Health & Beauty

In the past decade, the great development of digital technology in China has led to the development of digital medicine, and has laid a solid foundation for information. Digital medicine has gradually begun to play a role in medical intervention, and is about to move towards a higher model of subversion.

China's digital medicine has great potential. At present, the information base has been completed. It is evolving from simple service and management to more core areas such as diagnosis and treatment. Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

The promotion of policies for digital medicine is not trivial. At present, China has gradually created a series of central and local policies with industry guidelines and guidance to guide the development of the industry.

These policies will promote the accelerated development of digital medical care with the core of "benefiting the people's livelihood" during the "14th Five-Year Plan", build a patient-centered health care system, and simultaneously build smart ecological medical care. At the same time, the leading places in digital medicine also put forward their own goals, innovative practices or "bright spots" under the framework given by the central government.

In 2022, there will be a big explosion in the approval and supervision of digital medical care, market scale and investment and financing. As of November 2022, NMPA has issued a total of 25 AI Class III certificates and 30 Class II certificates that meet the definition of digital therapy. Both AI Class III certificates and digital therapy medical devices are the most approved year. Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

Digital medicine has made great progress in 2022. The breakthrough in digital technology has gradually led to more and more clinical indications and application scenarios.

1、 What does digital medicine represent?

In different specific contexts, the definition of digital medicine will be different.

It is generally believed that digital medical treatment is a new medical treatment method that applies modern digital information technology to the whole medical treatment process, and is the development direction and management goal of public medical treatment. According to the specific situation, the coverage of digital medical care can be large or small, which can be divided into broad and narrow sense.

In the broadest sense, digital medicine can even cover the application of digital technology in the business process of medical participants, including patients, medical service providers, academic research institutions, payers, policy makers and regulators, and the pharmaceutical and mechanical industry.

In short, any digital technology related to medical health belongs to digital medicine in this definition, for example, the digitalization of the production process of pharmaceutical and mechanical enterprises, or the digitalization of clinical research in academic research institutions.

However, this broad definition is not suitable for field consolidation that requires in-depth study, except for the application in very few macro situations. Therefore, the research subject will generally determine the coverage of the definition of digital medicine according to the specific needs.

In the early stage, digital medical care is more considered to be equivalent to electronic medical care (eHealth), which represents the application of information and communication technology in the medical field. With the passage of time, the concept of mobile healthcare (mHealth) has also been added, which includes the application of mobile information technology. At present, digital medicine includes eHealth and mHealth, and will also include advanced digital technologies such as big data application and analysis, artificial intelligence, and the Internet of Things.

The Stanford Center for Digital Health in the United States believes that digital medicine includes five types of digital medical technology:

1. AI (Artificial Intelligence), ML (Machine Learning) and various AI algorithms including deep learning, image processing and advanced analysis;

2. Medical informatization, infrastructure and data management system including electronic health record system (EHR);

3. Mobile applications and network applications including SaaS platform, cloud-based software tools and social applications;

4. Emerging clinical nursing models including telemedicine, patient participation and doctor-patient interaction;

5. Including wearable devices, sensors and other IoT hardware devices.

2、 Four stages of digital medicine

Basically, digital medical treatment is mainly reflected in the digitization and networking of medical equipment, the informatization of hospital management, and the convenience and personalization of medical services, which can be divided into four stages: digitization, networking, intelligence, and medical model reform.

1.0 Phase

HIS (Hospital lnformation System), which takes financial management and cost accounting as the core and allocates the human and financial resources of the hospital with the help of information network technology, was the first information system introduced at that time. At that time, the domestic medical information industry was still in the blank.

Powerful hospital information departments usually write software according to their needs. Some enterprises that found a huge market began to develop products and grow rapidly in response to the needs of hospital informatization, and a large number of medical informatization companies emerged to solve the problems of hospital finance and medical orders in a professional way.

At the initial stage, enterprises are willing to show the uniqueness of the system, and gradually turn to marketing in the later stage, trying to improve the attractiveness of GUI interface and product packaging. In the 1.0 phase, the hospital management information system took shape.

Stage 2.0

At the end of the century, China's economic and technological level has been significantly improved. The deepening of medical reform and the growing demand for medical services have increasingly higher requirements for hospital informatization.

The focus of informatization has shifted from the management level to the business level, and the CIS (Clinical Informatization System), which helps to realize the informatization of the whole process of patient diagnosis and treatment and the informatization of medical technology departments, has been introduced into hospitals.

Information manufacturers have begun to develop and promote a new round of medical information interaction in CIS systems such as doctor workstation, inspection report system and imaging system, which has gradually become the focus of attention of both medical and enterprise.

On the other hand, the accelerated development of clinical systems and medical informatization has gradually become specialized, and the demand has also begun to split, and the market scale has soared. From this stage, medical IT enterprises have gradually gained the initiative of hospital information construction.

Stage 3.0

At this stage, the informatization construction of the tertiary hospital was basically completed, but due to the different sources of the subsystem of CIS and the different interface specifications, the lack of interfaces between the systems resulted in the formation of many data islands. This also directly led to the emergence of "information islands" within the hospital.

The integrated system in phase 3.0 came into being. Medical informatization enterprises have developed an integration platform to connect different medical subsystems and integrate data from different systems.

Its purpose is to realize the information integration in the hospital and improve the interaction efficiency in the hospital. The information system of the whole hospital has not been completed until this stage. However, in actual operation, the information islands existing in medical institutions have not been completely solved.

Stage 4.0

With the rise of big data, cloud computing and artificial intelligence in recent years, and the huge potential of its system in other fields, the focus of hospital information construction has gradually shifted to regional medical information service (GMIS, Global Medical Information Service).

Under the guidance of the government and in the form of enterprise construction, various regions began to explore the establishment of information systems for patients, hospitals and health administrative departments by taking the electronic health records of residents in the region as the core, connecting the internal and external platforms of the hospital through the network.

Regional medical informatization hopes to gradually break through the isolated islands of information through the unified architecture and standards on the cloud, and integrate these sleeping data together to form a massive database. This stage is still in progress and innovative clinical applications have emerged through data integration and utilization.

At the same time, more and more attention has been paid to the intelligent degree of hospital services and management, and specific requirements have been put forward through policy guidance.

Through the continuous improvement of medical information construction in the past decades, China's digital medical service has basically completed digitalization and networking, and is also gradually becoming intelligent in some subdivision areas. A solid digital "base" is basically formed.

Based on the accumulation and utilization of massive medical data, China's digital medicine has also begun to move from the medical edge of management and service to the core areas of treatment and diagnosis. Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation Report.

Assisted diagnosis based on artificial intelligence and intelligent diagnostic equipment (such as wearable devices) combined with artificial intelligence and the Internet of Things have made rapid progress in recent years, and are widely used for the fine management of health care systems and to help doctors in clinical diagnosis and treatment.

3、 Future development prospect of digital medical industry

Digital medicine is mainly reflected in the digitization and networking of medical equipment, the informatization of hospital management, and the convenience and personalization of medical services, which can be divided into four stages: digitization, networking, intelligence, and medical model reform.

With the successive realization of digitalization, networking and intelligence, the reform of medical model has a corresponding foundation. Through quantitative change and ultimately qualitative change, the medical system and service model will be changed, the service quality will be improved, and the ideal digital medical service at the current stage will also be realized.

Digital medicine can be divided into two categories according to downstream customers, one is mainly for ordinary consumers (To C), and the other is mainly for enterprises or government units (To B or To G). Under the national policy of "Internet plus" medical care, there was a peak of digital medical investment from 2015 to 2016; Later, due to the immature landing mode and poor profitability, the track was at a low point from 2017 to 2018; From 2019 to 2020, the strong layout of Internet giants and policy breakthroughs brought about by the COVID-19 brought new trends in digital medical investment; From 2021, digital medical investment opportunities will spread to the head, waist and even start-ups. In the field of digital medicine, the pharmaceutical e-commerce and online diagnosis and treatment circuit are the most active, attracting more funds. The cumulative transaction scale from 2013 to the first half of 2021 is 48.1 billion yuan and 29.1 billion yuan respectively.

At present, through years of continuous policy guidance, China has created a good development environment in digital medicine and achieved support for talent training and enterprise development in relevant industries.

The central policy mainly has the characteristics of industry programmatic and guiding, and guides the development of the industry. China's digital medical construction plan presents a phased feature, which is closely combined with the "five-year plan" and forms a series of macro policies around the plan. During the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" period, the policy will promote the acceleration of digital medical care with the core of "benefiting the people's livelihood", create a patient-centered health care system, and simultaneously build smart ecological medical care.

2022 is the key year for the implementation of the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan". The importance of digital economy has become a consensus in China, of which digital medical care is an important component. Therefore, centering on the implementation of digital medical related fields in the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan", the central government of China also promulgated a number of relevant policies in 2022, Such as the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" for Public Services, the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" for Digital Economy Development, the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" for the Development of TCM Informatization, the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" for Health Standardization, and the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan" for National Health Informatization.

In addition to the macro policies surrounding the "Fourteenth Five-Year Plan", the competent departments of the medical industry, including the Health and Health Commission, the Bureau of Traditional Chinese Medicine, the Drug Administration and the Medical Insurance Bureau, also need to issue supporting policies, including specific rules, regulations and standards, on the fields of artificial intelligence, information technology and digital therapy involved in digital medicine within their respective functions, in order to achieve the corresponding management functions and promote the continuous development of digital medicine.

According to Huacheng Import and Export Data Observation, with the current development momentum, the number of Internet hospitals will continue to expand in the future. In terms of industry scale, the scale of China's digital medical service market was 23.2 billion in 2019, and is expected to exceed 700 billion by 2030, with a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 37% during the period.