Medlinker announces establishment of academic committee

Medlinker, China's major online healthcare platform, has officially established an academic committee that is composed of top experts from many disciplines such as tumors, endocrinology, infections, cardiovascular, and ophthalmology.

Cheng Shujun, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and a well-known tumor etiology expert, and Liu Lisheng, former president of the World Hypertension League and a renounced cardiologist, were announced as the chief consultants to serve on the committee during a ceremony held on Wednesday in Beijing.

The company said it will work with the academic committee to conduct in-depth exchanges and discussions on issues such as obstacles in the development of online healthcare, and will further integrate online and offline medical resources, to tap the potential of online healthcare in disease prevention, diagnosis, treatment and patient rehabilitation, so as to promote the healthy and standardized development of the industry.

Wang Shirui, founder and CEO of the company, said it is an urgent issue to make full use of the convenience, easy accessibility and intelligence of internet hospitals to ensure the standardization and effectiveness of online medical services and protect the vital interests of doctors and patients.

The company hopes to unite the academic forces of various parties to share the experiences it has accumulated in establishing online patient management systems, standardizing patient service procedures outside hospitals, and discipline construction, to promote the standardized development of the online healthcare industry to better serve doctors and patients.

According to Chen Qiulin, deputy director of the Health Industry Development Research Center at the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, the pandemic and supportive government policies have jointly shored up the development of the online healthcare industry in China, but the industry still faces a series of challenges to deliver healthy growth, such as a lack of effective implementation of public medical insurance reimbursement policies, prohibition of online medical consultation without a prior visit to a physical hospital, abuse of prescriptions, and disputes over ownership of data and information generated in online healthcare.

China has more than 1,100 internet hospitals, and more than 7,700 grade-2 and above physical hospitals providing internet-based services such as online appointments, while about 20 percent of Chinese doctors have used the internet to provide medical services to patients online, according to statistics from the health authorities.