ChinaWatch: The 'Happy Pad'

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Biggest Healthcare Overhaul

As a young Chinese doctor earning 4,000 yuan ($600) a month, Zhang Fei was faced with having to cough up 2,000 yuan for a bill that a patient left unpaid after Zhang removed a tumor from her womb.

Zhang managed to track down the patient after alerting her neighbors and only avoided having to settle the bill when the patient returned to the hospital to sign a promise to pay.

“I'm only a doctor, why do I have to pay for it? I was very, very depressed. I spent many, many days ringing her, trying to track her down and I had to get other villagers to knock on her door,” Zhang told Reuters.


China is overhauling the biggest healthcare system in human history and has made significant changes since 2003: implementing a basic universal medical insurance system and heavily subsidizing a growing list of essential drugs.

In March, it pledged more money to bring more people under the insurance scheme, raise reimbursements and improve services to meet the needs of its 1.34 billion people who are increasingly troubled by costly, chronic, non-communicable illnesses such as heart disease, stroke, diabetes and cancer.

The government also slashed the maximum retail price for more than 1,200 types of antibiotics and circulatory system drugs to cap profits of foreign and domestic drug makers and ward off grumbling over high healthcare costs.

But missing are plans to deal with other entrenched problems in the healthcare system, such as the absence of good hospital management which can often result in health workers being pitted against patients, like the situation Zhang faced.

Zhang and her colleagues often need to confront patients to get payment, or risk forking out for unpaid bills out of their pockets.
“There should be a department that deals with this and post-operation services that have nothing to do with therapy. But in China, doctors do a lot of work that has nothing to do with doctoring,” Zhang says.

The Happy Pad

Lenovo, Motorola and Dell are preparing to launch tablets in China. But can the Happy Pad outsell Apple's iPad?

Chinese PC maker Lenovo, which makes the “LePad,” hopes so. The name translates to “Happy Pad” from Chinese to English, and it is just one of several tablets taking aim at Apple as China's tablet market gets more crowded.

U.S.-based companies Motorola and Dell are also planning to launch tablets in China within the coming months. Motorola says it will release its Xoom tablet before the end of June, while Dell says it will launch its 5-inch Streak tablet in China later this month.

Lenovo launched the LePad tablet at the end of last month. The Android-based tablet is available for purchase online and is gradually appearing in retail outlets.


Apple dominates the tablet market in China, although it has not announced when its second-generation iPad will be available in the country.

The company has a 78 percent share over the market, according to Sun Peilin, an analyst with Beijing-based research firm Analysys International. The remaining 22 percent belongs to Samsung and other tablet producers.

“Apple's advantage is that they have the brand recognition,” Sun says. “When people think about buying a tablet, they automatically think about the iPad.”

In China, tablet sales reached about 600,000 units last year, according to estimates from Analysys. But that number is expected to rise to 4.5 million units this year.

Apple also dominates the tablet market worldwide, with a 73 percent market share, according to research firm IDC.

Analysts say Lenovo's advantage over the competition includes its well-known brand name in China along with its far-reaching distribution network.

Lenovo is currently the top PC seller in China and plans on making its LePad available in 5,000 stores in 400 cities across China this month.

In contrast, Apple has less reach, according to analysts. The company has a total of four Apple stores in Beijing and Shanghai, but also has a Chinese website from which orders can be made as well as from authorized resellers.

ChinaWatch

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