An online platform for epilepsy care goes online on JD.com on Friday to help patients get medication and services. [Photo provided to chinadaily.com.cn]

Global biopharmaceutical company UCB and China's e-commerce platform JD.com's health arm JD Health jointly launched on Friday a single-disease care platform - "Epilepsy Care Center" on JD.com, to help epilepsy patients get access to services and medications they need, when it is difficult for them to visit hospitals due to the COVID-19 outbreak.

Epileptic patients and their caregivers can acquire reliable disease knowledge, KOLs' sharing, and disease management information systematically, as well as get end-to-end online services on JD Health online consultation platform to renew prescription, purchase medicines and delivery of medicines.

Through the platform, the first batch of more than 500 epilepsy specialists from epilepsy centers and big hospitals in major cities across China, including more than 20 from Wuhan, Hubei province, will provide timely and convenient online medical services for patients with epilepsy.

As part of this initiative, the 28th of each month will be set as Epilepsy Care Center Members' Day to provide various updated activities based on patient needs, another move UCB has taken to address the needs of patients living with chronic diseases such as epilepsy and Parkinson's disease, following its support to JD Health's Chronic Disease Care Program starting Feb 8, the company said.

In November 2019, UCB and JD Health entered into a strategic partnership agreement to utilize the potential of the internet-plus healthcare to provide sustainable benefits to patients.

One of the key projects under this agreement is to build an online patient care platform for a specific patient population with a specific chronic disease.

During the epidemic, the two parties have worked closely together to accelerate the development of the online "Epilepsy Care Center", making use of UCB's leading expertise in epilepsy and JD Health's well-established capabilities in logistics and Internet technology.