Some demands are that the scene is small, but the scale is large.
Partnership of Kaifeng Venture Partners
With the continuous penetration of new technologies such as AI and big data into the medical industry, the medical industry has gradually emerged some new models in scientific research, clinical, management, diagnosis and other links .
The fifth installment of the “Catcher Closed-door Cultivation · Investigating Industry Investors Series” invited Kaifeng Venture Partners partner Wen Gang to share with you his in-depth thinking and investment experience on digital healthcare. As a senior investor in the medical industry, Wen Gang has dominated or participated in the investment over the years, including Taimei Medical Technology, Zhenhe Technology, Doctor Fangcun, and Good Doctor next door. This article is the actual record of the guest speech, edited by the catcher (ID: ibushouzhi).
Editor / Li Miaomiao
Unauthorized, declined to reprint
upper and lower half of China ’s digital healthcare
Hello everyone, I am very happy to be able to use the platform of the catcher to chat with you about some of my thoughts on digital medicine. I mainly focus on the development trends and new technologies of digital medicine Application, digital medical opportunities, and some observations we have made in investment in the past.
Let ’s first look at the development trend of digital medicine. In fact, digital medicine has existed since ancient times. It is a process of medical evolution and a process of understanding the world. It also helps us better transform the world.
This is an advance from the most primitive chewable compresses to the classification of medicinal materials by weight and volume; the film becomes digital film with the application of digital technology, allowing us to better local enlargement, better transfer and storage Digital imaging and information is also an advancement; so with the development of digitalization, the problem of medical treatment of people and things has evolved from appearance to subtlety and specificity, which can be understood from three aspects.
First of all, from the perspective of development nodes, we divide the Chinese medical digitalization node into the upper and lower half. The most valuable starting point of the first half of China ’s digital medical is 80 years.Although the information services of Chinese hospitals started in the new era, although the Internet has not been popularized, we have born a large number of listed companies including Neusoft.
In the period of vigorous development of the Internet, the Chinese Obstetrics and Gynecology Network, Lilac Garden, Sweet Home, etc., represented by the doctor community and the patient community, have gradually emerged. Afterwards, the doctors who mainly rely on patient communication tools gradually started to do it. Later, there was Dr. Chunyu, and then developed. Everyone paid more attention to personal health. Doctors like Palm Sugar and Fang Cun started to do some out-of-hospital health. Management work, finally with the development of the entire medical and health management gradually from offline to online, pharmaceutical e-commerce represented by dingdong fast medicine and so on gradually emerged.
We can think that this is the first half of China’s medical digitization. It can be seen that the medical information service is very complete in this process, and the industry chain is also very complete.
the first half of the development of China’s medical information service
With the development of the Internet, technological progress, and the completion of medical information services, medical digitalization has basically entered the second half, and the overall development is made up of technical barriers and services Depending on the difficulty.
The development line is Taimei Medical Technology and Jingtai Technology represented by drug research and development; followed by telemedicine system, then Zhenhe Technology and Burning Stone Medicine represented by genetic data detection and mining; and then to Knowledge Graph Kangfuzi, who assists in diagnosis and treatment; then, thinks about technology and Huiyi Huiying, represented by image recognition and AI diagnosis; and Internet + insurance, which has been popular in the past two years; finally, robots entered the hospital with the development of Internet of Things and 5G technology Replace manual.
China Medical InformationThe second half of the development of customized services
If you look at the development of digital medicine from the perspective of changes in supply and demand, I think that “supply” is not important. What matters is the change in “demand”. The demand side here is also the payer including: enterprises, hospitals, governments, patients, departments and doctors. But from 1980 to now, the payer has a migration process from the first hospital and government to the enterprise, department, and patient as a whole. It is also the process of the payer’s price sensitivity from low to high, and the use participant’s decision from small to many. It also reflects the increasingly high requirements for product applicability and service.
Actually, there are some trends in the development of China’s digital healthcare in micro and macro:
Microscopically, it is divided into “North, North, Guangshen”. The north is “shellfish”, that is, money. The closer to the money, the more attention will be paid to commercialization and practicality; “upper” is the upper layer, closer to the head, closer to the decision-making layer , The technology content is more and more intelligent from low to high;
“Guang” means more and more application scenarios, from inside the hospital to outside the hospital, from single scene to multi-scenario integration, including occupying more links in the service chain; “deep” means deep integration into the scene, that is We are talking about specialization and detailing. In the past, many products were platform-based across multiple fields and disciplines, but now we feel that platform-based enterprises do not match the current development of medical services, and the current market demands for services are increasingly Thinner and heavier .
At a macro level, China ’s Internet infrastructure and applications are quite complete. Everyone ’s Internet use proficiency and frequency are far higher than the world average, so China ’s digital healthcare is gradually accelerating in absolute speed. There are more and more ease, which means that entrepreneurs and companies will have many new opportunities.
In terms of relative speed, China ’s digital healthcare is leading the world, because in the course of enterprise development, we can try different products and models. After these products and models succeed, we will have the opportunity to enter the broader global market. For example, the good doctor next door that we voted for has made a basic clinic SaaS system. It has developed well in the country and is very popular when it is copied abroad. So if we can meet the needs of domestic users, it is basically no problem abroad.
In the future, China ’s digital healthcare will definitely continue to develop rapidly, which is related to our large market size and policy strength. China ’s policy tolerance is generally getting better and better, although our starting point may not be good enough, but We can see that the acceleration of the policy on the development of the industry is still very obvious.
In addition, the competitive atmosphere with domestic business is very fierce, which will force companies to innovate more. Finally, with the quantitative and qualitative changes brought by the digital infrastructure, we can see that the original simple digital medical will haveIt is more likely to move towards smart healthcare.
Applications and Opportunities Brought by New Technologies
In fact, the history of digital medical development is also the history of technological development. From the invention of the stethoscope in 1816 to the application of surgical robots, new technologies have been promoting the development of medical treatment to eliminate some incorrect treatments, such as bloodletting.
But medical has its characteristics as a special industry. First of all, technology introduction is slow, because it has a very long cycle from research and development to market, and it has high requirements for safety, so the latest technology is difficult to find. Medical applications .
Secondly, the product has been popular for a long time. The usage rate of PACS (Parks System) in the United States has only increased from 8% to 75% from 2000 to 2008. However, there will also be some problems and controversies at the same time. Because the medical environment is more complicated, the application of technology is not all positive to a certain extent. For example, PACS (Parks System) has changed between doctors, doctors and patients, and medical care. The communication between them has completely changed the clinical diagnosis and treatment process, made doctors more focused on data, lack of cooperation and collision of ideas, and exacerbated the tension between doctors and patients. Patients will think that doctors ’patients are more like” computers “than themselves.
There are also some social controversies, such as the discussion of ethical issues caused by some experiments of Professor He Jiankui, the problem of thinking safety caused by the realization of brain-computer interfaces, the increase in medical demand caused by the extension of life, and the corresponding social burden and wealth differences. The resulting inequalities in technology application, etc., are all the problems that technology changes to medical treatment may bring, so pay attention to that technology cannot be abused to see the boundaries of technology.
In fact, the application of technology in medicine is mostly the result of multi-party games. For example, the government’s game is mainly in policy and payment; the upstream of technology is reflected in price, maturity, medical and health management, etc., mainly from safety, supervision, ethics Participate in the game in other aspects; medical personnel provide usage habits, but it is difficult to change the usage habits of doctors; patients mainly pay ability, independent choice, etc .; and commercial ecological participants: product channels, competing products, etc.
Only when these games are together can we determine what role a technology plays in medicine, so we need to understand each role in medicine and their characteristics in order for technology to really work.
So I have a few suggestions for the application of new technologies in the medical field:
1, Focus on mature technology , it is best to have been widely used in other industries, because the application of new technologies in medical treatment is relatively risky.
2. People-oriented , user-centered design products, because medicine is not only a natural science or a social science, but ultimately for the benefit of people and society, not purely for the pursuit of technology Progress exists.
3. Focus on cost performance , medical economics has always been a particularly hidden existence, but it has a great influence on the development of medicine, because so-called economics is not only about money and costs, It also represents efficiency.
The development of technology often brings opportunities, which can be divided into the first, largest and longest opportunities. Looking back at the first opportunities for digital healthcare in China, we can see that in the 1980s in China, 50% of the patients were concentrated in the top three hospitals because of some practical problems, and the top three hospitals have high costs, financial and social security support. Ability to pay is also more willing to improve efficiency in its own scenario, which has given the hospital information system manufacturers a good market, which has led to the development and even listing of multiple companies. This is the first opportunity we think.
Looking at the biggest and longest opportunities for digital healthcare, it requires us to think about what healthcare will look like in the future. We believe that medical treatment will become flatter. From the perspective of the hospital, the level and number of hospitals will be reduced, and the equipment and facilities will be highly automated, such as remote consultation of AR, automatic voice recording, automatic operation of beds, automatic vital sign detection, etc. From the perspective of home and community, information is obtained more quickly, and the environment and facilities for continuous detection are more convenient, including non-intrusive detection equipment or technologies that have not yet been generated and may be generated.
Based on these analyses, we believe that there are two determinable digital medical development directions:
First, the digitization of blank links . For example, genetic testing, protein testing, intestinal flora, sweat, etc., we digitize in the absence of digital links, in fact, it is a means to improve diagnosis and treatment by understanding the disease.
Second, find associations in the existing massive numbers . For example, the metformin of the Chinese medicine industry was launched in 1995. The indication was to treat diabetes. According to our incomplete collection, there are 17 kinds of benefits, including anti-aging, weight loss, cardiovascular protection, even improving intestinal flora and inhibiting tumor growth. 1. Treatment of hair loss, including treatment of autism. Therefore, it is possible for us to develop good treatments and even new drugs based on these data.
Investment Tips and Recommendations
I talked about the development, technology and opportunities of digital medical treatment before, then talkTalk about our investment experience.
Kaifeng has invested about 110 high-tech start-ups from the beginning to the present, and 90 are the first institutional investors. In terms of medical investment, we are divided into medical device diagnosis and medical services, and digital medical is medical Serve one of them. For digital medical startups, we focus on several dimensions:
1, Team. In the early team, we hoped to be short and capable, with all the internal organs, well-decided, and effective execution . Especially for the digital medical team, we especially hope that there are people who are good at both technology and medical. Because digital medical companies are complex, they need a complex team.
The reason why we emphasize the team is because we have suffered a loss. We once invested in a highly innovative medical company. The core founders are two people, one of whom has a senior medical background and a senior technical expert; the other founder is partial marketing, but this project announced liquidation in 2018.
Afterwards, we did a review and found that the founder ’s role as a CEO from a medical background to a CEO was not adapted. The founder was very focused on technological development, and he did not spend too much time on the CEO. There was internal competition, the project progressed slowly, and the R & D efficiency was low, and ultimately did not support the next round of financing.
2. Technology, we are not exactly the same as the traditional VC investment logic of major platforms, we pay more attention to heavy innovation opportunities in vertical fields . Because medical care must be divided into subdivisions and departments, it is difficult for experts in different fields to become experts in another field, so it is very difficult for large platforms to take all fields and refine.
3. Enterprise values must focus on R & D and create incremental value .
Taimei Medical Technology as an example, Taimei Medical Technology mainly provides full life cycle digital services for pharmaceutical companies. The links involved are drug research and development, business management, and drug distribution. At the same time, they have also made a platform to connect hospitals. , Pharmaceutical companies, service providers, regulatory agencies, patients and other industry participants. Tencent, Tiger Fund, etc. have all invested in it. We have followed the first round of investment until now, and the growth has exceeded 200 times.
Typical case: Taimei Medical
In fact, when we first came into contact with Taimei in the second half of 2014, pharmaceutical company services were still relatively unpopular in the medical field, and their team was not the largest sales group , But after communicating with the team, we thought:
First of all, it is a very good 2 + 3 structure on the team. The overall working age in the pharmaceutical company is more than 60 years. A founder has very rich sales experience in the pharmaceutical company and also has a successful entrepreneurial experience. The other founder has very deep R & D experience in the field of pharmaceutical companies, and there are several core founders who are very skilled in software technology, clinical trial management and marketing, and they were very cutting-edge and thorough in their thinking at the time; Secondly, Taimei early focused on clinical trials in the field, and we feel that there is a very large demand in this market in the long run.
Interestingly, about a year after our investment, the industry set off a wave of enthusiasm for policy reasons. We have experienced many projects like Taimei which are in the process of alternating cold and hot in the industry, but in this process we still hope to realize the technical value, social value, and then commercial value.
If we want to say what our investment experience is, it is also very simple: One is not to catch the wind, and the other is to stay calm .
A company ’s development always has a low tide and a high tide. We hope that the project will have a longer-term development, so we will splash a little cold water on the team at the right time. When the development is smooth, you can calmly treat it.
And we encourage medical entrepreneurs to take root for a long time and delve deeper into a certain area, do n’t be afraid of being small. Be aware that two-thirds of Americans see a doctor in a clinic with fewer than four doctors, so there is a demand that the scene is small but the scale is large.
In the next few years, I believe that more and more excellent entrepreneurs will take root in the medical field, but it can be roughly divided into two categories:
One type is medical worker entrepreneurship. This kind of entrepreneurs especially need to pay attention to the role change, complete an expert to entrepreneur and then entrepreneur, and even become the transformation process of GameChanger . This process is actually very difficult, because Chinese medical workers are generally conservative in character due to their growing environment, and their expert awareness and style are more sufficient, but entrepreneurs need to be sufficiently grounded and frustrating, so not only the role change from expert to entrepreneur It also requires psychological construction and sacrifice. At the stage of entrepreneurship, it will also face the test of overall situation, pattern and spirit.
The first category is non-medical workers ’entrepreneurship. We suggest that we must have a deep understanding of the medical culture and medical scene needs . The medical industry is mostly top-down, and everyone speaks implicitly, which is simple and peacefulWaiting and bottom-up work differently. Therefore, we suggest that if a non-medical worker starts a business, the team must have a senior expert in the relevant medical field and also be able to find a suitable communication method.
In fact, the history of digital medical development is also the history of technological development. From the invention of the stethoscope in 1816 to the application of surgical robots, new technologies have been promoting the development of medical treatment to eliminate some incorrect treatments, such as bloodletting.
But medical has its characteristics as a special industry. First of all, technology introduction is slow, because it has a very long cycle from research and development to market, and it has high requirements for safety, so the latest technology is difficult to find. Medical applications .
Secondly, the product has been popular for a long time. The usage rate of PACS (Parks System) in the United States has only increased from 8% to 75% from 2000 to 2008. However, there will also be some problems and controversies at the same time. Because the medical environment is more complicated, the application of technology is not all positive to a certain extent. For example, PACS (Parks System) has changed between doctors, doctors and patients, and medical care. The communication between them has completely changed the clinical diagnosis and treatment process, made doctors more focused on data, lack of cooperation and collision of ideas, and exacerbated the tension between doctors and patients. Patients will think that doctors ’patients are more like” computers “than themselves.
There are also some social controversies, such as the discussion of ethical issues caused by some experiments of Professor He Jiankui, the problem of thinking safety caused by the realization of brain-computer interfaces, the increase in medical demand caused by the extension of life, and the corresponding social burden and wealth differences. The resulting inequalities in technology application, etc., are all the problems that technology changes to medical treatment may bring, so pay attention to that technology cannot be abused to see the boundaries of technology.
In fact, the application of technology in medicine is mostly the result of multi-party games. For example, the government’s game is mainly in policy and payment; the upstream of technology is reflected in price, maturity, medical and health management, etc., mainly from safety, supervision, ethics Participate in the game in other aspects; medical personnel provide usage habits, but it is difficult to change the usage habits of doctors; patients mainly pay ability, independent choice, etc .; and commercial ecological participants: product channels, competing products, etc.
Only when these games are together can we determine what role a technology plays in medicine, so we need to understand each role in medicine and their characteristics in order for technology to really work.
So I have a few suggestions for the application of new technologies in the medical field:
1, Focus on mature technology , it is best to have been widely used in other industries, because the application of new technologies in medical treatment is relatively risky.
2. People-oriented , user-centered design products, because medicine is not only a natural science or a social science, but ultimately for the benefit of people and society, not purely for the pursuit of technology Progress exists.
3. Focus on cost performance , medical economics has always been a particularly hidden existence, but it has a great influence on the development of medicine, because so-called economics is not only about money and costs, It also represents efficiency.
The development of technology often brings opportunities, which can be divided into the first, largest and longest opportunities. Looking back at the first opportunities for digital healthcare in China, we can see that in the 1980s in China, 50% of the patients were concentrated in the top three hospitals because of some practical problems, and the top three hospitals have high costs, financial and social security support. Ability to pay is also more willing to improve efficiency in its own scenario, which has given the hospital information system manufacturers a good market, which has led to the development and even listing of multiple companies. This is the first opportunity we think.
Looking at the biggest and longest opportunities for digital healthcare, it requires us to think about what healthcare will look like in the future. We believe that medical treatment will become flatter. From the perspective of the hospital, the level and number of hospitals will be reduced, and the equipment and facilities will be highly automated, such as remote consultation of AR, automatic voice recording, automatic operation of beds, automatic vital sign detection, etc. From the perspective of home and community, information is obtained more quickly, and the environment and facilities for continuous detection are more convenient, including non-intrusive detection equipment or technologies that have not yet been generated and may be generated.
Based on these analyses, we believe that there are two determinable digital medical development directions:
First, the digitization of blank links . For example, genetic testing, protein testing, intestinal flora, sweat, etc., we digitize in the absence of digital links, in fact, it is a means to improve diagnosis and treatment by understanding the disease.
Second, find associations in the existing massive numbers . For example, the metformin of the Chinese medicine industry was launched in 1995. The indication was to treat diabetes. According to our incomplete collection, there are 17 kinds of benefits, including anti-aging, weight loss, cardiovascular protection, even improving intestinal flora and inhibiting tumor growth. 1. Treatment of hair loss, including treatment of autism. Therefore, it is possible for us to develop good treatments and even new drugs based on these data.
Investment Tips and Recommendations
I talked about the development, technology and opportunities of digital medical treatment before, then talkTalk about our investment experience.
Kaifeng has invested about 110 high-tech start-ups from the beginning to the present, and 90 are the first institutional investors. In terms of medical investment, we are divided into medical device diagnosis and medical services, and digital medical is medical Serve one of them. For digital medical startups, we focus on several dimensions:
1, Team. In the early team, we hoped to be short and capable, with all the internal organs, well-decided, and effective execution . Especially for the digital medical team, we especially hope that there are people who are good at both technology and medical. Because digital medical companies are complex, they need a complex team.
The reason why we emphasize the team is because we have suffered a loss. We once invested in a highly innovative medical company. The core founders are two people, one of whom has a senior medical background and a senior technical expert; the other founder is partial marketing, but this project announced liquidation in 2018.
Afterwards, we did a review and found that the founder ’s role as a CEO from a medical background to a CEO was not adapted. The founder was very focused on technological development, and he did not spend too much time on the CEO. There was internal competition, the project progressed slowly, and the R & D efficiency was low, and ultimately did not support the next round of financing.
2. Technology, we are not exactly the same as the traditional VC investment logic of major platforms, we pay more attention to heavy innovation opportunities in vertical fields . Because medical care must be divided into subdivisions and departments, it is difficult for experts in different fields to become experts in another field, so it is very difficult for large platforms to take all fields and refine.
3. Enterprise values must focus on R & D and create incremental value .
Taimei Medical Technology as an example, Taimei Medical Technology mainly provides full life cycle digital services for pharmaceutical companies. The links involved are drug research and development, business management, and drug distribution. At the same time, they have also made a platform to connect hospitals. , Pharmaceutical companies, service providers, regulatory agencies, patients and other industry participants. Tencent, Tiger Fund, etc. have all invested in it. We have followed the first round of investment until now, and the growth has exceeded 200 times.
Typical case: Taimei Medical
In fact, when we first came into contact with Taimei in the second half of 2014, pharmaceutical company services were still relatively unpopular in the medical field, and their team was not the largest sales group , But after communicating with the team, we thought:
First of all, it is a very good 2 + 3 structure on the team. The overall working age in the pharmaceutical company is more than 60 years. A founder has very rich sales experience in the pharmaceutical company and also has a successful entrepreneurial experience. The other founder has very deep R & D experience in the field of pharmaceutical companies, and there are several core founders who are very skilled in software technology, clinical trial management and marketing, and they were very cutting-edge and thorough in their thinking at the time; Secondly, Taimei early focused on clinical trials in the field, and we feel that there is a very large demand in this market in the long run.
Interestingly, about a year after our investment, the industry set off a wave of enthusiasm for policy reasons. We have experienced many projects like Taimei which are in the process of alternating cold and hot in the industry, but in this process we still hope to realize the technical value, social value, and then commercial value.
If we want to say what our investment experience is, it is also very simple: One is not to catch the wind, and the other is to stay calm .
A company ’s development always has a low tide and a high tide. We hope that the project will have a longer-term development, so we will splash a little cold water on the team at the right time. When the development is smooth, you can calmly treat it.
And we encourage medical entrepreneurs to take root for a long time and delve deeper into a certain area, do n’t be afraid of being small. Be aware that two-thirds of Americans see a doctor in a clinic with fewer than four doctors, so there is a demand that the scene is small but the scale is large.
In the next few years, I believe that more and more excellent entrepreneurs will take root in the medical field, but it can be roughly divided into two categories:
One type is medical worker entrepreneurship. This kind of entrepreneurs especially need to pay attention to the role change, complete an expert to entrepreneur and then entrepreneur, and even become the transformation process of GameChanger . This process is actually very difficult, because Chinese medical workers are generally conservative in character due to their growing environment, and their expert awareness and style are more sufficient, but entrepreneurs need to be sufficiently grounded and frustrating, so not only the role change from expert to entrepreneur It also requires psychological construction and sacrifice. At the stage of entrepreneurship, it will also face the test of overall situation, pattern and spirit.
The first category is non-medical workers ’entrepreneurship. We suggest that we must have a deep understanding of the medical culture and medical scene needs . The medical industry is mostly top-down, and everyone speaks implicitly, which is simple and peacefulWaiting and bottom-up work differently. Therefore, we suggest that if a non-medical worker starts a business, the team must have a senior expert in the relevant medical field and also be able to find a suitable communication method.