On June 17th, Ping An Health held a special news conference-the China Ping An Family Doctor Brand Upgrade Conference.

The reason for the word 'special' is that not long ago, JD Health's JD Family Doctor Department was exposed to a complete layoff, although the official rumors were untrue, claiming that it did not involve business and personnel layoffs, but there was indeed a structural split.

Not only JD Health, but in 2015 Chunyu Doctor proposed, "a trusted personal doctor;" in 2020 Hao Daifu Online tested membership services, could it explore a successful path in the family doctor business?

The family doctor business is like a bunch of flowers, but it has thorny paths. Idealistic and beautiful, realistic and bony, a lot of customer acquisition investment and operational losses have caused many companies to give up.

Ping An is an exception. Last year, Ping An launched the "Ping An Family Doctor" service, providing customers with health management solutions covering health prevention, common disease treatment and offline medical care throughout the lifecycle through the "insurance + medical" model.

With its own online and offline medical resources, technology capabilities, and group network, Ping An has been sprinting all the way on the family doctor stage. Last year, the number of registered members of Ping An's family doctor exceeded 13 million, and the user's consultation received a 98% five-star rating.

Within one year, "Ping An Family Doctor" was upgraded again. For the industry, this press conference was an uplifting and positive affirmation.

Some people leave, some people advance, and the outside world also leaves three questions about 'Ping An Family Doctor' -

1. What makes Ping An Family Doctor special?

2. Why is Ping An able to succeed?

3. Why did Ping An have to do it?

Everything in the past can be surpassed. Seeing how Ping An answers these three questions can help understand the gap between success and failure.

From medicine to medicine, cultivate medical culture.

Central processing unit (CPU), blue light-emitting diode (blue LED), dynamic random-access memory, transistors, microelectromechanical systems, etc., these products that are now seen as significant original innovations were questioned by the industry when they were first introduced. Today, whether it is surfing the web, storing digital photos, playing videos, driving electric cars, or detecting nucleic acid sequences, rely on these technologies.

The importance of many product inventions is beyond redundant words, but at the beginning, they may not be optimistic.

The same can be said for 'family doctors.'

After JD Family Doctor's business adjustment, the industry had many criticisms of the business, feeling that the service value provided by the family doctor was too low, and it was impossible to arouse users' purchase desire. Even this business conflicted with internal business. The demand for low-frequency consultations was not enough to support such a service format.

Commercial itself emphasizes genetic differences. Internet medical platforms can be simply divided into two categories, represented by e-commerce platforms, which hope to extend from drug purchase to medical services, that is, the "from drugs to medical" path.

The other is represented by Ping An Health's insurance platform, which upgrades from health services to serious medical services, and the path is "from medicine to medicine." Compared with the former, the latter is a medical service logic, and the users' mental and experiential differences are naturally vastly different.

The Ping An announcement shows an updated service covering life-long family doctors, cancer specialist consultation, chronic disease care and management, etc. Full-time doctors will provide customers with the service throughout the whole process through "online + offline remote consultation/assisted hospitalization services + designated inpatient services." This path seems to be the way Ping An persists to provide medical services to its customers.

It is currently agreed that it is difficult to do home medical business, but not because it is unnecessary.

On the demand side, there is a strong demand for "home medicine" from users.

According to the Research Report on the Demand for Resident Family Doctors in China in 2024 and their Development, 80% of customers hope to get a family exclusive general practitioner, 76% of customers want family doctors to contact actively at least once every two weeks and more users hope to receive medical and health services, mainly including timely online diagnosis, door-to-door testing, health promotion, guidance for online and offline medical treatment.

On the supply side, there are many challenges, which can be summarized as: uneven distribution of medical resources, differences between regions, and differences between urban and rural areas, service standards cannot be referenced, and service levels are uneven.

The current doctor-patient ratio in China is 1 to 950, which means that there is such a doctor for roughly every one thousand residents in the country, which still falls behind other countries with better doctor-patient ratios.

In other words, it is not that the market does not need it, but that the supply is not good enough.

The topic to be discussed regarding home medical care is not whether it should exist or not, but whether it is good enough or not. This is also the reason why Ping An chose to upgrade its "home medical care".

So, what is the differentiation of Ping An's home medical care? How to do home medical care and how to upgrade it?

Ping An Home Medical Care is committed to providing worry-free, time-saving and cost-saving one-stop family health management services for customers through an exclusive family doctor portal, relying on advanced AI technology and a professional medical team, so that users can extend their healthy life and improve their quality of life.

Specifically, Ping An Home Medical Care has launched the "11312 One-Stop Proactive Health Management Service System," and launched the user service commitment of "proactive health management, good management of chronic diseases, and management of diseases throughout the process."

The "11312" proactive health management service system includes: a professional family doctor team certified by Peking University Medical International Hospital and the World Organization of Family Doctors WONCA; a 5A standard service path guided by the General Practitioner Branch of the Chinese Medical Association and certified by the Royal Australian College of General Practitioners; proactive health management services for sub-healthy populations, chronic disease populations, and disease populations; and 12 scarce medical resources.

Ping An Home Medical Care has also proposed the "Three Provinces" user service commitment: "proactive health management, good management of chronic diseases, and full-course management of diseases." For sub-healthy populations, home doctors provide high-quality solutions by analyzing the health records and physical examination reports automatically. For patients with chronic diseases, through real-time monitoring and high-risk warning of the Internet of Things, combined with 21-day lifestyle management, the symptom improvement rate and the standard rate of chronic disease management are industry-leading.

For patients with diseases, through comprehensive disease management, including providing 24/7 remote consultations, accurately recommending famous doctors and hospitals, and assisting in appointment registration before hospitalization; providing customers with convenient and efficient "hospitalization encyclopedia" during hospitalization, and providing customized "rehabilitation guidelines" and follow-up treatment after hospitalization, customers can receive accurate medical diagnosis and effective treatment, and achieve peace of mind during the process.

Comprehensive, convenient, and reliable home medical services can truly make users feel accessible and have a sense of gain.

For a set of services, from daily health care, medical diagnosis, chronic disease management to home care, Ping An Home Medical Care is not just a "medical" service, but a lifelong health steward for users and aims to be the daily health guardian for customers.

Group effort ensures long-term endurance.

For a product to be successful, it is never just because of localized innovation.

As the core hub of medical and health services, Ping An Home Medical Care, upgraded, assumes three roles: doctor, health navigator and customer manager. Depending on the authoritative/professional home medical team, intelligent/automated health records, system active health management services, and many scarce medical resources, it can exert proactive management capabilities in various stages of pre-diagnosis, diagnosis, and post-diagnosis, and provide customers with all-weather and high-quality "three-to" services, including online, offline, and home-based.

The wide scope of population covered by the whole service system and the many details of the services will actually make the service system node cumbersome and bulky, and many players in the field are avoiding it. How can Ping An achieve this?

In summary, the excellent medical team, leading-edge technology, complete network ecology, and strong group resources behind it are the advantages of Ping An Home Medical Care.

Starting from building its own medical team, Ping An Health has grown its capabilities and experience over the years. Currently, it has more than 50,000 internal and external doctors in 29 departments, and cooperates with more than 2,500 external experts. The user satisfaction rate of its services has exceeded 98%. At the same time, it has established 23 specialized disease centers around the eight major disciplines, and its medical resources also cover overseas areas.

In terms of medical ecology, Ping An Health has established a leading online and offline service network, including in-store, online, and at-home services, as well as real-time cooperation with more than 4,000 hospitals. It has achieved 99% coverage of the top 100 national hospitals, has more than 2,000 health examination suppliers, and collaborates with 230,000 pharmacies. Its strong medical resource reserve allows family doctors to establish high-frequency interactions with customers more conveniently and efficiently through online methods.

However, to achieve the goal of Ping An Family Doctor, relying solely on traditional medical methods is not enough, and advanced technology is needed to provide more efficient and accurate services.

In terms of medical technology, Ping An Health has built five databases including a disease repository, prescription treatment repository, medical product repository, medical resource repository, and personal health repository, and has constructed a globally leading medical knowledge map. Based on this, Ping An has also made a breakthrough by innovating and constructing the "Ping An Medical Broadband" multimodal medical model and 12 AI business models.

Recently, Ping An Health has also fully upgraded the "Ping An Family Doctor" doctor's workstation. This smart workstation not only assists family doctors in quickly generating medical knowledge, making medical appointments more time-saving, but also helps automatically update files and match health plans, making health management more worry-free. In addition, AI enables 100% full quality inspection, covering online consultations, electronic medical records, prescription quality control, and other aspects to ensure the medical safety and compliance of Ping An Family Doctor.

On the supply side, from serious medical treatment to technological applications, Ping An has made comprehensive layout and through a complete online medical ecological chain, has achieved seamless integration of online and offline services, forming a closed loop. It can also provide patients with more comprehensive and continuous medical services.

As a result, the role of "Family Doctor" can be extended to multiple scenarios such as sub-health, chronic diseases, retirement, etc., with comprehensive solutions for prevention, early diagnosis, treatment, rehabilitation, and popularization, providing high-frequency services and products with greater social value.

Creating value for users is the foundation of a good product and it is also a deep learning process to effectively deliver value to users and enable them to recognize and obtain it.

Therefore, through many years of deep cultivation, Ping An has developed its own business routes for acquiring and retaining users.

From its inception to 36 years of development to the present day, Ping An Group has built a unique competitive advantage and leading industry position. Under the management-style medical strategy of "integrated finance + medical care + retirement", Ping An uses insurance as the payment method, integrating various supply-side services, and has achieved a large amount of user education and product education, whether in the financial or medical and health care industry.

Compared to screening based on e-commerce platform members, backed by Ping An Group, Ping An Family Doctor also has unique user advantages. Based on Ping An Group's accumulated customers in the financial and corporate end, Ping An Health can quickly enter the F-end and B-end markets. By combining insurance with medical care and retirement, Ping An connects with customers in a strong way, locking them in insurance and care, and then extending to the B2C/F2C family doctor model, which is more sticky than direct 2C.

Once a person has health insurance and establishes a network, the service stickiness is very strong. Especially if the service is provided through the employer, it is only possible to change when leaving that job.

A customer case from China Mobile, an external customer of Ping An Family Doctor. Pu Guiyang, General Manager of the Smart Home Operation Center Family Solution System Department, who is talking about Ping An’s services, says that he not only wants to provide so-called health services for employees, but also hopes to provide health services for China Mobile's extensive users. "We hope to combine with intelligent hardware, rural areas, and communities, and AI. With low-cost, high-value services, we can cover 300 million households and 900 million ordinary users in China, and provide true family doctor services to millions of families."

On the B2B to 2C path, centered on policies, Ping An Family Doctor can provide medical services, claims, payment and other functions, making it unique in the market.

As of the end of last year, at the Ping An Group level, the number of individual customers was 232 million, and more than 64% of customers simultaneously used the services provided by the medical and health care ecosystem. Ping An's home care service has covered 54 cities across the country, and more than 80,000 customers have qualified for home care services. It can be seen that these premium services are continuously empowering comprehensive finance and further improving user stickiness and recognition and changing low-frequency financial services to high-frequency medical, health, and retirement services.

To grasp the strategic high ground through key points of interests.

As Rome was not built in a day, the innovative model of Ping An Family Doctor was not formed overnight.

Behind these is the confidence that Ping An Group has built up over many years of combining insurance with medical care and retirement services.

Ping An Chairman Ma Mingzhe once stated: "Finance is Ping An's present, and medical care is Ping An's future."

In fact, since Ping An first entered the life insurance business, it has been exploring the medical, pharmaceutical, and insurance fields for more than 20 years. As recognized by the outside world, Ping An has insurance business, health data, technology capabilities, and service experience.

This system is very similar to that of UnitedHealth in the United States.

UnitedHealth, established in 1974, is the largest health insurance company in the United States. It has the Health Insurance (UnitedHealthcare) business sector, which provides medical insurance for group and individual customers; and the Health Services (Optum) business sector, which supports the entire group's health management service system, which includes health management service, pharmaceutical management service, and information technology service.

The UnitedHealth Group's business model manages the upstream customers of insurance and the downstream customers of medical care and health management through vertical integration. The business complements and strengthens each other.

Compared with traditional life insurance companies, health services are the second growth curve of UnitedHealth. The policy dividend in the United States continues to promote income from health insurance, while the medical ecosystem business map continues to enrich. Through refined customer health management services, it is possible to lower the incidence and payout rates of diseases, reduce costs, and lower drug prices through the acquisition of pharmaceutical factories and optimize systems to obtain operational costs.

It has linked insurance, medical care, pharmaceuticals, and medical technology, and has established its own service closed loop and cost control barrier by running through the entire process from prevention, chronic disease management, treatment, payment, and recovery.

Last year, UnitedHealth provided risk-based fee health insurance to more than 50 million people worldwide, with total revenue of 371.622 billion US dollars, of which insurance accounted for 55% of the income, and the medical services sector Optum accounted for 45%, and the two are already evenly matched.

Ping An wants to build a Chinese version of UnitedHealth, also by "using medical and health to create a new growth engine." In fact, the two have similar scale economics, user stickiness, resource integration, established circulation volume, and network effects.

Starting with UnitedHealth, insurance companies are exploring medical and health services, which not only improve service levels, but also bring new business growth, achieving a win-win situation between customers and enterprises, which has become a common trend in the insurance industry at home and abroad.

However, the difficulty of family doctor business is that many companies regard it as an investment and loss, and low-frequency services can not generate a positive cycle. But in Ping An's "integrated finance" + "medical and retirement" strategy, Ping An family doctor is no longer a cost center. Ping An family doctor with the three roles of doctor, health navigator, and customer manager is the core hub of Ping An's medical and health services, an important lever for realizing managed medical care, a key tool for empowering and nourishing the main business, and a powerful link between payment and service providers.

From the earliest online medical consultation, Ping An family doctor's service has been a long-term partner of Ping An Health.

In recent years, relying on the medical and health ecosystem, Ping An has used "insurance + service" as the background, and has constructed several major product service lines such as "insurance + health management", "insurance + home care for the elderly", and "insurance + high-end care for the elderly." Combining with the reform background of Ping An Life's "4 channels + 3 products," we have explored a series of "insurance + medical" products.

Chen Zheng, director of the sales management department of Ping An Life, stated that quality standards and strict service supervision and management mechanisms have been established for each introduced service, allowing customers to use them with confidence and satisfaction. With the integration of insurance and medical health, insurance is no longer just selling a policy.

Before 2015, Ping An Life's products focused on providing insurance protection and mainly provided policy services to customers. In 2016, it explored the combination of products and services and launched the Ping An RUN sports health promotion plan. Customers who reach their exercise goals can receive corresponding increases in their insurance coverage.

After 2021, Ping An Life fully integrated insurance and medical health services, and launched the Zenxiang RUN health service platform, which provides customers with health solutions including insurance protection and full-cycle health management.

In the process of serving customers, Ping An Life further identifies differentiated health needs of different customer groups. In 2024, it introduced a brand-new family doctor service and launched the exclusive version of Zen Health RUN. Not only does it further expand the customer base of insurance services, but it also upgrades service capabilities.

Through Ping An Family Doctor's connection with payment providers (insurance) and service providers (medical and health services), as well as online and offline medical resources, it creates a full life-cycle management service of screening, prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation, upgrading the original responsive service to proactive health management.

The biggest feeling of Chen Zheng is the transformation of the insurance business model under the empowerment of medical and health services. Traditional insurance from low-frequency policy services have been upgraded to advanced health services. It has evolved from a single provider of insurance products to providing professional insurance products and services, increasing the market competitiveness of products, further enhancing customer loyalty. The insurance industry, reinforced by health services, has a unique competitive advantage, more lasting vitality, and stronger support and profitability.

In the just-ended year of 2023, Ping An Life cumulatively paid out 44.2 billion yuan in claims, while actively guiding customers to use health and medical services, making the rights and interests of services a real support for customer health. The number of customers using services exceeded 20 million last year. For example, in critical illness protection, the critical illness claim amount in 2023 reached 22.1 billion yuan, and the customers who used our critical illness special plan increased more than twice.

These heavy data are the most intuitive manifestation of the value of insurance + services, and the introduction of the Ping An Family Doctor system has injected more warmth into insurance products, as well as providing Ping An with new user grips and growth engines outside of insurance products.

Economics has its cycles, and for the past 30 years, Ping An has crossed economic cycles multiple times through the advantages of comprehensive finance, achieving growth from creation to being at the top. Today, medical and healthcare, as a business that is hardly affected by economic cycles, has become Ping An's new driving force and is bound to strengthen its defense.

Starting with knowledge and ending with action.

Strictly speaking, Unitedhealth, in the eyes of the outside world, is no longer a pure insurance company. Ping An, which has gradually built a managed medical system, has now connected insurance, medical care, medicine, medical technology, and realized the entire process from prevention, chronic disease management, treatment, payment to recovery, and has its own service barrier and cost control loop. It is no longer just a commercial story of insurance or medical care.

Ma Mingzhe has always emphasized that 'Ping An' is not only our name but also a heavy trust and responsibility. What Ping An wants to do is to provide a one-stop medical and health management solution to ultimately satisfy the financial services and medical and health needs of the public, helping customers save time, effort, and money, making medical treatment and health services accessible with ease, and having all needs met.

In 23 years, the company's overall sales volume was 18,000 kiloliters, a year-on-year increase of 28.10%. In terms of product structure, the operating income of products from 10-30 billion yuan were 4.01/12.88/0.06 billion yuan, respectively.