Will Internet Healthcare Surpass Traditional Clinics? Expert Insights Revealed

Mode Advantages

Experts say internet healthcare has clear model advantages.

On one hand, it improves the convenience of the medical process through digitalization. Traditional hospitals suffer from long registration, queuing, and medication collection times, while doctors have short consultation times. Online platforms offer appointment booking, drug delivery, and remote consultations, saving patient time and improving experience.

On the other hand, internet healthcare can alleviate regional medical resource imbalance. In remote areas with scarce resources, patients can have video consultations with specialists. It also promotes the development of hierarchical diagnosis in China.

Data shows a leading internet medical platform recorded 1.11 billion visits during the pandemic, a ten‑fold increase in new app users, and daily consultations nine times higher than usual. E‑commerce platforms also opened free online clinics, with some achieving 3000 consultations per hour.

Realistic Dilemmas

Despite these benefits, several constraints limit long‑term growth.

Policy Side

In April 2018 the State Council issued guidelines allowing internet hospitals to provide full‑process services, but strict regulations limit online diagnosis to follow‑up patients with common or chronic diseases, and prescriptions require stable conditions and proof of in‑person visits. Experts predict no major policy relaxation in the next 5‑10 years.

Platform Side

High industry barriers make profitability difficult. Most well‑known platforms focus either on B‑side services for doctors or C‑side services for patients, rarely integrating both. Doctors’ participation is limited due to heavy offline workloads and concerns about hospital approval and patient stability.

Doctor Side

Physicians have limited time for online services and often rely on hospital reputation rather than personal brand, reducing their incentive to join internet platforms.

Patient Side

Patients’ trust in platforms remains low; they prefer authoritative hospitals and government endorsement, and the lack of guaranteed safety hampers adoption.

Future Development

Experts agree that medical diagnosis fundamentally relies on doctors’ expertise and cannot be fully replaced by AI or big data. Internet healthcare will remain a supplement to offline services for the foreseeable future.

Retail giant Sun Weimin notes that technologies such as online consultation, remote diagnosis, and AI assistance have broad prospects, especially in the context of drug‑separation reforms, but emphasize the need for authentic products and proper usage.