April 22, 2024

Healthcare Marketing in China: WeChat eBooking Mini program is Becoming the Front Door to Chinese Healthcare

China digital health trend: WeChat appointment booking & Telehealth systems, Personal Heath Records Management System, Medical Knowledge Miniprograms… How WeChat Ecosystem Innovate Chinese healthcare industry

In this article we are about to discuss:

1. The impact of WeChat marketing on the healthcare industry in China, including key trends.
2. The development of WeChat e-Booking mini programs to enhance smart healthcare and patient experiences.
3. Utilization of WeChat mini programs to enhance patient connectivity, interaction, and overall healthcare services.
4. The role of WeChat e-Booking mini programs in streamlining medical insurance payment processes and alleviating the financial burden on patients.
5. The benefits of utilizing WeChat Enterprise and CRM Marketing in medical management and service chains for both medical institutions and patients.

In the past year, the digitalization of the medical industry has continued to accelerate. The latest data from the National Medical Insurance Bureau shows that the number of national medical insurance code users has exceeded 1 billion. Mobile appointments, paperless visits, and going to see a doctor with your mobile phone have become increasingly common in people’s daily medical visits.

What new medical services and healthcare experiences can new technologies bring? At the 2024 WeChat Open Class PRO Healthcare Special, lecturers from WeChat and medical institutions shared innovative explorations and practices in medical treatment, medical insurance payment, medical claims, medical management, and services.

(Medical Assistant) Source: developers.weixin.qq.com

From official account push, online payment to mini-programs, the continuous development of digital and online capabilities has enabled smart healthcare to continue to evolve. In the past year, WeChat has developed a new smart tool called “Medical Assistant” which has been implemented in many hospitals, helping to further upgrade smart healthcare in medical treatment.

WeChat Open Class lecturer and WeChat Open Platform Healthcare Industry Manager, Ma Xinzhu, said that the Medical Assistant allows hospitals to send more informative messages to patients, with higher efficiency, and can also include visualized processes, significantly reducing the amount of offline manual guidance work for hospitals.

The positioning of the Medical Assistant is “providing standard hospital messages and visualized product capabilities for public hospitals.” The demand for medical process messages is a trend and a user necessity. Based on the platform’s existing ID system and payment capabilities, the Medical Assistant fits the hospital’s own business, making hospital message sending and receiving more comprehensive.

At the same time, the Medical Assistant also improves the efficiency of hospital information outreach, reduces patient complaint rates, and through visualized processes, helps hospitals optimize the offline manual guidance experience, ensuring that hospitals manage messages well before, during, and after diagnosis.

The Medical Assistant’s existing template library has as many as 80-100 templates, fully meeting the current needs of many hospitals, increasing the number of patients covered by 25%, with users receiving medical care reaching 75-90%, and an average 50% increase in service usage and efficiency.

How Digital Technology Enhances Patient Connectivity and Interaction in WeChat

The Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center is one of the first hospitals in the country to use the Medical Assistant. The hospital has been exploring and trying to build patient services on WeChat since 2014, from the earliest public accounts to continuously improving mini-programs. It has now achieved the goal of 100% online service for offline services, establishing a full-process, humane and intelligent service system.

Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center engineer, Liao Wenmin, said that WeChat is a powerful platform for people’s livelihoods. In various aspects of patient services, we have the ability to use WeChat, including service, publicity, connection, payment, and authentication.

On the WeChat mini-program, the Sun Yat-sen University Cancer Center has built some special small functions using WeChat and Tencent’s AI big model, such as one-stop online self-service refunds, precise cloud bed reservations, and cloud patient continuity management. These three functions can be asynchronously audited or periodically conveyed, improving key nodes in patient connectivity and interaction.

Recently, the hospital has integrated the “Medical Assistant” into almost all main medical scenarios, deploying template messages of the Medical Assistant in offline clinics, laboratory tests, internet hospitals, with more than 400,000 inquiries, and also inpatient services, medical examination services of the medical examination center, have realized full-process, visualized message reminders, so that patients can clearly know which service node they are in.

With the Medical Assistant, the hospital has also created its own internal message push management platform, managing these WeChat message push needs, and established a special project to migrate these scenarios that need WeChat push from previous SMS to WeChat.

WeChat opened up Medical Insurance Mobile Payment Improves Medical and Drug Purchase Experience

In addition to the increasingly intelligent medical experience, last year WeChat also supported the interconnectivity of the industry’s upstream and downstream, such as medical insurance mobile payment, and supported the support of the industry, for patients to reduce medical burden, improve medical experience, and create a more reliable guarantee.

WeChat Public Class lecturer and WeChat Payment Business Medical Responsible person Hu Qinghua said that the cumulative number of WeChat medical insurance codes has exceeded 500 million, and more than 800,000 medical institutions support patients to complete medical and drug purchase settlements through medical insurance codes, laying a solid foundation for the entire medical insurance mobile payment.

In specific application scenarios of medical treatment and drug purchase, such as the most frequent application scenarios of patients’ registration and in-treatment payment, WeChat has already opened up medical insurance mobile payment. After registration, treatment, and billing, patients can use WeChat to scan QR codes or public account template messages for medical insurance payment, greatly improving the experience of the entire medical insurance payment.

Currently, the demand for medical insurance payment for patients in pharmacies and online drug purchases is also expanding. Medical insurance mobile payment can provide a new customer acquisition and reach channel for pharmacy home delivery services, and also meet the needs of users for convenient drug purchase.

In addition, WeChat is actively promoting the integration of medical insurance mobile payment and prescription circulation. Various prescription platforms across the country have successively completed the construction of corresponding platforms, through the integration of hospital prescription, pharmacy drug information, user medical insurance information, etc., to achieve compliant prescription circulation. With the support of prescription circulation and outpatient pooling policies, combined with WeChat mobile medical insurance payment capabilities, prescription circulation will enter an accelerated landing stage.

"Medical Claims" Adds a Health Protection Net for Patients

The “Healthy China 2030” Planning Outline proposes to improve a multi-level medical security system with basic medical security as the main body, supplemented by other forms of supplementary insurance and commercial health insurance. As a supplement to medical insurance, commercial insurance can meet users’ personalized and diversified medical security needs, reduce personal out-of-pocket expenses, and alleviate the medical payment pressure of the majority of patients. However, the current status of user commercial insurance medical claims still has some objective pain points, such as scattered entry points, cumbersome procedures, inconvenient reimbursement, etc.

Source: ResearchGate

WeChat Payment launched the medical claims service, helping our patients to initiate claims online immediately after paying for medical treatment, improving the overall experience of patient medical services.

Based on these problems, WeChat Payment has launched a new capability—medical claims service. When a bill is generated for a payment at a hospital, the payment message will automatically remind users to “apply for reimbursement.” After users upload orders and reimbursement materials, the reimbursement can be paid in as fast as 6 seconds.

In the past six months, medical claims have covered 100% of public hospitals nationwide, serving 4 million users, settling 300,000 cases, and a large number of users have given good feedback, saying, “I discovered for the first time that commercial insurance can really be reimbursed after seeing a doctor, and it’s so easy to reimburse,” improving the overall experience of medical after-sales service.

Enterprise WeChat Connects Medical Management and Service Chains

From information transmission, private domain operation, service optimization, etc., Enterprise WeChat, with its mature intelligent system and comprehensive technical ecosystem, connects multiple links in medical treatment, institution management, etc., making the full-process management of the medical system more stable and reliable.

Enterprise WeChat can provide a one-stop solution for G-end to B-end management, and then to C-end service, weaving an information network for medical management and services. Combining interconnection and WeChat customer service capabilities, it ultimately better serves insured residents.

Within the medical insurance bureau, based on Enterprise WeChat, it can connect the entire chain from province, city, county, township, village, and even to medical insurance grid personnel, and efficient internal collaboration within the medical insurance system helps implement relevant medical policies. Combined with the “WeChat Customer Service” capability, it can provide a consultation and dialogue entrance for medical insurance management departments, greatly improving the efficiency of consultation and handling.

Outside the medical insurance bureau, management departments need to connect to thousands of two-tier institutions and serve tens of thousands of insured units. Similarly, based on Enterprise WeChat’s upstream and downstream capabilities, a platform can be built for G2B refined management, realize real-name management of institutional units and docking personnel, help the medical insurance bureau self-check and “find out the family background,” and dynamically grasp the real situation of all institutions in the jurisdiction.

In addition, medical insurance management departments can also improve service efficiency and reduce the pressure of medical insurance handling through one-click group sending, all-member notification announcements, group chats, and building a medical insurance knowledge base. Based on the entire G2B chain being opened up, Enterprise WeChat makes all data visualized and standardized, ensuring that data is traceable and storable, and sedimenting into digital assets of management departments.

For hospitals, leveraging Enterprise WeChat and WeChat’s interconnection capabilities, with just one QR code, it can efficiently create “hospital business cards,” “department business cards,” and “doctor business cards.” Combining the temporary friend relationship chain of WeChat customer service, as well as the long-term friend relationship chain of Enterprise WeChat and WeChat adding friends, it can cover patient-end, health management-end, and patient-oriented service-end, hospital operation-end, etc., meeting different scenarios, different periods, different stages of patient needs.

Building a Medical Institution Private Domain Operation Entrance

Regarding how to quickly respond to inquiries on the customer acquisition side, Enterprise WeChat also provides two new adding paths, one is the customer acquisition assistant, which can achieve one-click addition of Enterprise WeChat inquiries, and the other is WeChat customer service one-click jump, which can accept patient needs without adding friends, providing consultation services in real-time.

Enterprise WeChat helps medical institutions provide valuable consultations and services to patients in the private domain, this year, there have been new changes and breakthroughs in traffic reception and discharge services.

From the patient’s arrival to departure, the hospital, with the front-end customer service and medical care staff establishing “friend” relationships with patients through Enterprise WeChat, sincerely provides patients with warm and valuable services. Only in this way will patients think of this “good friend” first when they have a need. It is in these communications and services that the hospital continuously clarifies patient profiles, understands patient needs, and efficiently serves patients, establishing a “deep trust” relationship between doctors and patients.

The ultimate goal of “active patient management” is that when patients have any questions during the treatment process, they think of opening WeChat first to find the hospital, to view all their diagnosis and treatment information, and to be able to consult online at any time, serving the needs of patients well.”

OctoPlus Media is an integrated marketing technology company focused on China inbound and outbound marketing. OctoPlus Media is also one of the pioneer agencies becoming WeChat Full Ecosystem Service Provider, providing one-stop WeChat services, from Social Content Management, Ads Campaigns, WeChat Mini Programs Development and CRM Marketing Solution. Contact us with the form below to understand how we can help you boost your business!