Mobile healthcare sector attracts investment

A parent shows an online registration service powered by Wechat platform in a hospital in Shanghai, April 10, 2014. [Photo/Xinhua]

Mobile healthcare investment is popular in China among venture capital and private equity firms, but its business pattern, talent and technology remains to be improved, experts told China Daily.

Mobile healthcare is the adoption of mobile technology to the medical sector.

"Investors have shown great interest in Chinese mobile healthcare companies because they combine Internet with healthcare, and I believe it's a good time to make investments in China in this sector," said Ouyang Xiangyu, managing director of leading Chinese investment company Legend Capital and leader of its healthcare investment team.

The value of the Chinese mobile healthcare market at the end of 2014 is estimated to reach 2.7 billion yuan ($439.5 million), an increase of 20 percent on the figure for 2013. It is projected to reach 12 billion yuan in 2017, according to a report of Zero2IPO Group.

From 2010 to the first quarter of 2014, 61 VC and PE deals were made in the Chinese mobile healthcare market, and deals in 2013 and 2014 increased fast, according to the report.

Ouyang said that in developed countries, mobile healthcare companies are business-to-business, helping hospitals and clinics improve efficiency or doing applications related to insurance companies, and charging fees from these institutions.

"In China, most mobile healthcare companies are business-to-customer, and they are still at the stage of cultivating users and exploring business patterns," said Ouyang.

Zhang Rui, CEO of Beijing Spring Rain Software Co Ltd, a leading Chinese mobile healthcare company, has a positive view on China's mobile healthcare market but acknowledges companies in the sector are still at the beginning of exploring business patterns.

"A real mobile healthcare company should meet three requirements: be based on data; target all people; and have new business patterns," said Zhang.

He said China has more than 100 companies engaged in mobile healthcare businesses or planning to develop them.

Xu Zhipeng, an analyst at Zero2IPO Group, said: "China has the largest and fastest-growing mobile user group, and diversified consumption pattern, which offer many segmented market opportunities for mobile healthcare.

"For promoting healthcare policy reform, the Chinese government will invest heavily in improving the level of healthcare services, which will also benefit the mobile healthcare sector," Xu said.

James Zhao, a managing partner of Vivo Capital, a healthcare investment firm focused on investing in companies in the United States and China, said that the Chinese mobile healthcare sector is good, but investment in the sector has been overheating.

"Talent, data accumulation and detailed implementation have not kept pace with the sector's development," Zhao told China Daily.

According to Zhao, requirements of talent in the sector are very high because they need to understand healthcare, the Internet and consumers.

"In my view, we should wait another two to three years before investing in the Chinese mobile healthcare sector," said Zhao.

Zhao said Vivo Capital has invested in 20 healthcare deals in China but none in the mobile healthcare sector.

"We will choose mobile healthcare companies capable of showing business and social value," said Zhao. "Using the collected data to create business and social value is a challenge and also an opportunity."

According to Ouyang, they choose to invest in companies that own good business patterns and can meet the requirements of users.

Legend Capital has invested in 27 healthcare deals at home and abroad totaling $250 million, but only one of them is a mobile healthcare company, Garea, in Jiangsu province.