Ping An Good Doctor: Creating a Nondisruptive Solution for China's Healthcare System

This case describes how the Chinese internet healthcare company Ping An Good Doctor created a nondisruptive solution for addressing a key challenge in China’s healthcare industry: Seeking healthcare was difficult for many Chinese people due to the relative scarcity and uneven distribution of high-quality healthcare services. While the government and some internet healthcare market pioneers tried to increase the supply of medical resources in various ways based on the existing hospital-centered system, Ping An Good Doctor aimed to remove the part of unwarranted demand from over-crowded large hospitals by launching an internet healthcare platform to provide primary care services. The company recruited a full-time inhouse doctors’ team of high qualifications to provide 24x7 online consultations, and partnered with other healthcare players to build a “closed-loop” system of healthcare services with fast delivery of medicine to patients’ doorsteps and convenient access to partnered clinics and labs. Ping An Good Doctor has been addressing the needs of a vast population of Chinese people who are looking for high-quality basic care and health management services while creating a win-win between the company and other players such as hospitals, grassroots healthcare institutions, pharmacies, and independent clinics and labs. Instead of causing displacement and disruption in the existing industry, Ping An Good Doctor’s has allowed medical resources to address market demand more effectively while lowering social costs, thereby achieving nondisruptive creation, a concept coined by Chan Kim and Renée Mauborgne in their international bestseller Blue Ocean Shift.

• Demonstrate how Ping An Good Doctor identified a longstanding problem in the healthcare industry from a fresh perspective and offered a brand-new solution. • Illustrate how new market creation can take the form of nondisruptive creation, where an innovative business creates win-wins and generates social benefits instead of disrupting the existing industry. • Showcase how new technologies such as the internet and artificial intelligence (AI) can be deployed to achieve nondisruptive creation instead of having a disruptive effect on an industry and the larger society. • Examine Ping An Good Doctor’s revenue model and appreciate how an innovator can pursue its market-creating initiative with great market potential based on a realistic and effective business model.