Department of Global Health and Population, Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Boston, MA, USA.
Health Syst Reform. 2024 Dec 17;10(2):2389570. doi: 10.1080/23288604.2024.2389570. Epub 2024 Oct 22.
Around the world, the adoption of digital technologies in health care has accelerated considerably in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic. Prior to the emergence of the pandemic, China had already embarked on a private sector, technology enterprise-led creation of an innovative internet health care ecosystem, which has dramatically transformed China's health care landscape. In this article, we describe the evolution of China's internet health market, focusing on internet telemedicine. We trace its early origins with the establishment of information networks in the 1980s, to the emergence of a fast-growing internet health market in the 2010s that leveraged the capabilities of technology enterprises in e-commerce, logistics, and payment systems. Private health care platforms have played a central role throughout this transformative process. The supplyside of the market has a unique public-private mix structure, with the coexistence of public and private internet hospitals, and with the majority of telemedicine services provided by public hospital doctors working on private platforms in a dual practice capacity. We conclude with a discussion of the prospects of internet telemedicine, including how it should be optimized and harnessed to improve China's health system. Finally, we set out areas where more research is needed.
在全球范围内，COVID-19 大流行之后，医疗保健领域对数字技术的采用大大加快。在大流行出现之前，中国已经开始由私营部门的科技企业主导，创建一个创新的互联网医疗保健生态系统，这极大地改变了中国的医疗保健格局。在本文中，我们描述了中国互联网医疗市场的演变，重点介绍互联网远程医疗。我们追溯其早期起源于 20 世纪 80 年代的信息网络，到 21 世纪 10 年代快速发展的互联网医疗市场，利用了电子商务、物流和支付系统的科技企业的能力。私营医疗保健平台在这一变革过程中发挥了核心作用。市场的供应方具有独特的公私混合结构，既有公立和私立互联网医院并存，也有大多数远程医疗服务由在私立平台上双重执业的公立医院医生提供。最后，我们讨论了互联网远程医疗的前景，包括如何优化和利用它来改善中国的医疗体系。最后，我们列出了需要进一步研究的领域。
