Huidian Research estimated that the market scale of mobile health in China registered CNY 2.21 billion in 2013, an increase of 18.8% over the previous year. The market will continue to grow and eventually reach CNY 19.05 billion by the end of 2018.

According to the last year’s numbers, mobile conventional services generated CNY 1.36 billion, mobile diagnostic services (only refer to online auxiliary diagnosis) reached CNY 290 million, and treatment services (including hospitalization) achieved CNY 220 million; while the market scale of mobile conventional services will be up to CNY 12.45 billion as of 2018. Because of the technical background of mobile internet, conventional services, diagnostic services and treatment services will occupy the majority of China mobile health market all along.

At the moment, there are more than 2,000 types of mobile healthcare apps in China.At the moment, there are more than 2,000 types of mobile healthcare apps that mainly can be divided into five categories, including e-business apps for pharmaceutical products, apps for meeting professionals’ demand to understand special information and inquire medical reference materials, apps for seeking doctors for treatment, service platform used for booking register and guiding service, and segmented functional products.

As of 2013, Chinese mobile phone users had a very low recognition toward mHealth – 9.7% users understand it, 18.3% users have heard about it but are not familiar with it, and 64.8% even have never heard of mobile heath completely. Only 7.2% of Chinese mobile phone users installed mobile healthcare apps in their phones or mobile devices.

When choosing mHealth apps, Chinese mobile phone users pay close attention to security and quality of medical services, with 45.8% people most concern over security and 25.3% emphasize on quality. In addition, they also care about the cost that they have to bear and promptness of service.

[Image from MedCity]