon, Google and Microsoft, have entered the healthcare market by providing direct-to-customer innovative services, which leverage data, artificial intelligence (AI) and machine learning and define new points of value along the value chain, which is changing the traditional notion of “product vendor”. Such innovations and services result in raising the expectations of stakeholders who are beginning to insist that healthcare is as convenient and personalized as every other good or service they purchase. Notwithstanding, leveraging data generated by devices, patients, healthcare providers  and payers is challenging for traditional MedTech’s who tend to view IT as an isolated cost centre often constrained by legacy systems, aging infrastructures, complexity and skills’ shortages rather than as a key strategic asset.
 
It seems reasonable to assume that over the next five years MedTech’s will be forced to rethink their role as product manufactures and forced to find new and innovative ways to deliver value in a rapidly evolving healthcare ecosystem. Failure of MedTech’s to accelerate their digital agendas will benefit giant technology companies who have entered the market and well positioned to take advantage of the digital transformation of the 4th Industrial Revolution: characterized by the marriage of physical and digital technologies and an ability to change the nature of work to the extent where a significant proportion of future enterprise value will be predicated upon analytics, artificial intelligence and cognitive computing.
 
Concern # 5: The dearth of millennials
 
An obstacle for MedTech to develop digital strategies and keep up with the pace of innovation is its inability to recruit, develop and retain millennials. This is significant because millennials are “digital natives” and crucial to MedTech’s shift to increase their service offerings.  Millennials have been raised in a digital, media-saturated world and are well positioned to opine on and contribute to digital initiatives. Also, millennials have a natural ability to understand, adopt and implement new technologies, use digital platforms and analyse data, which enable them to make informed decisions.
 
Unlike most C-suite executives, millennials inhabit a world unconstrained by precedent, where processes are digitized, and tasks automated to create seamless offline-to-online experiences. It seems reasonable to assume that with a dearth of such capabilities MedTech will lag other industries in defining and developing positive online interactions. This is important because effective digital strategies involve significantly more than simply providing online customer services. They involve leveraging social media and evolving technologies to create memorable experiences from content to customer support.

Millennials have a distinct ethical orientation and “sense of purpose”, which makes them difficult for traditional MedTech’s to recruit and retain. According to a 2018 survey by Deloitte’s, millennials tend to be pessimistic about the prospects for political and social progress and have concerns about social equality, safety and environmental sustainability. While they believe that business should consider stakeholders’ interests as well as profits, millennials’ perception of employers tend to be that they prioritize the bottom line above workers, society and the environment. This leaves millennials with little sense of loyalty to traditional business enterprises and thereby difficult to recruit and retain. According to Larry Fink, CEO, Black Rock, “To prosper over time, every company must not only deliver financial performance, but also show how it makes a positive contribution to society. Companies must benefit all of their stakeholders, including shareholders, employees, customers and the communities in which they operate”.

Given MedTech’s dearth of expertise in digital skills, it might be obliged to develop dedicated teams and processes to source and execute value-added partnerships in a similar way big pharma has.
 
Smartphone penetration driving digitization strategies
 
Digital healthcare strategies are driven by the increased penetration of smartphones and the plummeting costs of wireless communications. Smartphones are powerful multipurpose devices capable of performing a number of tasks beyond their primary purpose of communication. These range from using the mobile’s SMS function to send alerts and reminders, to leveraging inbuilt mobile sensors or apps to capture and interpret clinical data.  Over the past decade, smartphones have fuelled the rapid uptake of internet access and transformed life for developed market consumers in terms of convenience and simplicity. In the US and UK smartphone penetration is about 84% and 80% respectively with the older age groups (55+) recording the highest growth. Smartphones have served an even more pivotal role for emerging market consumers by placing the internet into the hands of millions of consumers. In 2018, 98% of the global population had access to a mobile network with 75% having access to the fast 4th generation networks. Smartphones, together with other wireless technologies, (mHealth), are increasingly used in healthcare by patients, healthcare providers and payers, to improve health outcomes, increase efficiencies and reduce large and escalating healthcare costs. It is anticipated that by 2020, global smartphone subscriptions will be about 6bn and growing rapidly especially in emerging economies such as China, India, Egypt, Turkey, and the United Arab Emirates. In the past three years health apps have doubled and have reached over 140,000. The global mHealth market is expected to grow at a CAGR of 45% over the next six years and reach US$236bn by 2026.
 
 Concern # 6: Healthcare in emerging economies is predicated upon digital strategies
 
The relative high levels of healthcare demand and spending are expected to increase in emerging markets as populations grow, household spending rises and smartphone penetration increases. This is important to MedTech because emerging economies represent about 85% of the world’s population, 90% of which is under 30, and this cohort is expected to grow at three times the rate of the similar cohort in developed economies. Further, over the past decade, the number of high-income households have risen globally by about 30% to nearly 570m, with over 50% of this growth coming from emerging economies in Asia. Asia is comprised of 48 countries and represents roughly 60% of the global population, and its stake in world markets has grown dramatically in the last half-century. Today, Asian countries rank as some of the world’s top producers, which has brought them significant wealth.
 
According to Euromonitor International more than 50% of the world’s (3.6bn) internet users reside in Asia. Between 2013 and 2018, Asia accounted for 60% of new users coming online and the region has become an economic powerhouse, populated by young, digitally savvy consumers.  China is the largest mobile market in the world with close to 1.2bn subscribers. Significantly, in 2018, China’s rate of growth in mobile internet penetration reached 58% and the number of smartphone connections surpassed 1bn. Similarly, in India, the number of smartphone users is expected to double to 859m by 2022 from 468m in 2017; growing at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 12.9% and expected to reach 859m by 2022.
 
Digitized services are replacing traditional distributors in China
 
Western MedTech operations in China have tended to replicate the Western commercial model, which relies heavily on distributor networks. But this is changing.
 
China has a land mass similar to that of the US and a population 1.4bn organised by 34 provincial administrative units, which are comprised of 23 provinces, four municipalities, five autonomous regions and two special administrative regions. Healthcare in China consists of both public and private medical institutions and insurance programs. About 95% of the population has at least basic health insurance coverage and is served by over 31,000 hospitals, primary care is patchy and there is a shortage of doctors.  Because of China’s large number of dispersed healthcare providers, traditional distribution models employed by western MedTech companies tend to be inefficient and costly.
 
In recent years, MedTech’s operating in China, supported by Beijing policy makers, have been gaining back control over customers from distributors. The reason for this is because, in the vast bureaucratic Chinese healthcare system, distributors evolved far beyond their core capabilities and controlled most commercial activities. For instance, the value Chinese distributors capture, as opposed to manufacturers, is disproportionately high and has led to restrictive policies. This has caught the attention of  policy makers who are seeking to correct these practices by promoting direct to customer digitized healthcare services. Beijing is minded that effective healthcare services for the nation’s vast and dispersed population cannot be achieved with traditional healthcare delivery models and has to be predicated upon appropriate digitized direct-to-customer operations. Similarly, this is true of other large emerging economies, particularly India.
 
The future is Asia and digitization
 
The reason we suggest that digitization is likely to help MedTech’s increase their market share in China is because digitization has become an essential part of everyday life in China including mobile payments, online-to-offline services, the sharing economy, smart retail, digital ID cards and healthcare services. WeDoctor and WeChat, are at the centre of this digitized society and only show signs of increasing their influence over Chinese healthcare and lifestyle.

WeDoctor is just one example of several Chinese start-ups that has leveraged data and digital strategies to re-engineer the nation’s healthcare system. Founded in 2010, the company has grown into a US$6bn enterprise and not only has increased access to healthcare, improved diagnoses, enhanced patient outcomes and lowered costs, but has disintermediated traditional distributors by simplifying and centralizing the procurement processes of medical devices.
 
It is sometimes hard for people based outside of China to grasp just how fully digitized Chinese society has become. WeChat, known in China as Weixin, is a multi-purpose messaging, social media and mobile payment app first released in 2011. By 2018 it had become one of the world's largest standalone mobile super-apps and controls life in modern China. For most Chinese citizens, especially those living in cities, it is possible to get through an entire day using WeChat for your every need. Millions of businesses have chosen to create mini-apps within WeChat instead of developing their own standalone apps. These allow businesses to send promotional messages directly to their customers via WeChat, as well as tap into the WeChat’s broader user base. With 1bn active monthly users, WeChat has reached the ceiling of its growth within China and its future will be about developing more services, which includes connecting people to businesses and products offerings.
 
Takeaways
 
Over the past decade, while the MedTech industry has increased its asset value, leaders focussed on, (i) short-term growth, (ii) portfolio optimization and (iii) returning cash to shareholders. Also, they allowed R&D to stagnate and were slow to appreciate the strategic significance of digitization. Data and smart analytics are positioned to play an increasing role in future MedTech growth and value creation. They are the key to creating new and innovative service offerings for healthcare providers, patients and payers and critical to MedTech increasing its share in large fast-growing emerging markets. Future  MedTech leaders will be required to leverage both physical and digital assets. Significantly, they will need to enhance the efficiency of legacy manufacturing systems while developing and marketing new innovative offerings derived from data and smart analytics.
 
Postscriptum
 
A concern not mentioned in the above discussion is ‘recession, which although mooted since the sharp fall in markets in December 2018 has not materialized. Indeed, the S&P 500 continues to rally, rising from 2,351 in 24th December 2018, to 3,026 in 26th July 2019. However, a reason for bullish US stock markets is low interest rates: the lower the interest rate, the higher the multiple the market applies to earnings. One indicator of recession is the J.P. Morgan Global Manufacturing Purchasing Managers’ Index (PMI), which has been declining since January 2018. In May 2019, it fell below 50, which is the number that suggests a recession has started. Another indicator of a recession is the yield curve, which is a chart showing the interest rate paid on bonds of different maturity. As a forecasting tool, the difference between long- and short-term interest rates has proved to be a reliable indicator of future recessions. Currently, the difference between the yield on the US 10-year bond and the US 3-month T-Bill is negative. This means the yield curve is inverted, which indicates recession. However, the yield curve is only an indicator of a recession and is neither definitive nor causal.
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6 years ago

WeDoctor’s impact on global healthcare

HealthPad
Directory:
Medical Technology
Tags:
affordable quality healthcare
AI
Artificial Intelligence
big data
commentary
global healthcare systems
smart devices
WeDoctor
  • Experienced Western healthcare professionals have little knowledge of WeDoctor a Chinese internet healthcare start-up positioned to have a significant impact on global healthcare systems over the next decade
  • Founded in 2010 and backed by Tencent, a US$0.5trn Chinese conglomerate, WeDoctor has grown rapidly to become an influential US$6bn enterprise
  • WeDoctor bundles services AI and big data strategies into smart devices to help unclog China’s fragmented and complex healthcare system and increases citizens’ access to affordable quality healthcare
  • WeDoctor has expanded its franchise outside of China and has global ambitions to become the “Amazon of healthcare”
  • Is WeDoctor an exemplar for Western healthcare providers?
 
WeDoctor’s impact on global healthcare

The speed and scoop of technological change is forcing traditional healthcare providers to move beyond the comfort of their production models, embrace services and develop smart devices, which support customer-centric, value-based, data driven strategies. To illustrate this shift, we describe a Chinese internet healthcare start-up WeDoctor, which is having an impact on re-engineering China’s overly bureaucratic, fragmented and complex healthcare system and is positioned to influence the delivery of value-based healthcare services globally in the next decade.
 
In this Commentary

This Commentary describes WeDoctor and some of its recent activities to expand its influence and market share. Three things of note:

  • The partnerships that WeDoctor has developed with payers and providers, which are different to conventional transaction-based contracts
  • WeDoctor’s pragmatic approach to evolving technologies, which differentiates it from Western technology companies entering healthcare markets
  • WeDoctor might be considered as an exemplar and its strategy copied by Western companies. Because most giant Western technology companies are banned in China, local firms have stopped copying Western counterparts and innovate. This has resulted in many Chinese apps and services being better than their Western rivals. For example, Huawei’s mobiles outperform Apple’s, and China is ahead on 5G, mobile money and artificial intelligence. In 2016 the US technology publication Wired ran a cover story entitled: “It’s Time to Copy China”.
Smart Clinics

Imagine going to your primary care physician and, within a 15-minute consultation, receiving up to eleven tests, which include analysing your blood and urine, taking your blood pressure and measuring the electrical activity of your heart; and all the tests being delivered by a small portable all-in-one diagnostic device weighing just 5 kilos (11Ibs) and situated on the table of your doctor’s consulting room.

Imagine further that your test results are returned in minutes rather than days or even weeks and uploaded to your cloud-based electronic medical record to be reviewed in real time by your doctor. Simultaneously, your data are anonymously merged with similar information collected from millions of other patients and stored in a cloud file embedded with AI, in the forms of machine learning and cognitive computing, which complement and enhance the capabilities of your doctor. Your physician plays a key role in interpreting your test results and providing you with a diagnosis and treatment options as well as giving you an essential human touch of reassurance and guidance. Notwithstanding, as soon as you leave your doctor’s office, your mobile phone will suggest smart ways to monitor and manage your condition remotely. Information about your condition will appear on your social media feeds, you will also receive prompts for treatments, alerts about health supplements and suggestions about appropriate insurance policies. Currently, no amount of money can buy such a service in advanced wealthy Western economies, but it is a lead device of WeDoctor, which is available in rural China and in other emerging countries. According to Frost and Sullivan, a consultancy, the China market alone for remote diagnostics is currently estimated to be US$2bn and projected to grow to US$28bn in 10 years. WeDoctor’s  near-term goal is to capture a significant share of this market and help re-engineer China’s healthcare system by nudging individuals with the right piece of information at the time to maintain their health. This makes the device valuable to patients, healthcare providers and payers.
 
Reverse innovation
 
It seems reasonable to assume that, in addition to being useful in China and other emerging countries, WeDoctor’s all-in-one diagnostic device is well positioned to help enhance primary care practice in developed Western nations by a process of ‘reverse innovation’. This refers to a strategy where a product offering, which is specifically developed for emerging countries is subsequently successfully marketed in developed wealthy nations. It is particularly relevant to healthcare systems, which are universally challenged to deliver high quality outcomes with increasingly scarce resources. The strategy was formalized in a paper entitled, ‘How GE is Disrupting Itself’, which was published in the October 2009 edition of the Harvard Business Review (HBR), and subsequently expanded into a book published in 2018 entitled, ‘Reverse Innovation in Healthcare: How to make value-based delivery work’.
 
In the early 2000s, General Electric (GE) took an affordable, high quality portable ultrasound device, which it had developed for the Chinese market and successfully marketed it in the US and elsewhere. GE found that ‘affordability’ and ‘portability’ were universally valued healthcare factors. Jeffrey Immelt, then chairman and CEO of GE and one of the authors of the 2009 HBR paper, challenged other multinationals, “to see innovation opportunities in emerging markets in a new light”. Reverse innovation was more widespread than Immelt first thought and over the past decade the strategy has become a significant part in the armoury of many multinational corporations. Although the strategy is relevant for value-based healthcare,it is rarely practiced by Western healthcare providers.
 
The starting point for reverse innovation healthcare strategies is emerging markets where the rapid growth in the demand for quality healthcare outstrips the development of resources and infrastructure. This creates significant opportunities for Western companies with smart solutions to common healthcare challenges. Similar to GE’s portable ultrasound device, WeDoctor’s smart all-in-one diagnostic device, in time, could be marketed in developed regions of the world where healthcare systems are struggling to improve patient outcomes while reducing costs.
 
WeDoctor’s pragmatism

WeDoctor, founded by Liao Jieyuan an AI specialist, is backed by Tencent, which is one of the world’s largest technology and internet companies with a market cap of US$0.5trn and a mission to enhance the quality of life through the development and global distribution of emerging technologies. WeDoctor has a market cap of US$6bn, an established network in China of some 240,000 doctors, 2,700 large premier hospitals, over 15,000 pharmacies in 30 of China’s 34 provinces and about 160m platform users and joins a growing contingent of technology companies with a mission to change the healthcare industry, which to-date has resisted online disruption.
 
Notwithstanding, there is a significant difference between giant Western technology companies who have entered healthcare markets and WeDoctor. While the former have tended to invest heavily in aspirational projects such as unravelling the medical mysteries of anti-ageing, and AI systems to replace clinicians, WeDoctor has been more pragmatic and focused on making money by unclogging bottlenecks in the Chinese US$1trn healthcare market. Although Liao is an AI expert and WeDoctor is a significant user of AI, Liao believes, “AI won’t replace doctors, but will become an important tool for doctors to help improve their efficiency and accuracy”. WeDoctor has a practical mission: to enhance access to quality medical resources, improve patient outcomes and reduce costs. Indeed, Liao founded WeDoctor simply to help people book physician appointments, which is challenging in China. Chinese primary care practices are underused due to the poor distribution of resources, a lack of reputable practitioners and the nation’s relatively low number of doctors per capita. Further, waiting times to see a hospital specialist are long and patients reportedly have to pay significant amounts of money to middlemen to secure appointments.
 
AI healthcare systems are more challenged in the West than in China
 
In 2017, the Chinese central government released a plan to become the world leader in AI by 2030, aiming to surpass its rivals technologically and build a domestic industry worth almost $150 bn. WeDoctor and other Chinese healthcare providers are mindful that AI is a transformative technology for healthcare partly because of its ability to recognise patterns in vast amounts of data and to detect and quantify biomarkers in non-solid biological materials. Jamie Susskind, in his book Future Politics, published in 2018, suggests that doctors consulting both medical and legal big data banks in support of diagnoses and treatments, will become as commonplace as  consulting standard images such as MRIs or X-rays. And if such data banks are not consulted it will be considered negligent.  
 
WeDoctor’s AI systems hold out the prospect of delivering rapid diagnoses, efficient triage, enhanced monitoring of diseases, improvements in personalized care and making medicine safer. Notwithstanding, a limiting factor in the use of AI systems in healthcare generally is neither investment nor the technology, but the ability to amass vast amounts of reliable personal and genomic data. This is a bigger challenge in the West than in China. More robust privacy legislation, higher levels of security and broader-based ethical concerns in the West are substantial obstacles. A significant advantage of WeDoctor is the freedom in China to collect, store, analyse and use patient, personal and genomic data on an unparalleled scale. China has yet to establish laws to protect such personal information and is systematically building health profiles on its 1.4bn citizens, which, together with Beijing’s commitment to AI, will provide scientists in China a significant advantage to lead and dominate life sciences over the next decade.
WeDoctor is one of several similar start-ups
 
WeDoctor is just one of several recent Chinese online start-ups employing evolving technologies to improve China’s healthcare system. Another is Good Doctor, which is an offshoot of the Ping An Insurance Group, a financial giant with a US$181bn market cap, annual revenues of US$142b and 343,000 employees. Both start-ups compete to build smart clinics in rural China.
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WeDoctor endeavours to extend its franchise

In addition to its smart diagnostic device, WeDoctor has leveraged Tencent’s substantial expertise and resources in mobile, AI and cloud-based technology to develop a significant customer-focused retail prowess and is rapidly developing a range of services for healthcare providers and manufacturers of medical devices. This positions the company well to have a significant near-term impact on Asia’s healthcare systems. In 2018 alone, WeDoctor has strengthened and extended its franchise by entering into a number of partnerships with a range of healthcare stakeholders, which include insurance companies, specialist in the procurement and distribution of medical devises and also investment companies interested in improving the physical infrastructure of southeast Asian healthcare systems. We describe some of these partnerships, which enable WeDoctor to consolidate and expand its market position both in China and internationally and suggest that Western healthcare providers should be considering similar partnerships to help them make the product to service shift.
 
WeDoctor and the AIA insurance group

In May 2018, WeDoctor formed a strategic alliance with the AIA Group, which is the largest public listed pan-Asian life insurance group with customers in China and across the Asia-Pacific region. WeDoctor and AIA are aligned in their ambition to partner with consumers in China and across southeast Asia to provide innovative quality healthcare and wellness offerings and financial protection solutions. The partnership provides WeDoctor with preferred access to AIA’s customer base and thereby strengthens and enlarges its networks and strategies to deliver affordable, digitally-enabled personalised healthcare offerings. AIA becomes WeDoctor’s preferred provider of life and health insurance solutions and gains access to its 160m registered users. According to Liao the partnership, “leverages AIA’s long history and extensive operations across the Asia-Pacific region . . . and is crucial to meeting the diversified life and health insurance requirements of our growing user base as we look to anticipate users’ needs, through our platform’s expanding functionality and our mission to transform healthcare through technology. This partnership not only helps us to cement our position as the premier technology-enabled healthcare solutions platform in China but also supports us as we expand our international presence in the years to come”.  
 
WeDoctor and China’s IVF market

Also, in May 2018, WeDoctor made a strategic investment in Reproductive Healthcare,a new in-vitro fertilisation (IVF) group, which was formed by a merger between two of Hong Kong’s largest and most reputable IVF practices. This was WeDoctor’s first investment outside of Mainland China and represents a significant milestone for the implementation of its international strategy. The new company provides a comprehensive range of IVF services, which include intra-uterine insemination, frozen-thawed embryo transfer and egg freezing services for China and the Asian region. The new company’s established frozen embryo services benefit from findings of a paper published in the January 2018 edition of the New England Journal of Medicine, which suggest that pregnancy and live birth rates are similar among women who use fresh or frozen embryos.
 
WeDoctor and its expanded international IVF market
 
In August 2018 WeDoctor, entered into an agreement with the Mason Group and Aldworth Management to acquire an 89.9% stake in Genea, Australia's leading provider of integrated advanced assisted reproductive technology (ART) services. Headquartered in Sydney, Genea has over 400 employees and is a leading international fertility group with a 30-year track record and a significant presence in New Zealand and Thailand as well as Australia. The company offers a comprehensive range of ART services, including IVF, egg and embryo freezing, genetic testing, sperm banking, day surgeries and pathology. Genea has developed proprietary technologies, including culture media and embryo transfer catheters, which are used in more than 600 clinics across 60 countries and is the only ART platform, with both services and technology, in the industry worldwide. The agreement strengthens both WeDoctor’s international strategy and its ability to increase its share of China’s US$2bn and fast-growing IVF market. WeDoctor also is targeting a bigger share of the outbound Chinese IVF medical tourism market, which in 2017, grew approximately 40% year-over-year to approximately US$151m. According to Grand View Research, the global IVF market in 2017 was valued at about US$15bn and is expected to grow at a CAGR of around 10%.
 
WeDoctor is China's first smart medical supply chain solutions and procurement company
 
In July 2018, WeDoctor entered into a joint venture (JV) with IDS Medical Systems Group (idsMED Group), to form idsMED WeDoctor China Ltd. This is China's first smart medical supply chain solutions and procurement company and is positioned to transform China’s fragmented, multi-layered and relationship-driven medical device distribution systems.
 
idsMED is a leading Asian medical supply chain solutions company specialising in the distribution of medical devices and consumables, clinical education and hospital design and planning. It represents over 200 global MedTech companies and has extensive Asia Pacific distribution networks with access to over 10,000 healthcare institutions. The company has 1,600 employees, including 700 experienced field sales, product and clinical specialists and 300 professional bio-medical engineers providing installation and maintenance services.
 
The JV, owned 51% by WeDoctor and 49% by idsMED Group leverages the respective companies’ strengths, innovative resources and networks to procure medical devices and services centrally by connecting global manufacturers directly to China’s hospitals and healthcare providers. The JV will further enhance WeDoctor’s value proposition by managing and optimizing China’s entire medical supply chain, which until now has been fragmented, overly bureaucratic and complicated. In addition, idsMED WeDoctor will set up medical education and training academies throughout China to deliver and promote medical devices and clinical education as well as accredited medical training courses for doctors and nurses.
 
WeDoctor & Fullerton
 
In September 2018 WeDoctor entered into a strategic partnership with Fullerton Health a Singapore-headquartered healthcare service provider. The alliance is, “In line with WeDoctor’s international growth strategy and will extend our reach and facilitate our development in Asia,” said Jeff Chen, WeDoctor’s Chief Strategy Officer. The JV provides WeDoctor access to Fullerton Health’s 500 healthcare facilities and its network of over 8,000 healthcare providers across eight Asian pacific markets. Fullerton Health benefits from WeDoctor’s footprint in China and broadens its patients’ access to online healthcare consultations. In the near term, both companies aim to broaden their reach in the corporate healthcare service market by opening onsite medical centres for businesses across China. In addition, the partnership plans to create about 100 primary care and specialist outpatient facilities.
 
Takeaways

Healthcare has become digital and global and long ago, the geo-political axis of the world has moved East. To remain competitive, Western healthcare providers must increase their knowledge and understanding of initiatives in China and southeast Asia, be prepared to transform their strategies and business models and engage in partnerships with a range of healthcare stakeholders, complementary enterprises and start-ups in emerging nations.
 
Two of China’s largest healthcare challenges are the uneven distribution of its services and its vast and escalating costs. The nation has an underserved primary care sector and the most qualified and experienced doctors are concentrated in a few premier mega-city hospitals, which account for 8% of the total number of medical centres but handle 50% of the nation’s outpatient visits. These challenges are not unique to China but experienced by healthcare systems throughout the world.

WeDoctor is an exemplar of how such universal healthcare challenges might be improved by a combination of evolving smart technologies and strategic partnerships with a range of healthcare stakeholders. As MedTech companies continue to transform their business models to increase customer-centricity, the types of partners they need to engage will only expand. In a rapidly moving market, keeping abreast of these potential collaborators is critical.

Another takeaway is that WeDoctor does not use AI and big data technologies to resolve the mysteries of medicine, but to increase access to healthcare, improve diagnoses, enhance patient outcomes and lower costs. The company also is increasing the effectiveness and efficiency of healthcare providers by simplifying and centralizing procurement processes of medical devices and pharmaceuticals.
 
Once WeDoctor has helped to improve China’s healthcare infrastructure, the nation would have amassed the world’s largest personal, medical and genomic data base of its citizens. WeDoctor will then be well positioned to turn its formidable AI prowess to accelerating R&D in lifesciences, improving the accuracy of early diagnoses, enhancing the monitoring of devastating life-threatening diseases and improving personalized care.
 
WeDoctor is an exemplar for Western MedTech companies.
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