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Article: China’s vast opportunities in health care attract global telemedicine firms to world’s second-largest market

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5 / 10

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China's massive and growing health care market, the world's second-largest by expenditure, is attracting global telemedicine firms. This is driven by significant market opportunities created by a physician shortage, an aging population, and uneven distribution of medical resources.

Companies are entering the market by offering specialized services, like comprehensive medical case management, which go beyond basic teleconsultation to address gaps in the domestic healthtech landscape. They focus on providing access to quality diagnosis and treatment pathways, not just digital accessibility.

The main topics covered are the scale and drivers of China's health care market, the entry strategies of foreign telemedicine firms, and the specific service gaps they aim to fill within the system.

Original URL

https://www.scmp.com/business/china-business/article/3119909/foreign-telemedicine-firms-struggle-crack-china-market?utm_source=rss_feed

Source Feed

Science & Research - South China Morning Post

Published Date

2021-01-31 02:30

Fetched Date

2026-03-04 14:31

Processed Date

2026-03-04 15:18

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Present

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Not Clustered

Raw Extracted Content

China’s vast opportunities in health care attract global telemedicine firms to world’s second-largest market
- China’s health care industry is the second-largest global market by expenditure, based on US$3.5 trillion spending in 2018
- The country’s ongoing demographic shift means elderly population above 65 is expected to increase from 166 million in 2018 to 250 million by 2030
China’s health care industry, the second-largest in the world with US$3.5 trillion spent in 2018, is attracting global telemedicine investors and service providers as the government gives technology a role to improve the allocation of vital medical resources.
Companies like Medix Global, which provides second opinions, necessary tests and monitors recovery – known as medical case management – for individual customers, are seizing the opportunity left unattended by AliHealth, WeDoctor and other home-grown Chinese healthtech companies.
“Telemedicine [alone] is not enough,” said Medix’s chief executive Sigal Atzmon, in an interview with the South China Morning Post. “At the end of the day, you need to have access to the right treatment, the right diagnosis, you need to make a choice of which hospital you go to, to choose your doctor. It’s not just the accessibility to the app, it’s the quality.”
In the medical field, China is a land of opportunity as the nation faces a huge deficit in doctors, with 1.8 physicians – both general practitioners and specialists – for every 1,000 people. That is lower than the 2.4 ratio in the US, 2.8 in the UK, 2.4 in Japan and 2.3 in Singapore, based on a World Bank study in 2014.
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The country’s ongoing demographic shift means the elderly population above 65 is expected to increase from 166 million in 2018 to 250 million by 2030. Besides, access to medical services is unbalanced, with more than 2,300 top-tier public hospitals running at capacity and struggling to cope with demand, while close to 950,000 lower-tier hospitals struggle to attract patients.