Turning point of medical e-commerce has arrived

Wen Tamer The novel coronavirus pneumonia epidemic prevention war has reached a critical period Under the call of the state, people generally live at home in a small way In addition to purchasing necessary living materials, they try to reduce the frequency of going out and the risk of disease It seems to be a paradox not to go out and hope to buy necessary epidemic prevention materials In this regard, people turn their attention to medical e-commerce to seek solutions Just in the past Spring Festival, thanks to the concept of home-based, pharmaceutical e-commerce is unprecedented On the one hand, residents' recognition of medical e-commerce has gradually increased, and the number of active people has grown rapidly According to Analysys data, the peak number of active medical e-commerce during the Spring Festival reached 1.4821 million, an average increase of 5.44% Table 1 number of daily active medical e-commerce during the Spring Festival Data source: Yiguan data On the other hand, residents have initially formed the habit of purchasing drugs through the medical e-commerce platform, and the sales volume of medical e-commerce is expected to increase significantly Huajin Securities believes that in 2020, the scale of pharmaceutical e-commerce is expected to further soar, with a year-on-year growth rate of 61% Table 2 market scale of pharmaceutical e-commerce Data source: Huajin securities With the Internet platform as the carrier, pharmaceutical e-commerce organically combines traditional medicine and emerging Internet technology to provide users with services such as drug purchase and delivery Its main feature is convenient, users can enjoy the services of purchasing medicine, distribution, medicine and so on without leaving home Some pharmaceutical e-commerce even provide users with the services of Chinese medicine boiling, which is very considerate It is not difficult to find that a strong user entrance and distribution channel is the core value of pharmaceutical e-commerce Therefore, the mainstream Internet companies have their own layout in this field, including Ali health, Jingdong pharmaceutical mall, pinduoduo pharmaceutical health center, etc In addition, some enterprises that focus on medical e-commerce are no inferior to these large factories, such as Jingdang fast medicine, 1 medicine network, Jianke, etc Take Dingdang fast medicine as an example Dingdang fast medicine is an o2o internet medical product Its main business is divided into two parts: Dingdang fast medicine platform and Dingdang smart pharmacy Dingdang fast medicine platform is mainly engaged in offline delivery service, providing 7 * 24-hour door-to-door delivery service for users; Dingdang smart pharmacy is its own chain drugstore, which can provide remote consultation, offline drug purchase, chronic disease management and other services Although the development of medical e-commerce has been nearly 20 years, it is still tepid From the annual reports of some pharmaceutical e-commerce enterprises, it is not difficult to find that, although the company has a huge flow and bright revenue, its profits have been losing money year after year, so it's not good enough There are three main reasons Drugs are not only commodities, but also different from general commodities On the one hand, the main body of drug use is people, and people's life is only once; on the other hand, the professional threshold of drugs is high, the ordinary people do not have rich drug knowledge, need to pass the examination and diagnosis of doctors, and can use drugs reasonably under the guidance of doctors, "information asymmetry" is very strong According to the statistics report on the development of China's Internet, by the first half of 2019, China's Internet penetration rate had reached 61.2% In the age structure distribution of Internet users, only 10.5% of them are over 50 years old The main audience of medical treatment is the elderly, who are not proficient in using the Internet, and are still accustomed to the traditional way of purchasing drugs in hospitals and pharmacies With medical insurance becoming an important part of residents' income, it has become a habit of people to buy medicine with medical insurance card However, at present, the whole medical insurance system is not open to medical e-commerce Therefore, for residents, although the medical e-commerce simplifies the process, it adds a lot of burden on the cost From the perspective of medical insurance, residents are more inclined to choose drugstores or hospitals After the outbreak of novel coronavirus pneumonia, the national health and Health Committee issued many documents, encouraging telemedicine services and guiding patients to purchase drugs online to avoid cross infection caused by outpatient visits or drug purchase It can be predicted that the epidemic is expected to change consumers' drug buying habits, and the spring of medicine e-commerce may not be far away In general, medical e-commerce may present three major trends in the future In the new drug administration law of 2019, it is clear to give green light to online prescription drugs with an inclusive and prudent attitude This means that pharmaceutical e-commerce can include prescription drugs in the scope of sales in strict compliance with the standard of unified online and offline drug management Under the background of strict control of the proportion of drugs in the current hospital assessment, in addition to the retail channels outside the hospital, some drugs are bound to flow to the pharmaceutical e-commerce, promoting the sales of pharmaceutical e-commerce to further improve At present, the supervision of pharmaceutical e-commerce is still insufficient Because of the difficulty of tracing the source of online sales and the difficulty of punishment, pharmaceutical e-commerce has become a place where some fake drugs and inferior drugs can hide the dirt With the introduction of relevant laws and policies, such as market access of pharmaceutical e-commerce, Internet transaction behavior and service control, regulation of pharmaceutical e-commerce subject and market control, the supervision will be further enhanced, and some unqualified drugs will completely lose the hotbed of barbaric growth.