Analysis on the development prospects of China's medical information industry during the 13th Five-Year Plan

The development stage of medical informationization in China

According to the analysis of the World Health Organization, the development of medical informatization can be divided into three stages: hospital management and clinical informatization, regional health informatization, and personal health management. If medical institutions are regarded as nodes, the regional health platform is the information exchange network covering these nodes. The construction of the regional health platform is based on health records and the basic business information systems of medical and health institutions in the region. Overall, the development of medical informatization has expanded from the informatization of medical and health institutions to the informatization of regional health platforms, and finally to personal health management, diagnosis and treatment services based on the Internet, so as to achieve universal coverage of the medical and health system.

According to this classification standard, my country's medical information construction is currently in the early stage of the second stage, and some areas have begun to enter the third stage. The information construction of the first two stages mainly relied on the development of computer and network technology, and the overall level was still backward compared with other industries.

Figure 1: Schematic diagram of various stages of medical informatization in my country

The development trend of China's medical informationization in the 13th Five-Year Plan

1. Industry chain integration trend: software providers integrate their business into the downstream service market

The main drivers of this trend include the growth in demand for services and companies' desire to improve profitability.

2. Development trend of informatization in different types of medical institutions: obvious hierarchy

From the perspective of hospital informatization development, the hierarchical level of informatization development in hospitals of different sizes is still obvious. In general, the average informatization level of high-level hospitals is higher than that of low-level hospitals. At present, most of the tertiary hospitals and some advanced secondary hospitals in China have basically completed the construction of the first round of HIS systems, and some advanced tertiary hospitals have entered the HIS system integration stage; most of the first-level and lower hospitals and some secondary hospitals are in the process of building the first round of HIS systems.

Figure 2: Informationization trends of different types of medical institutions

Forecast of China's medical informationization prospects during the 13th Five-Year Plan

1. Overall demand outlook: Large room for improvement

As the living standards of the Chinese people improve, the expenditures of various health institutions are gradually increasing, and at the same time, the proportion of medical information technology investment in health expenditure is also increasing. Specifically, from 2008 to 2013, the proportion of medical information technology investment in the total health expenditure of health institutions in my country increased from 0.49% to 0.69%. However, compared with the 3%-5% proportion in developed countries, there is still a big gap. There is still a lot of room for improvement in my country's medical information technology market. According to the estimates of the Prospective Industry Research Institute, in 2016, the proportion of IT expenditure in my country's medical industry to the total health expenditure of health institutions was about 0.82%.

Figure 3: Proportion of IT expenditure in the healthcare industry to total healthcare expenditure of healthcare institutions from 2008 to 2016 (Unit: %)

2. Product market prospects: The software and service market prospects are broad

Judging from the trajectory of demand development, hospital information management systems, medical technology information management systems and public health information management systems are different stages of medical informatization development from basic to advanced.

Judging from the current situation in China, at the hospital level, tertiary hospitals are entering a period of in-depth development from the popularization of basic medical information management systems, and are gradually building medical technology information management systems; secondary and lower hospitals are still in the popularization and application period of basic medical information systems. Medical technology systems such as image archiving and transmission, test information, pathological information, surgical information, and electronic medical records are currently only being built in large tertiary hospitals, and the informatization of the entire hospital system is far from mature. On the other hand, outside of the hospital information management system, the public health and regional medical and health information management system has just started, and the public health information system that integrates social medical and health resources and connects medical insurance, community medical and health services, remote diagnosis, drug management platforms, health administrative departments, banks and other related functions has just begun to be piloted.

Figure 4: Typical development of medical informationization needs in my country

As medical reforms go deeper, the country's investment in the medical and health industry continues to increase. Since the hospital's own information construction and the establishment of a public health system platform are important means to improve the medical level of the entire industry, optimize the use of medical resources, increase the health care level of citizens, and ultimately improve the medical care level of residents and improve the efficiency of national health expenditures, the IT investment in the medical and health industry will be significantly higher than the growth rate of the entire IT industry. After years of hardware-based IT investment, the proportion of software and services will become increasingly larger.

Driven by the new medical reform and the construction of smart cities, the Forward-looking Industry Research Institute believes that the domestic medical information industry will show a rapid development trend in the future. In recent years, the investment scale of the medical information market has continued to expand, and has maintained a growth rate of more than 20% for five consecutive years, which is much higher than the global market's annual compound growth rate of 5.1%. The overall market size is growing rapidly.

According to the Planning and Information Department of the National Health and Family Planning Commission, medical and health informationization is the focus of national information development and has been included in the "13th Five-Year Plan" national network security and information construction priorities, and will achieve key breakthroughs. According to forward-looking forecasts, the scale of medical informationization in my country will continue to grow in the next few years, and by 2022, the scale of medical informationization in my country will exceed 100 billion yuan.

Figure 5: Forecast of my country's medical informationization scale from 2017 to 2022 (unit: 100 million yuan)

The above data and analysis are all from the "2017-2022 China Medical Information Industry Market Outlook and Investment Strategy Planning Analysis Report" released by the Forward-looking Industry Research Institute.