BACKGROUND
In China, Internet plus healthcare is believed to be able to break the predicament of medical information asymmetry and unreasonable medical resource allocation and solve the difficulty and high cost of getting medical service problems. However, the new development trends of China’s Internet hospitals under the effect of COVID-19 pandemic have not yet been systematically studied.
OBJECTIVE
The aim of this research was to review the development status quo of China’s Internet hospitals and summary their challenges during the COVID-19 pandemic and predict their future trends.
METHODS
Data on Internet hospitals were acquired through the Baidu search engine for results up until December 31, 2020. Then, more detailed information from the official websites and apps of 264 online hospitals were obtained according to the results of the search. Finally, a database for descriptive analysis was formed.
RESULTS
As of December 31, 2020, the number of registered Internet hospitals nationwide has reached 1004. Among these registered Internet hospitals, the sponsors are various, where public hospitals are becoming the main force in the construction of Internet hospitals, accounting for nearly 70%. They can be roughly divided into three types in terms of development pattern: Internet hospital independently built by hospitals (H-type), Internet hospital jointly established by hospitals and enterprises (H+I-type), and Internet hospital independently set up by enterprises relying on physical medical institutions (I-type), where H-type is the mainstream form, accounting for 61.0%.
CONCLUSIONS
Although the COVID-19 pandemic has promoted the development of Internet hospitals and the government has put forward management measures such as availability of medical insurance coverage, they still had not yet matured and faced various issues.
