“China’s online medical market grew 47% last year alone…there is a need for efforts to preoccupy the market”
[아시아경제 정현진 기자] It was argued that the online medical industry in China has been growing rapidly since Corona 19, so Korean medical device and related service companies should pay attention to the Chinese market.
According to the’Status and Implications of the Online Medical Industry in China’ jointly published by the Shanghai Branch of the Korea International Trade Association and the Chengdu Branch of the Korea International Trade Association, the size of the Chinese online medical industry market was from 49.8 billion yuan in 2015 to 133.7 billion won It was found to have grown by an average of 28% per year in yuan. Last year, it is estimated that this market will reach 19.6 billion yuan, an increase of 46.7% from the previous year.
(Data provided = Korea International Trade Association)
China’s online medical industry is divided into ▲medical platform ▲online hospital ▲smart medical device market by function. As a medical platform, it can provide medical services using big data technology such as medical appointments, counseling treatments, and drug prescriptions. In the case of online hospitals, doctors can treat and prescribe remotely, and online pharmacies are developing toward tracking the effectiveness of medicines by combining services such as health management and chronic disease prevention. Smart medical devices are considered a market with high growth potential thanks to the advantage of being able to check their health status by themselves.
In the case of China, it has been confirmed that online transactions of pharmaceuticals are also active. Last year, China’s business-to-business (B2B) and business-to-consumer (B2C) pharmaceutical e-commerce transactions rose 50.7% and 81.4% year-on-year to 308.6 billion yuan and 178.2 billion yuan, respectively. Online medical content users also recorded a record high of 61.96 million in April last year, just after the Corona 19 outbreak, and the average number of users per month reached 51.3 million.
The Chinese government has also invested in the online medical industry to improve the medical environment, which is different by region, and the amount of investment has more than doubled from 63.4 billion yuan in 2017 to 151.5 billion yuan in 2019.
A trade association official said, “Since Corona 19, the demand for related contents such as remote diagnosis, outpatient reception, and medical information provision has been increasing.” “We need to do our best to preoccupy the market,” he said.
Reporter Jeong Hyun-jin [email protected]