Alibaba Health Debuts Official Website, Reveals Potential Ecosystem
36Kr.com, 3/18/15
Chinese e-commerce conglomerate Alibaba Group's (NYSE: BABA) online healthcare subsidiary Alibaba Health Information Technology (0241.HK) recently launched its official website which encapsulates four core businesses.
The "Cloud Hospital" (unofficial translation) is an O2O platform for medical clinics and health care practitioners to find patients. Patients browse the information of registered health care providers on the platform and make online appointments. Cloud Hospital digitalizes and manages patient history and prescriptions, and even supports online billing. The Cloud Hospital is currently recruiting merchants and has not officially launched.
Alibaba Health's website has a download for mobile healthcare app Alijk, which users can use to upload pictures of a prescription or medicine package. The app will recommend nearby pharmacies, enable online consultation with the pharmacist, and allow the user to order the medicine.
The third component is the China Drug Electronic Regulation Platform, a project led by the China Food and Drug Administration (CFDA) and operated by Alibaba Health. CFDA requires that all drug manufacturers, wholesalers, retailers, and medical establishments must register on the platform and keep records of drug transactions by scanning bar codes.
The final component is a big data analysis service for drug manufacturers based on drug circulations, that includes analysis of circulation efficiency, sales network, and monitoring of transregional regulations.
Editor's Note: According to a source from Alibaba Health, the company will soon update the Alibaba Health mobile app, integrating into it its Cloud Hospital platform, providing information of hospitals, doctors and drugstores in one app. For more background on this topic, please see "Alibaba, Kingstar Winning Partner on E-Medical Service," MD 1/26/15 issue, and "China Jo-Jo Drugstores Joins Alibaba Health's E-prescription Platform" MD 02/11/15 issue.
Keywords: wireless Internet online healthcare Alibaba Group mobile healthcare Alibaba Health 0241.HK BABA