China’s vast opportunities in health care attract global telemedicine firms to world’s second-largest market

China’s health care industry, the second-largest in the world with US$3.5 trillion spent in 2018, is attracting global telemedicine investors and service providers as the government gives technology a role to improve the allocation of vital medical resources.

Companies like Medix Global, which provides second opinions, necessary tests and monitors recovery – known as medical case management – for individual customers, are seizing the opportunity left unattended by AliHealth, WeDoctor and other home-grown Chinese healthtech companies.

“Telemedicine [alone] is not enough,” said Medix’s chief executive Sigal Atzmon, in an interview with the South China Morning Post. “At the end of the day, you need to have access to the right treatment, the right diagnosis, you need to make a choice of which hospital you go to, to choose your doctor. It’s not just the accessibility to the app, it’s the quality.”

In the medical field, China is a land of opportunity as the nation faces a huge deficit in doctors, with 1.8 physicians – both general practitioners and specialists – for every 1,000 people. That is lower than the 2.4 ratio in the US, 2.8 in the UK, 2.4 in Japan and 2.3 in Singapore, based on a World Bank study in 2014.

The country’s ongoing demographic shift means the elderly population above 65 is expected to increase from 166 million in 2018 to 250 million by 2030. Besides, access to medical services is unbalanced, with more than 2,300 top-tier public hospitals running at capacity and struggling to cope with demand, while close to 950,000 lower-tier hospitals struggle to attract patients.