When you think about online-to-offline (O2O) platforms in China you think about the basics that are available everywhere: food delivery, taxi services, edcuational apps, etc. What you probably don’t think about is surgery. But yes, in China’s overloaded O2O market, there’s an app for that.
It’s called Mingyi Zhudao – roughly, ‘famous doctor holding the knife’ – and last week it raised an angel round of RMB 5 million (US$805,000) from Zhenfund founder Xu Xiaoping. Supposedly, Mingyi Zhudao founder Su Shu won Xu’s investment with a single phone call. I guess he must have taken the startup pitching advice Xu doled out earlier this month to heart!
Although surgery O2O apps aren’t exactly a dime a dozen, the concept behind Mingyi Zhudao is pretty basic – if you’re going to be having surgery, you want to make sure the guy holding the knife knows what he’s doing. So the startup’s app and website allow you to select the kind of surgery you’re having – like cardiovascular – and then browse bios for some of the best surgeons in the field. If you like one, you can book an appointment with him or her right in the app.
What kind of surgery do you need? Mingyi Zhudao has them all.
Right now, Mingyi Zhudao’s offerings aren’t that impressive. In cardiovascular surgery, for example, the app lists just five surgeons: four in Shanghai and one in Beijing. And aside from simple biographies and photographs, there’s not a lot of information about the doctors that patients could base a choice on. But given that the company’s still in the early stages, that shouldn’t be a big surprise. It has reportedly already signed up an impressive list of partner hospitals in major cities, though, and it even has been planning a kind of partnership with O2O car service Didi Kuaidi, although the details of that aren’t yet clear.
Mingyi Zhudao doesn’t face many direct competitors in the surgery-specific O2O space. There are plenty of Chinese O2O apps working in the healthcare industry more generally that might someday overlap with Mingyi Zhudao, but almost all of the healthcare O2O companies in China that have gotten funding this year have been focused on services like massages and spa treatments. Mingyi Zhudao is blazing a fresher trail, and while that also can bring a host of unforeseen problems, with the backing of a famous investor like Xu, the startup is off to a good start.
Photo by Army Medicine
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