The People’s Daily has recently conducted an exclusive interview with Group Chairman Fu Gang and a report titled Baheal Pharmaceutical Group Uses Medical Cloud to Remove Barrier for Information Sharing - Test Results Shared for More Convenient Two-way Referral was published in the Regional Economy section of the Paper dated September 25, 2017.

(Below is the full text of the report)

An expert is analyzing and developing medical treatment programs for patients by referencing the diagnostic and treatment advices given by IBM Watson system

To deepen the medical reform relies not only on mechanism improvements, but also on technological innovations. In recent years, the Baheal Pharmaceutical Group, a front-runner in the field of “medical + Internet” for many years, has made active efforts to explore the potential of the Internet and informatization to break through the traditional bottleneck of the medical industry and improve the traditional ecology.

Medical Cloud Platform Connects Hospitals

Big hospitals are overcrowded while small ones see a few visitors. For a long time, the medical resources have been unevenly distributed among hospitals of different levels and regions, creating a siphon effect for big players. “To change the current situation requires establishing a joint medical body to effectively connect large hospitals, grassroots hospitals and community clinics,” said Fu Gang, vice president of the China Association of Pharmaceutical Commerce and Chairman of the Baheal Pharmaceutical Group. The key to effective connection lies in connecting and sharing information and data among different hospitals. “However much a single hospital invests in informatization, it remains isolated in terms of information sharing, which takes a third-party enterprise to do relevant jobs.”

The Baheal Pharmaceutical Group has been committed to becoming the third-party enterprise to break through the information bottleneck. In 2016, the Group worked together with IBM, Oracle and GOHIGH, all world leading Internet companies, to launch the “Bodhi Medical Cloud”. Later, it reached an agreement on deep strategic cooperation with Qingdao Municipal Hospital (Group).

With the Bodhi Medical Cloud, the medical data of Qingdao Municipal Hospital (Group) is no longer restricted to internal sharing. Rather, it was visible to the medical systems of the first, second, and third-class hospitals and information sharing was thus achieved. “There are many benefits. For patients, as a number of medical institutions use the same third-party information platform and the test results are shared, two-way referral has become more convenient; For hospitals, since there is no need for every one of them to invest huge money in building their own information platforms, repeated human and financial resource investment is thus avoided,” said Fu Gang.

Prescription Sharing Platform Makes Medicine Acquisition More Convenient

“In the future, the roles of doctor, hospital and medical information platform will be clearly defined, and their responsibilities clearly set out,” Fu Gang said, summarizing the vision as “differentiation of doctors, hospitals and medical information platforms”. The hospital will serve as a venue for practicing medicine, and a doctor can work at different hospitals, while the professional medical information platform will provide technological support and environmental security for the linked reforms of medical care, medical insurance and medicine through comprehensive use of big medical and health care data and information technologies. “The new type of medical informatization will generally head for three directions. The first is to provide services with software, namely, to upload all information for sharing on the cloud instead of offering information offline; the second is mobile medical informatization, i.e., to connect the mobile medical terminal to the information system of hospitals so that the entire development progress of a disease and its treatment can be understood; The third is smart decision-making, namely, to leverage artificial intelligence to provide intelligent support for doctors’ diagnosis.”

If we say the Baheal Pharmaceutical Group’s medical cloud in Qingdao has removed the barrier for information sharing among hospitals, the prescription sharing platform it worked out in Yuzhou City of Guangxi Zhuang Autonomous Region has facilitated communication between hospitals and Internet-connected pharmacies.

Last year, under the support from relevant local authorities of Wuzhou City, the Baheal Pharmaceutical Group, using the third-party information platform, connected the information systems of hospitals and outside chain pharmacies. As soon as a doctor finishes a prescription, the patient can locate the pharmacies where the prescribed medicines are available on his/her cellphone and choose one based on his/her preferences or convenience. Upon arriving at the chosen pharmacy, the patient can print the prescription by swiping the code and get the prescribed medicines. More convenient is that patients with chronic diseases who need long-term medication do not have to go through the procedures of queuing up, registration, payment, and fetching medicines in hospitals. Instead, they can regularly go to the pharmacy to get the medicines.

Cold Chain Distribution System Covers Entire Nation

“With the separation between hospitals and pharmacies, a large number of prescriptions will flow from hospitals to the market, thus greatly increasing the room for expansion of outside pharmacies.” In Fu Gang’s opinion, as the medical reform deepens, the supply-side reform in the field of medicine circulation is also imperative. “So far, we have established stable cooperation with over 10,000 outside pharmacies nationwide and helped these pharmacies increase operation efficiency through our professional medical cloud platform. In the meantime, as an increasing number of pharmacies are also offering clinical services, the Baheal Pharmaceutical Group will make further efforts by exploring the use of information tools to help these pharmacies develop into service centers for health care and chronic disease management of surrounding residents.”

What makes the Baheal Pharmaceutical Group capable of accomplishing the above achievements lies in its own strength. With more than ten years’ experience in the field of medicine circulation, the Group has not only established a nationwide cold chain delivery system which strictly complies with the standards set out in the Good Supply Practice for Pharmaceutical Products but also realized flexible supply chain management, namely, delivery by order. Theoretically speaking, contract pharmacies can expect to achieve zero inventory.

“In the future, the mission for both drug manufacturing and drug circulation companies shall be optimize flow and reduce repetitive transactions through professional operation, thereby providing more cost-competitive products and services for ordinary Chinese people while ensuring the quality of medicines,” Fu forecast.