The joint-venture, to be called Shanghai People’s Health Information Technology, will build a private internet-based network that will link doctors and patients, enabling consultations via the internet.
The venture will also provide a “national interactive health channel” on China’s only IPTV service, BesTV.
IBA owns 51 per cent of the joint venture and will contribute up to $7 million, based on future earnings and related working capital requirements.
The joint venture has acquired the intellectual property and support and maintenance contracts for an administrative hospital information system currently installed in over 180 hospitals –representing 90 percent of tier one hospitals and 20 per cent of tier two hospitals in Shanghai and surrounding provinces.
It also has the rights to provide health information systems to eight planned Harvard Medical Centre hospitals, two of which are currently under construction.
Shanghai People’s Health’s first customer will go live at the end of March – following trials in December and January – with an optical fibre, IP based network that will link over 20,000 families with doctors through 11 hospitals and community centres in Shanghai’s Changning District.
The Changning private network will initially provide the capability to deliver in-home and out of hospital consultations linking health professional and patients with community clinics and specialists located at the larger public hospitals.
With trials now complete, the joint venture will launch China’s first Health Channel in May.
The service not only provides more channels than traditional terrestrial television, using full size MPEG-4 video coding.
The service will provide health information, in-home video and audio consultations, video on demand capabilities and relevant health media content, including paid advertising.
The Health Channel will be distributed through an exclusive contract with BesTV, which is jointly owned by Shanghai Media Group, China’s second largest media company, and China Telecom, the largest fixed line telephone company.
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