This article is from the “Internet+” industry team of the Industry Research Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University and reviews the current development and future of the Internet + healthcare industry.

In recent years, Internet healthcare enterprises have been mushrooming. In particular, due to the COVID-19 pandemic in early 2020, the advantages of Internet healthcare were further explored, and the favorable policies promoted the scale and influence of Internet healthcare to grow rapidly. However, the business model of Internet healthcare enterprises is still at the preliminary development stage and is to be explored and tested in depth.

The Internet healthcare enterprises at current stage mainly focus on pharmaceutical, content and disease to provide healthcare services. Some enterprises provide pharmaceutical service online and form a platform economic model similar to “online takeout”. Some enterprises integrate the doctor resources and provide online consultation service through a “Internet diagnosis and treatment platform”. In the future, such model can further evolve into two more complex types of shared services. One is "mobile healthcare and surgery platform", which integrates the information of patients, doctors and hospitals, and uses big data, artificial intelligence and other technologies to match suitable doctors and hospitals for patients to receive treatment; the other is the "multi-site practice sharing platform", which has its own medical resources and provides places for regional first-class doctors and even national senior experts.

The prominent contradiction between supply and demand is a fundamental problem in the healthcare in China. Restricted by the regional economic gap, the distribution of healthcare resources is unbalanced and inadequate. Therefore, the development of Internet healthcare enterprises should provide support to alleviate the supply side imbalance. However, the purpose of enterprises is inevitably to make profits. It is particularly important to balance profit and social responsibility and prevent the risk.

Therefore, Internet healthcare enterprises need to balance profit and social responsibility, strictly abide by the standard requirements of the healthcare industry, comprehensively improve the compliance awareness, improve and implement the internal control system, and pursue profit maximization on the premise of fulfilling their social responsibility. This not only guarantees the security of Internet healthcare, but also is the most direct and effective means of risk prevention for Internet healthcare enterprises.

In the operation process of Internet healthcare enterprises, in addition to the common market risks of general enterprises, they also face the risks of medical negligence, credit default, information security and policy.

First, the defaulters of credit default risk increase. Firstly, the Internet healthcare platform may also become a defaulter; secondly, as the patients are characterized by high degree of dispersion and large number and the doctors & hospitals include more than one person, the number of defaulters increases significantly. Second, the information security risk is more prominent. A lot of doctor-patient data are collected and stored on the Internet platform, which brings information security risks.

At the same time, it is necessary for Internet healthcare enterprises, doctors and hospitals to make clear how to share risks and profits before establishing a partnership, especially for the reasonable and clear division of potential risks and responsibilities such as medical negligence risk, information security risk, privacy protection and policy risk in the agreement. On that basis, the government needs to strengthen the supervision of Internet healthcare enterprises, doctors and hospitals, and issue relevant policies, laws and regulations to regulate the behaviors of all parties and control the occurrence of risks.

Under the background of "Changjiang River Delta Integration", Internet healthcare enterprises can carry out pilot projects in the Changjiang River Delta, boldly explore new business models, and deepen the sharing degree of medical resources in the region; and they can create a new track, face the grassroots, optimize the allocation of medical resources through Internet technology, and alleviate the contradiction between supply and demand caused by the imbalance of medical resources between different regions.

Associate Professor Luo Jun, member of the “Internet +” industry team of the Industry Research Institute of Shanghai Jiao Tong University. His research topics include stochastic modeling, simulation optimization, business analysis, statistical learning; service operation management, healthcare management, financial risk management, and logistics management, etc.