"Chinese sample" of AI healthcare: Why can HEALTHYWAY INC (02587) compete with Open Evidence, valued at $12 billion, under the joy of profit?

In the valuation system of the global biopharmaceutical and digital health industry, a new "anchor point" is triggering a dual resonance in Wall Street and the Hong Kong stock capital markets. Recently, the U.S. medical AI company Open Evidence, with its rapid penetration capability - covering the majority of doctors in the United States in just 11 months, quickly saw its valuation soar to $12 billion, becoming another phenomenon-level target after Doximity. In the Hong Kong stock market, after more than 20 years of deep cultivation in grassroots medical scenes, HEALTHYWAY INC (02587) completed a fundamental transformation from a "registration tool" to an "AI-empowered medical ecosystem connector," perfectly mirroring the underlying logic of Open Evidence and evolving into a more commercially explosive "Plus mode" through the offline closed loop evolution of "medical assistance + AI." On February 12, HEALTHYWAY INC announced a profit forecast, expecting annual revenue for 2025 to be no less than 1.5 billion yuan, a year-on-year increase of no less than 25%, and net profit to increase significantly to no less than 50 million yuan. This performance improvement is not the result of short-term cost squeezing or pulse growth, but the inevitable result of "economies of scale" and business structure optimization through "AI efficiency." Why is it the Chinese version of Open Evidence Plus? When global capital markets are searching for the best landing paradigm of artificial intelligence in medical scenarios, the recently renowned AI medical target, Open Evidence, has provided a reference for the market. It is understood that the company covered the majority of doctors in the United States in just 11 months, and its valuation quickly soared to $12 billion. The "viral" growth behind this is that AI precisely solves the efficiency pain points for doctors in the era of information explosion. At the fundamental level, HEALTHYWAY INC and Open Evidence have a high degree of similarity, that is, by establishing deep binding and strong cooperation relationships with AI tools and doctors, they acquire a massive number of doctor users and medical interaction data. It is worth mentioning that by focusing on the "core clinical scene," both have taken the starting point of "solving the efficiency pain points of doctors in clinical practice" and have avoided the "red ocean" of "mild illness consultation." Therefore, in terms of commercialization path, both rely on "high doctor stickiness" and have positioned themselves in the blue ocean of digital marketing for pharmaceutical companies. Open Evidence attracts doctors to its platform by using an AI algorithm to analyze literature; while HEALTHYWAY INC, through the human-machine collaborative model of "medical assistance + AI," integrates deeply into the clinical workflow. According to the latest data, HEALTHYWAY INC has over 905,000 registered doctors. In an environment where Chinese doctors generally face heavy administrative burdens and high diagnostic pressure, HEALTHYWAY INC's AI digital employees have significantly reduced doctors' workload by providing intelligent patient record management, assisted diagnosis, and automated follow-up visits. This technological empowerment has brought about high doctor stickiness and has enabled the company to master the most crucial decision-making entry point in the Chinese medical system. Based on this strong connection, the company, like Open Evidence, can quickly intercept the trillion-dollar budget shift of pharmaceutical companies from traditional marketing to digital and compliant marketing, becoming a natural hub for pharmaceutical academic promotion and Real World Studies (RWS). However, when deeply exploring its business moat and monetization breadth, compared to Open Evidence which mainly serves the doctor end, HEALTHYWAY INC has built a full life cycle service ecosystem through the dual-loop of "doctor end + patient end," indicating that the company has a more significant value ceiling and higher valuation potential than Open Evidence. Regarding the doctor end, HEALTHYWAY INC not only provides AI assistance similar to Open Evidence but also achieves physical positioning in the clinical scene by deploying offline medical assistants in more than 1,500 top-tier hospitals nationwide. This collaborative system of "doctor + medical assistant + AI" solves the most complex "last 100 meters" landing problems in the Chinese healthcare system. At the patient end, the company's "health steward" model infiltrates into long-term health management scenarios such as continued medication and chronic disease management, implying that HEALTHYWAY INC is not only a processor of information but also a deliverer of services and a matcher of transactions. From a valuation logic perspective, as an ecosystem connector that simultaneously controls the professional decision flow of doctors, patient service experience flow, and pharmaceutical marketing value flow, its business boundaries and data closed-loop depth far exceed that of a simple decision support tool. This full-chain control power is not just a technological increment but also an ecosystem hub that can self-evolve, allowing the company to maintain high liquidity premiums and strategic valuations in the capital market when facing pure traffic e-commerce platforms, thanks to its control over the "smallest granular level" in medical scenarios. The underlying logic of profit reversal - Why is 2025 a "watershed" year? From a financial perspective, 2025 is undoubtedly a milestone in the development history of HEALTHYWAY INC, marking the company's transition from an "investment period" to a "harvest period." It is understood that in the first half of 2025, HEALTHYWAY INC's gross margin increased by 1.2 percentage points year-on-year to 31.2%. For the full year of 2025, the company's net profit went from a loss of 269 million yuan in the same period of 2024 to a projected net profit of no less than 50 million yuan for the full year. The underlying logic of this lies in the qualitative change in the business structure and the efficient release of cost management leverage. Supporting this leap forward are the three driving forces - digital marketing, RWS support, and the explosive synergy of member services. Firstly, in the context of the pharmaceutical compliance reform, pharmaceutical budgets are accelerating their shift towards channels that provide precise, high-quality academic content, making digital marketing services the profit pillar of the company. Currently, the 900,000 registered doctors under HEALTHYWAY INC, and the offline private domain traffic derived from this, have become scarce assets in the industry, elevating the company's bargaining power and gross margin level. Secondly, the real-world research (RWS) business empowered by digitalization is showing enormous growth potential, significantly shortening clinical trial cycles through technological means and embedding the company deep within the pharmaceutical innovation value chain. By the first half of 2025, the company had delivered hundreds of high-quality research reports to 48 top pharmaceutical companies, transforming 200 million medical-patient interaction data into valuable research assets. Lastly, in the C-end member services field, by leveraging the value of the 212 million registered users, the company has formed a revenue structure that is light in assets and high in gross margins, providing a solid cash flow foundation for the company. Furthermore, what sets them apart is the reassessment of the asset value of deep cultivation in the waiting areas of top-tier hospitals by HEALTHYWAY INC. Unlike platforms that pursue centralized traffic, HEALTHYWAY INC has chosen a "decentralized" offline deep cultivation path: by delving into waiting rooms, HEALTHYWAY INC focuses deeply on "offline patients who have to visit hospitals," especially the group with an urgent need for serious and chronic diseases. Through deploying offline medical assistants and utilizing WeChat for enterprise, this "doctor-medical assistant-patient" strong connection that HEALTHYWAY INC has created is actually building a set of digital private domain assets that cannot be breached by purely traffic-based logic in the public medical system. It has a high competitive threshold, making it a gap that internet giants find difficult to surpass in the short term. It is worth mentioning that in 2025, HEALTHYWAY INC completed the commercial landing of its AI business. According to the latest profit announcement, the company's independently developed AI software products have achieved scale income for the first time at the To B end, with revenues expected to contribute approximately 30 million yuan in 2025, validating the commercialization logic in the market. With the company completing a magnificent transformation from a traditional registration services provider to an AI-driven medical ecosystem platform, HEALTHYWAY INC's technological foundation has solidified, proving its ability to commercialize and operate in a complex medical ecosystem. Looking back from the breakeven point, the accumulation of the company's past twenty years is coalescing into an unstoppable momentum. As the profit inflection point is established in 2025, HEALTHYWAY INC, as a "scarce AI-capable digital medical target" in the Hong Kong stock market, is facing a fundamental transformation in its valuation system from a "traditional service industry" to an "AI platform-based enterprise." As the pace of profit release accelerates and the ecological value becomes more apparent, the market should re-examine this digital medical giant on the eve of qualitative change and re-anchor it in the global AI medical forefront coordinates.