Feeling sick? Cyber doctor is just a click away

n parts of rural China, private health can be a very
public affair.
Crammed into shop front clinics on the main streets of many provincial
towns, patients can be seen paying for routine treatment -- regular
injections, intravenous drips or a consultation -- just by walking in off
the street.
The conditions are rudimentary -- often no more than rows of vinyl
benches replete with drip stands. However, catching the spillover from
China's overstrained public health system has become big business for
pharmaceutical companies and healthcare corporations.
While China is supposed to have comprehensive state-
funded health cover, the stark reality is that many
Chinese need medical insurance to make up the
shortfall in the system.
For many Chinese people, private savings for medical
insurance is one of the reasons the country has one of
the highest rates of personal savings in the world.
For most, however, medical insurance is a contentious
outlay.
"I don't think it really works for most ordinary Chinese
people," 24-year-old Guangzhou-based student Xi
Chen said. "Last November, our father's hospital bill
came to 6000RMB ($976) but we had to top it up
the insurance 2300RMB of our own.
"The doctor told us we should have been thankful for our medical
insurance or we would have had to pay more ... The truth is that
government officers and hospitals benefit rather than ordinary people."
There's an app for that
It's in this space that medical assistance app Chunyu Yisheng hopes to
carve out a niche.
The app -- which this month raised $50 million in funding, the biggest
single funding round into a Chinese healthcare startup to date --
connects users with physicians remotely to discuss and diagnose their
ailments. The site already commands 30 million users who can connect
with 40,000 doctors.
It has set an ambitious target of gaining 100 million
users by the end of 2015.
"We started in 2011, wanting to do something in the
joint field of mobile internet and medicine," Chunyu
chief technology officer Zeng Boyi said. "We wanted to
something of practical use that could actually help
people.
"In China, it's very difficult for people to get an appointment with a
doctor, so the idea of a medical app was quite a natural one," he said.
Zeng said the startup is aimed at resolving minor ailments that often
clog up hospital waiting rooms and aims to help people who may be at
risk of misdiagnosing by reading up about their complaint on the
internet.
"Some problems, mainly mild problems, are better solved online than
others," Zeng says. "People get safe, personalized, and professional
advice from doctors on Chunyu -- we do not see Chunyu as a
replacement for hospital.
"Besides a professional diagnosis, people often want to communicate
-- they need to decrease their anxiety, know a bit more about their
bodies and decide on the next move even before going to hospital.
"These sorts of problems are not easily solved in the hospital, but they
are important to users. By reducing the cost of seeing a doctor, we
activate a huge suppressed market."
He says the service acts as an adjunct to normal
medical attention.
"We cannot diagnose serious diseases and doctors are
careful in the advice they give. If users have serious
symptoms -- if they're very sick -- their best choice
is to go to a hospital.
"If a doctor is asked about serious symptoms, then
the kind of advice we could give is the most suitable
hospital to go to, the type of lab tests needed, and any
other helpful advice."
Big potential
The startup is currently on a drive to recruit more doctors who not only
earn money in their spare time but also gain a profile and a platform
from the service.
Of particular interest, says Zeng, are the data that will be generated by
the online service.
"There's a lot of doctor/user communications that is logged on Chunyu
every day. Those data are of particular importance because they are
generated by real doctors whose only focus is solving the problem at
hand -- they are not selling medication or promoting hospitals."
Chunyu's model is based on making the service free for both doctors
and users, with its revenues raised through advertising from insurance
companies, pharmaceutical companies and private hospitals.
"It's hard to estimate how much revenue would be generated by this
service. By way of comparison, Baidu (one of China's largest online
portals) makes one third of its revenues from the healthcare industry.
"We think it's a huge market."