China Focus: Golden decade expected for IT application in China’s medical care industry

BEIJING, June 1 (Greenpost) — Stock prices of many Shanghai and Shenzhen listed companies with the concept of information technology application in medical care sector has more than doubled and outperformed the market since February this year. This is a reflection of investors’ expectation for great growth potentials in China’s medical care informatization drive.

Indeed, along with implementation of the nation’s new medical reform scheme, concrete policies in favor of the industry’s development have followed, such as a five-year plan for informatization in the medical and health sector.

Aside from governmental support, social investment in the sector is expected to warm up quickly.

A China Securities Journal report on Monday predicts that the total investment in this field is expected to hit 34 billion yuan in 2016 and the coming decade will be a golden period for the industry’s development.

The medical information construction includes tele-medical information systems, regional medical information platforms, and hospital intelligent management systems, and the former two are fully supported by the government.

The National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) has appointed five regions, including Ningxia, Yunnan, Inner Mongolia, Guizhou and Tibet, as telemedical information pilot zones. And each will be given 120 million yuan or 200 million yuan as supportive funding by the Ministry of Finance.

Both the government and grassroots medical organizations have more rigid demands on the development of regional medical information platforms. The current investments in such platforms are much less than the average of developed countries.

Confident in the outlook of regional medical information platforms, investors on the domestic capital market have begun to pay attention to companies related to the field.

Nearly 50 institutional investors recently visited Chongqing Adtech Co Ltd, one of the leading companies in regional medical information for market research.

Analysts say that, as a main shareholder of Adtech, Hainan Haiyao Co Ltd (000566.SZ) can get the whole medical data of Chongqing local people.

Since February the share prices of many medical information concept stocks such as Hainan Haiyao (000566.SZ), WinningSoft (300253.SH), and Wonders Informaiton (300168) have more doubled. (Edited by Bai Jiechun, baijc@xinhua.org)

Source Xinhua

Editor  Xuefei Chen Axelsson