Interview With Zhang Meng, Vice President Of Tencent Medical: Epidemic Situation Stimulates Capital Enthusiasm Again

Internet medical care is not an industry that can be really smashed out with money, nor can it be spawned by traffic. It should pay attention to service and pay attention to scientific and normal laws.

Internet medicine has become another hit because of the epidemic.

Under the influence of the new crown pneumonia epidemic, more and more attention has been paid to the internet medical service from all walks of life, which makes the internet medical industry usher in a transformative development opportunity.

During the epidemic period, in order to avoid cross infection, the general outpatient windows of major hospitals were basically closed, and the majority of patients who were inconvenient to seek medical treatment began to seek online consultation. At the same time, in order to reduce the burden of hospitals and the risk of doctors, many public hospitals and third-party Internet service platforms have launched free online medical services. In the end, the Internet and domestic service will promote the outbreak.

However, after all, Internet medicine is still a new thing. Although it has developed for more than 10 years, its development mode and profit-making mode are still in the exploratory stage.

On the afternoon of September 8, Zhang Meng, vice president of Tencent medical, said in an interview with the 21st century economic reporter that internet medical service is not an industry that can be smashed with money, nor can it be spawned by traffic. It is necessary to pay attention to service and scientific and normal rules.

On September 10, Tencent global digital ecology conference smart medical special session appeared in the cloud. Tencent medical classics officially released the content opening plan, and systematically exported professional popular science content and intelligent tools to different platforms in the form of API interface.

Zhang Meng. Information map

Internet medicine can't be matured in a short time

21st century: during the outbreak of new crown pneumonia, what is the development of Tencent medical team from online to now?

Zhang Meng: Tencent medical classics team has done a lot of follow-up information on disease progress from the embryonic stage of the epidemic situation before Wuhan was blocked, mainly focusing on how to better protect science popularization. During the period of the epidemic, we have done more than 2000 articles about Xinguan, and the reading volume has increased tens of times compared with that before the epidemic, especially the hot spots. There are nearly 10 billion reading volumes distributed throughout the network. In addition, Zhang Wenshan has been invited to live broadcast the epidemic, and has been invited to participate in the live broadcast.

21st century: other brands are doing similar things. How do you view the competition among peers?

Zhang Meng: I think competition is a good thing. No matter what kind of content is produced and distributed by users themselves, it doesn't matter what kind of content users need. But at the content level, medical care, unlike other tracks, needs scientific principles and a spirit of responsibility. Medical content is very difficult to do, countless diseases, uncertain user needs, medical knowledge update speed is also very fast.

21st century: Internet medicine was very popular a few years ago, and then it got cold again. After the epidemic, people pay more and more attention to this industry, but the profit model has been difficult to break through. Will there be any new inspiration in the industry exploration after the epidemic?

Zhang Meng: Internet medicine has always been looking for breakthroughs. I think that through the epidemic situation and the exploration in previous years, we may have a more practical understanding. In the past, this industry was accelerated by capital, but medical care is a relatively long business model, which can not be accelerated by short-term capital.

For Internet medicine, it is not an industry that can be smashed out with money, nor can it be spawned by traffic. We should pay attention to service and pay attention to scientific and normal laws. Moreover, the medical consumption behavior belongs to the low frequency behavior, and can not be induced artificially, which also has certain particularity.

During the epidemic period, the Internet has indeed brought positive promotion to the medical industry. Online consultation, online drug delivery and information are very convenient. Now the market is rekindling its enthusiasm for Internet medicine. At the same time, compared with the time when Internet medicine was just booming in the past few years, people will be more mature and rational about Internet medicine, start to eliminate impetuousness, and really grasp the core value points to make a long-term layout. No matter what, I always think that medical treatment is not a profiteering industry, or a business model that can quickly realize profits. We need to have a long-distance running heart and the heart of problem-solving users, and we should be prepared in this respect.

Medicine circulation is still the main profit model

"21st century": in the past, the profit model of internet medical service often stayed in the way of online consultation, opening up the closed-loop of medicine and returning to online pharmacies. Will Tencent medical have any specific attempts in exploring new profit models in the future?

Zhang Meng: the introduction of pharmaceutical enterprises is one of the few profit channels under the current situation, including pharmaceutical enterprises and equipment companies. In addition, the insurance model also plays an important role in Internet Medical profits. However, commercial insurance in China has just started, and it can not really change medical behavior and supervise and control doctors' prescription habits through payment leverage, which is still in its infancy.

Many internet medical enterprises feel that a win-win model can be formed through cooperation with pharmaceutical enterprises. In the absence of a better profit model, I think it is a profit model that can be tried to solve the problems of users by taking patients as the center and solving the problems of users and improving the efficiency of doctors.

In the future, how to bring a positive cycle with pharmaceutical enterprises, better understand the disease, further improve the behavior of patients, and further improve the efficiency of doctors, so as to reduce the overall efficiency of the medical system and social medical expenses, so as to form a supplement to the current domestic medical treatment is the main research direction of Tencent medical in the future. Our advantages focus on technology Big data and technology.

21st century: Alibaba, Ping An and other giants are not a few in the layout of consultation platforms. What is the difference between Tencent's online consultation and other Internet inquiries?

Zhang Meng: Tencent medical online consultation is based on wechat ecology, so we will also focus on user security. We hope to have a higher industry standard consultation quality tracking system or monitoring system. Because we should be responsible for the ecology of wechat and Tencent.

In this process, we also strive to add more information connotation. For example, we break the contents of Tencent medical classics to form a function of screening patients, so as to achieve the purpose of completing relatively simple problems by machines during the consultation period. On the one hand, it can quickly solve some problems of patients. For the consulting doctors, the simplest medicine in the early stage can be completed by the machine after breaking the information Doctors can reply to patients more quickly without typing a lot of words. On the other hand, we find that more often, patients are just looking for comfort when they are on-line. Online consultation is to solve problems, but most of the time, they are not so urgent and urgent medical problems. In this context, relying on Tencent medical classics and Tencent's powerful AI capabilities, our advantage is that we can improve the efficiency of two-way consultation between doctors and patients, and reduce the round-trip time.

21st century: what is the development of Tencent medical classics in the b-end direction? As a platform with content as carrier output, where is its bargaining power?

Zhang Meng: our advantages are: first, we have the scarcity of products; secondly, high-quality content output and ensuring the user's love degree are also relatively important advantages. At present, on the B end, it mainly cooperates with the channel. We have received a lot of demand from channel providers for customized content, especially for video medical content. The medical content of video can meet the needs of users and expand channels, which is the direction of b-end cooperation. In the future, we will better grasp and meet the needs of users by improving our own content.