On-line Medical Services to Expand in ChinaWei Jingyu, a resident in Qingdao, Shandong Province, had his life turned upside down when he found out his 10-year-old son was suffering from a rare tumor in his pelvic cavity.He took his son to Beijing for medical attention but the boy became thinner and thinner. In a last desperate attempt, Wei sent out an emergency call for help via the Internet. The email message luckily reached www.jk123.com, China's largest medical health care website, which referred the boy to the best doctors. Wei's son is among hundreds of patients who have benefited from emerging on-line medical services in China. Many patients have experienced the headache of waiting for hours just to see a doctor. Simplifying procedures, finding the right doctors for patients at the lowest cost is what jk123.com, and a dozen other health care websites are intended to do, said Shao Haiyang, president of the Beijing Nanshansong E-commerce Network Co. However, most of the country's health websites now offer only databases, consultation and "match-making" between doctors and patients. They have yet to enter medical e-commerce in a real sense, according to some industry insiders. Earlier this year, the State Drug Administration announced that on-line sales of over-the-counter drugs would be suspended because the business mode severes links between customers and drug sellers, making supervision of sales difficult. The ban put the brakes on drug sales on domestic websites. But Shao said he believes the tough stance by the administration will not last, since on-line sales of medicine is the trend. The State Economic and Trade Commission seems to have bought the e-commerce concept. It has selected several medicine websites to pilot e-commerce in this field, according to sources with the commission. Yu Mingde, director of the medicine department under the commission, said the commission supports on-line transactions among medicine production enterprises, pharmaceutical circulation firms and hospitals. "This includes retail medicine stores' on-line sales to consumers," Yu said. In the latest development, the State Drug Administration, the SETC and the Ministry of Information Industry held a "China Medicine E-Commerce Forum" to discuss digital medical business. Wang Lifeng, vice-director of the Market Supervision Department under the State Drug Administration, said the administration is ready to contribute to the healthy expansion of China's medical e-commerce. "The development of medicine e-commerce should comply with China's laws and regulations," he said, adding the administration will participate in the management of the business mode. With this promise and the medical websites' efforts, experts said they believe the country's burgeoning on-line medical service and e-commerce will thrive. |
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