Internet Hospitals in China - Exploration of Business Models and Marketing Strategies

The development of China’s Internet hospitals is not ideal in terms of quality despite rapid growth in quantity. The tech-based Internet hospitals operate with the Internet mindset, resulting in high operating costs and difficulties in profitability. Traditional hospital-based Internet hospitals suffer from a lack of technical capabilities, and operational talents, resulting in high operating costs and challenges in achieving better services. This paper explores the business models and market strategies of China’s Internet hospitals by comparing the healthcare systems and the current situation of telemedicine in China and the United States, and using the PEST and SWOT analysis frameworks to analyze the Internet healthcare industry in China by interviewing industry experts, quantitative questionnaires and data analysis, combined with analysis of the core pain points of stakeholders related to healthcare activities. Unlike the patient-centered business model of most Internet hospitals today, this paper proposes to build an Internet hospital platform with hospitals and medical staff as the core. The profitable multi-win business model proposed in this paper is to charge patients, medical students and young doctors, pharmaceutical companies, insurance companies, and medical device companies. The doctors can get the consultation and treatment fees, and the hospital can use the hospital-side products for free. In the end, we propose the market strategy is to build a sustainable platform product with traditional hospital resources as the core. We provide the medical-side product mainly for medical students and medical workers under 50 years old. The hospitalside product is mainly for the top 100 medical institutions with medical schools. The patient-side product is mainly for the generation under the "One Child Policy" to facilitate patients’ access to medical care.

Name thesis:degree_name

Master

Department dc:contributor.department

Sloan School of Management

Grantor dc:publisher

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Year dc:date.issued

2022

Author dc:creator

• Yang, Xi

Advisor dc:contributor.advisor

• Zhang, Juanjuan

Statement dc:rights

• In Copyright - Educational Use Permitted
• Copyright MIT

Licence dc:rights.uri

• http://rightsstatements.org/page/InC-EDU/1.0/

Handle dc:identifier.uri

https://hdl.handle.net/1721.1/146656

OAI identifier oai:identifier

oai:dspace.mit.edu:1721.1/146656