Online doctors

Medical professionals can give advice online for a range of scenarios, including prenatal checks and ultrasound scans. (Photo: GT/Li Hao)

How the Internet makes it easier for people to access medical care in China

Rather than just resting his weary bones after a long day attending to patients, Yu Keyi, an orthopedist at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, spends most of his evenings in front of a computer, giving online consultations to people who would otherwise not have access to his expertise.

"On average, I give medical advice to three to five people each day," said Yu, who gives online consultations through several platforms including Sina Weibo, WeChat and haodf.com, a website registry set up specifically for facilitating online and telephone consultations between medical professionals and those seeking medical advice.

The initiatives, said Yu, help address the problem of access to good medical care in China, particularly in less developed towns and rural areas. At present, the best doctors and medical facilities are concentrated in China's largest cities.

According to a Guangzhou Daily report last May, there are 196 "first class" hospitals in Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou in Guangdong Province, compared to only 37 in Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region, Qinghai Province, Ningxia Hui Autonomous Region and Tibet Autonomous Region combined.

Consequently, hospitals in China's biggest cities are often overwhelmed with patients from all over the country.

Many of the top hospitals routinely receive twice the number of patients per day than they are equipped to handle, according to a Bohai Morning Post report last August.

"The borderless nature of the Internet enables patients from small towns or even rural villages to have access to expert advice through online consulting, without traveling for thousands of miles," said Yu.

Prioritizing preventative care

Yu is quick to point out that online consultations are not a substitute for face-to-face diagnosis. Under Chinese law, it is illegal for doctors to make a full diagnosis or prescribe treatment without seeing the patient face-to-face.

Rather, Yu suggested, the primary benefit of online platforms connecting doctors and patients was to shift the paradigm of healthcare to emphasize preventative care and general well-being over merely treating a patient after he or she is already sick.

Unlike in the UK and the US, where there are family health clinics, doctors in China's hospitals rarely have any acquaintance with their patients' medical histories beyond the immediate ailment they are treating.

"Doctors can administer better care if they know and understand their patients, and are able to develop a relationship with their patients," said Yu, who said that online consultations allowed doctors to establish such relationships.

"[This way], doctors can provide ongoing and preventative care for patients."

Although doctors cannot prescribe treatment over the Internet, said Yu, online consultations offered patients access to medical advice that would otherwise be much more difficult to get.

According to a February article on lifetimes.cn, around 80 percent of the consultations on haodf.com are between doctors and patients in different cities.

Doctors online could also advise patients from small towns whether they need to crowd into a large hospital in a big city for treatment, or whether their health problem could likely be treated equally well at a smaller hospital, where there are less people, said Yu.