Chinese Healthcare: The Rural Reality

One of the largest health disparities present in China is the inequality between rural and urban healthcare. In particular, rural patients face barriers to equal resources to healthcare access. There are less than half as many medical institution beds and licensed physicians per 1,000 citizens in rural areas compared to urban areas. In even more isolated areas where there are only small township h…

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Restoring Trust in China’s Physicians

In the coming years, China is facing significant challenges in the healthcare sphere and one of the most formidable will be public perception. A particularly pervasive and damaging perception in China is the distrust of physicians. Without well-established patient-physician trust, the mission of delivering quality healthcare is significantly set back. DOCTORS ARE NEEDED, BUT NOT TRUSTED Being a…

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Chinese Healthcare Trends: Rising Hospital Privatization

A significant trend in the current and future trajectory of Chinese healthcare is the increasing privatization of medical hospitals and clinics. This development is driven by both consumer desires for a more patient-centered experience and government initiatives that aim to distribute the burden of care from public hospitals. Despite the rapid expansion of private options, several barriers prevent…

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Chinese Healthcare: Challenges & Opportunities

With big corporations including Tencent and Alibaba already investing heavily in the healthcare industry, there is a lot of speculation as to what the future of healthcare will look like, and also how corporations, startup companies, investors, physicians, and hospitals will collaborate in this space. Some Context China has undergone concerted development over the last two decades to improve hea…

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Rural Healthcare: Field Notes From Shaanxi

In 2009, the Chinese government introduced a healthcare reform plan aimed at providing affordable medical care for its entire population by 2020. This ¥850 billion reform called attention to inequalities within the country’s public healthcare system, notably the urban-rural healthcare disparity. Reforms have focused primarily on strengthening primary care in lower-tier and remote areas, which will…

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Can Apps Transform Chinese Healthcare?

China’s healthcare industry has reached a crossroads. In Tier-1 cities, public hospitals are overcrowded. Patients wait in long lines and receive at best 6-7 minute consults. The elderly and patients with chronic illness travel long distances for treatment and are often turned away because of doctor shortages. In terms of health insurance, the picture is no better, as a majority of Chinese citizen…

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Sustainable Tech: Healthcare

Tech is becoming a part of all aspects of life and sustainability is no exception to this. In this piece, in the run-up to our Beyond Business As Usual Forum, we present the future of healthcare and how there is a growing opportunity for tech to be leveraged to provide for a growing, more expectant urban population. While China has made great strides to improve the quality of life for its 1.5 b…

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The Future of Healthcare

Held on September 10th, 2015, Bayer and a group of industry leaders brought their expertise to discuss current and future healthcare challenges that patients face in China and explored ways forward. During a series of interactive workshops, participants worked together to understand the issues from a patient’s perspective, and discussed how they can turn them into opportunities that can drive b…

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Technology and Social Enterprises

Over the last few years, as I have spent more time studying the impact of social enterprises and looked to understand how to maximize the impact of entrepreneurs who hold an issue of society, environment, or economy at their core, I have begun to understand that the future of social entrepreneurialism is VERY different today than what it will be in 5 years from now. At present, if you take a…

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