Web brings medics to grassroots

Long-term efforts

Despite its promising future, mobile healthcare has not entered the fast track of development in China, insiders said.

China launched its healthcare informatization development plan more than five years ago; however, the market scale is not as big as had initially been envisaged.

A mismatch between hospitals, IT operators and medical companies is the crucial problem, said Jiang Xiaodong, a global partner at international venture capital firm New Enterprise Associates.

The companies, especially foreign ones, cannot understand the detailed policies on hospital operations in China, which directly resulted in the scrapping of some partnerships among various stakeholders.

"In many hospitals, the informatization standards are different. How can a unified system be established?" he said.

GE Healthcare's Duan said her company has set up a specific department to deal with Internet-based healthcare.