"I used to think every hospital is the same-noisy, crowded, and you have to take off your pants in front of everybody in the room when you are given an injection," said Cai Qiang, founder and president of Beijing Saint Lucia Hospital Management Consulting Co.
"But when I moved to Australia, I saw a completely different scene in the hospital－the building looked like a star hotel, and there were special rooms for the doctor and the patient to use at the time of an examination. When my wife gave birth to our baby, the doctor even prepared a camera for us," Cai said.
He said he was shocked by the stark contrast and decided to go back to China in 2009 to help Chinese people receive overseas medical treatment.
In 2011, Saint Lucia became the nation's first provider of overseas medical care, and it is now the largest in this area with nearly 1,000 clients receiving either a long-distance medical consultation or medical treatment overseas.
"There are only three or four agencies offering similar services when we established the company in 2013, and we had only a certain number of customers (who went to the U.S. for treatment) in the first year," said Guo Liang, executive director and co-founder of MEGA Healthcare.
The number of such agencies rose to 30 early last year, and has since grown to about 100.
That has created an urgent need for quality control and tighter supervision as expensive medical treatments are usually followed by either fine recovery or death.
A report by Analysys.cn published in May said the demand for overseas healthcare started in 2000. Between 2010 and 2014, consumers of such services were often those with an annual income of 1 million yuan or above. Now, the market is set to grow on the back of online platforms.
"The average cost of a health check in Japan is about 80,000 yuan. The highest price could reach 168,000 yuan. After we opened our online services in September last year, the cost fell to about 50,000 yuan," said Xiong Juan, CEO of cycares.com, the nation's first online cross-border healthcare consulting and service platform.
According to Xiong, cycares.com's monthly revenue doubled in April to 2 million yuan from the level in November 2015.
Compared with brick-and-mortar counterparts, online platforms boast larger customer bases. For they had started with services like providing registration and online medical consulting service by linking domestic hospitals and patients, said Jiang Xinwei.
"The more than 88 million registered users of Shenzhen Ningyuan Technology Co Ltd will give us an edge in providing personalized service accordingly," said Luo Ningzhen, CEO of the company.
The online medical services provider founded its overseas healthcare arm in March. It helps patients receive treatment in more than 60 hospitals in South Korea, Japan, the U.S. and Thailand. It is also planning to add more hospitals from other countries and regions soon.
Brick-and-mortar service providers are also jumping on the online bandwagon. "We started to offer video diagnoses in August 2015. The new service increased the number of our patients by 50 percent and lowered the cost to patients, as they can now seek a second opinion from overseas experts without going abroad," said Guo.
"Although this is a niche market, I believe it will grow rapidly in coming years, and we will keep exploiting it," said Guo.
