Dingxiang Doctor Product Analysis

I have been suffering from insomnia recently, and I happened to see a message about Ding Xiang Doctor ’s health encyclopedia in my circle of friends, so I scanned the QR code and took a look.

Haha~ You know what, the way the entire content of the medical dictionary about diseases is expressed gives me a refreshing feeling (for Dingxiang, this may be a routine operation). It is not a traditional rote guide, but all output in the form of multiple questions and answers, so that every entry is sufficiently rewarding to read.

This aroused my interest in finding out more, so I downloaded the DingXiang Doctor APP to study the differences between the Health Encyclopedia and other medical products.

1. Product Introduction

I looked up Dingxiang's official positioning of the health encyclopedia, which is mainly committed to providing users with professional, practical, easy-to-understand and warm health knowledge solutions.

Therefore, from the entire definition, we can basically see that Dingxiang hopes that the content can directly guide patients in the treatment plans at various stages of the disease, throughout the entire cycle of the disease, from prevention, to differential diagnosis, to treatment, to rehabilitation and life management, so that people can gain something immediately after reading it. Practicality is the core focus of the content, and the final targeted service is the implementation solution.

At present, the entire encyclopedia product has launched more than 3,000 entries, mainly covering high-frequency health issues of public concern, including common diseases, symptoms, medication, physical examinations, vaccines and other health life scenarios. The total number of questions and answers for all entries adds up to more than 100,000, which means that each entry will generate an average of 33.3 questions and answers.

In this way, basically all the knowledge points that should be covered can be covered. At the same time, some special words will also include links to vaccine appointment services and consultation services. Clicking them will directly reach the service interface, completing a complete closed loop from knowledge popularization to medical services.

2. User Analysis

For tool-type products such as Medical Classics, the main way to access the Internet is still through user search, and it is also a low-frequency action compared to the consumer field. Therefore, we must know who will watch it and who will use it in what scenarios. A detailed analysis shows that they may mainly be the following four groups of people.

1. Potential patients

This category refers to a group of people who have experienced some abnormal symptoms in their bodies and need to understand the causes, get a clear diagnosis, or find ways to relieve the symptoms.

For example, if I have been suffering from insomnia at night recently, I might use this symptom to search online for treatment methods to improve insomnia.

For example, I have been burping after meals recently, so I would go online to check what disease might be causing the hiccups, where to go for tests, and what to do to find out the cause.

Potential patients have a very high demand for this batch of content before the disease is diagnosed, that is, the causes of the disease, symptoms, related examinations, identification misunderstandings, etc.

2. Confirmed patients

This category refers to people who have been formally diagnosed as suffering from a certain type of disease after going to the hospital for examination.

Note that this is no longer a symptom. It may be that the patient has been diagnosed with a specific disease. For example, patients with reflux esophagitis, type 2 diabetes, etc. will search the Internet for disease diagnosis conditions to review their own conditions; or they may search for some treatment options, including medication, surgical treatment, physical therapy, psychotherapy, etc., to see if it is possible to collaborate with the doctor to improve their treatment results.

Confirmed patients will have extremely high demands for re-testing after the disease is confirmed, as well as treatment methods, because their core demand is to better treat the disease, rather than staying at the stage of determining what kind of disease it is like in the previous stage.

3. Associated patients

This category refers to people who have a genetic history of certain diseases in their family, such as diabetes, high blood pressure, etc., or there are sudden infectious diseases around them, such as discovering that their partner is infected with a sexually transmitted disease, or the new coronavirus pneumonia that is raging around the world in 2020, or people who have been in a bad working environment for a long time, such as pneumoconiosis which is easy to contract when working on construction sites. Because they care about their current and future physical health, they will pay special attention to this type of disease.

Related patients have a strong desire to search for the pre-stages of the disease, and their main concerns are disease prevention and control methods, as well as related risk factors.

4. Senior Patients

This group of people can almost be called "long-term illness makes them doctors". Since current medical research has reached very detailed molecular and genetic fields, and each scientific research cycle is particularly long, it takes a long time for researchers to update some important guidelines, which may be updated only once every 4 or 5 years.

This leads to some patients finding that after reading medical content, they tend to be homogenized, while what they urgently need to know at this time is some cutting-edge content, which is actually the same as some experts in the medical field, and they want to understand new surgical methods, treatment equipment, clinical research progress of new drugs, etc.

Veteran patients need more cutting-edge disease content; simple, routine content can no longer meet their needs.

5. Patient’s relatives

They usually don't take the initiative to see a doctor. In most cases, their family members or people around them are sick. Out of concern for others, such as sick parents, children, siblings, close friends, etc., this category may generally involve disease treatment methods, medical guidance strategies, psychological comfort techniques, life care and other content. They are also the target audience of medical content products.

So in general, we can almost see that medical classics content runs through all cycles of an unhealthy normal population, from genetic risks, to symptom examinations, to diagnosis and treatment, to rehabilitation care. As long as you are alive, there will always be a time when there is a demand for medical content. It’s just that people have different stratified preferences for content themes, the urgency of content needs, and the length of time for content consumption, so when they need to be met, it depends on the individual.

6. Summary

At present, Dingxiang Encyclopedia products have basically met the needs of other types of users except senior patients. However, the coverage of advantageous question-and-answer content on various diseases is still slightly insufficient. In addition, the gap in subsequent content-related medical services needs to be filled as soon as possible before we can catch up with large manufacturers, because users want not only content, but real help in curing diseases and solving problems.

3. Content Analysis

1. Content Theme Analysis

Judging from the product interface, Dingxiang Doctor's health encyclopedia mainly provides queries on 9 major categories of topics, including diseases, medicines, hospitals, vaccines, examinations/treatments, physical examination interpretations, first aid knowledge, medication guidelines, and sports rehabilitation, covering a total of 3,000 entries. This form of content organization is actually a topic aggregation method based on the highly structured underlying data for patient user cognition. It looks easier to understand and more direct.

We divide it into sections and look at the relevant topics one by one.

1) Disease theme

Take the disease entry "plantar warts" as an example. If a patient sees something strange growing on the sole of his foot, the first thing he or she should do is to compare the symptoms, what kind of skin disease it is, and find the same symptom description.

Dingxiang uses real photos in this area, and the effect is very intuitive. Users can easily identify the disease and check it themselves (in fact, there is a most suitable way to match pictures for each disease theme. Skin diseases are best matched with real photos; and some invisible organ lesions in the human body are actually better in the form of illustrations, which does not cause bloody stimulation).

At the same time, I would also like to point out that users' active inquiries and searches are based on finding answers to questions and have a clear purpose. Therefore, appearing in the form of questions and answers is already an order of magnitude improvement in the cognitive dimension compared to previous guidelines and stereotyped statements.

Overall, the health encyclopedia is fully sufficient for most user queries in the disease section, but the experience can still be improved.

2) Drug topic

The content of this section focuses on increasing knowledge in the popular pharmaceutical health encyclopedia. The content of some high-frequency commonly used drugs is relatively substantial and is basically presented in a question-and-answer format. Take emergency contraceptive pills as an example. The entry for this drug contains a lot of key information that is easily overlooked and rumor-busting, such as:

1. Can emergency contraceptive pills only be taken once a year?
2. After taking emergency contraceptive pills, can I have sex again without using contraception?
3. If I still get pregnant after taking emergency contraceptive pills, can I still keep the child?
4. Do I need to take emergency contraceptive pills with vitamins?

It is almost impossible for you to find these contents in the manual, but they are indeed issues that the audience will pay special attention to at the time and in the current scenario. Therefore, Dingxiang captures high-frequency hot spots and aggregates them based on its own content advantages accumulated in the industry. This is a very good idea and it can really help users.

Some high-frequency medicines, such as amoxicillin and domperidone tablets, can still be presented in a high-quality manner through questions and answers. However, after entering more drug lists, the content becomes rather thin. Most of it is not in the form of questions and answers, but mainly excerpts of key information from simple instructions.

3) Hospital Theme

The hospital section is relatively conventional, with the hospital's name, introduction, address and contact number. The homepage will link to the doctors in the hospital who have opened Dingxiang Doctor Consultation, but the departments are not complete, so it is difficult to fully meet the patients' consultation needs. There is no registration function, so the overall consultation is relatively rudimentary, and the service has not yet formed a closed loop. It is basically no match for industry players such as WeDoctor and Jiuyi160 who have been in the registration field for a long time.

4) Topics on vaccines, tests/treatments, and physical examinations

I classify the above into one type, which is diagnosis and treatment. These contents are generally structured and presented in the form of questions and answers. What is more unique is that when reading the encyclopedia on vaccines, you can directly jump to Dingxiang’s mini program to make an appointment for a vaccine.

In fact, there is an additional item in the examination and treatment, which is "interpretation of the examination results". This is actually the thing that patients cannot understand the most and want to know the most. What exactly do the results on my examination report indicate about my disease and health status? I especially want to know.

For example, when explaining the normal range values ​​of venous plasma glucose fasting test and the corresponding disease conditions it indicates, this is particularly easy to understand and practical, and most platforms do not have it, which is sufficiently differentiated. Later you can consider it as an important product highlight.

The interpretation of the physical examination report is actually an aggregation of a classification dimension in the inspection query. Because the audience is relatively wide, basically the employee pre-employment physical examination, routine physical examinations for various special occupations, or annual inspections of key physiological indicators are also included. Because they are very high frequency, they are extracted and displayed in an independent section, which is more user-friendly. These include laboratory tests (such as blood routine, uric acid, liver function, etc.), imaging tests (liver, gallbladder, pancreas, spleen, kidney, heart function, etc.), physical examinations and other extended items, etc., with a very complete range.

During the operation, three sections of questions that users are concerned about are added: "Before the operation", "During the operation" and "After the operation". This is also a differentiated and practical point of content. After reading it, you will be able to clearly understand what issues you should pay attention to at each stage if you plan to have this operation. For example, before performing anal fistula surgery, simple auxiliary examinations are required, such as routine blood tests, coagulation tests, electrocardiograms, imaging examinations, etc. For example, before cataract surgery, you need to have your vision checked, have your eyesight refraction checked, and have your vision corrected.

5) First aid treatment, medication guidance, sports rehabilitation topics

These three topics are more practical, so I put them into one category.

For first aid treatment, it is divided into four sections: popular first aid, first aid basics, home care, and sudden illness; outdoor first aid also aggregates the content of each section for hyperlink jumps, and will link to the encyclopedia, as well as separate popular science articles, to facilitate users to conduct classified searches.

The following medication guidelines and sports rehabilitation basically explain common medicines and rehabilitation after common sports injuries. What’s good is that most of the content in these three sections is in the form of videos, and you can follow them directly to perform the operations, such as cardiopulmonary resuscitation, the use of ibuprofen suspension drops, prevention training for plantar fasciitis, etc. This makes it easier to learn intuitively.

These videos are generally less than 5 minutes long and are shot with high quality. They provide explanations of the principles, practical steps, and precautions for practice. Basically, they are all original works by Ding Xiang’s own team, maintaining the brand unity of the entire content and giving people a strong sense of professionalism!

2. Content quality analysis

1) Authority

As a professional healthy lifestyle platform, Dingxiang Doctor is backed by the strong medical background of Dingxiangyuan Group, covering more than 70% of the country's professional doctor resources and signing more than 1,000 doctor authors. Doctors and experts are deeply involved in Dingxiang Doctor's content production, product review, user service and other aspects to ensure that all content is professional and reliable.

Currently, more than 300 doctors from tertiary hospitals and professors from double first-class universities have participated in the writing and review of health encyclopedia entries.

For each entry, it will include the entry author and 1-2 review experts, and most of the experts have verifiable records on Dingxiang Doctor, including their place of practice, department, and title. This actually ensures the authenticity of the creation and review objects, rather than being nominal. In addition to being created by DingXiang Doctor's medical team or doctors and experts, each entry also uses a peer review mechanism to invite other experts to conduct cross-reviews. The double review process ensures the professionalism and scientific nature of the entry.

At the end of each entry, relevant references will be noted. This is actually based on the evidence-based principle of medicine, so that every sentence is well-founded. Although most people can’t understand it and won’t read these professional documents, they still feel it’s amazing! Professionalism continues to double!

Another small detail you will find is that the entries have the last revision time, which means that the current content does not remain unchanged for many years, but will be gradually iterated with the development of medicine and the updating of guidelines.

This turns static content into dynamic content. Keeping entries fresh is actually a responsibility for the life and health of patients. Perhaps a new treatment method or plan update can save a life.

2) Popularity

Most of the entries are effortless to read. They are not just excerpts and copies of the guide, but are transformed into questions and answers, so that users can read with purpose, know what problems are being solved, and have a sense of achievement. At the same time, they are accompanied by vivid presentations of popular science with pictures and texts, as well as short videos that are easy to understand at a glance, making it more intuitive and easier to understand.

3) Sense of achievement

1. One is to provide a lot of extended knowledge that everyone cares about outside of the guide;
2. The granularity of the structured entries is detailed enough. Instead of abstract and general descriptions, they are detailed into practical solutions for each disease scenario.
3. Reading the encyclopedia with a purpose in the form of questions and answers makes it easier to remember;
4. Strengthened the relevance between content sections, allowing users to find content in other sections by following the instructions;
5. Complex and obscure operations are expressed through videos, making them easier for patients to learn and perform.

3. Summary

Based on Dingxiang's deep cultivation in the content sector and its understanding of patient needs, I think it has done a pretty good job in content expression. First, it solves the problem of users being willing to read, then being able to understand, and finally being able to remember and use it after reading. The only two shortcomings may be:

1. After the encyclopedia content came out, there were too few related services that could influence decision-making, but for specific drug purchases and treatments, people still had to go to other e-commerce platforms or online institutions, and had no connection with Dingxiang Doctor.
2. The entries still need to continue to improve the question and answer content. Currently, the highly structured and question-and-answer entries may only cover some common diseases, but many are only roughly explained. I believe that as the manpower expands in the future, they will gradually follow up.

In fact, the above conclusions are basically consistent with those of user analysis~

4. Product Analysis

Because it is a tool-type product, the overall functions are relatively simple and easy to use, focusing on query efficiency and reading experience. Let’s first look at the overall functional structure diagram of the Health Encyclopedia section (because the functions are too simple, the information fields are also merged together).

1) In terms of query, multiple query methods are provided, including search, classification, pinyin sorting, etc., which are basically regular interactions.

When searching for most medical entity keywords, the recommendation list in the first column can basically accurately locate the type of searched keyword, whether it is a disease, symptom, drug, etc. The generic names associated with the trade names of some drugs are still good, such as Metoclopramide and Voltaren.

However, once a non-exactly matching word such as "mouth ulcer" is output, the system will not be able to associate it with the corresponding encyclopedia, so the underlying alias system of medical entity words and the algorithm capabilities of intent recognition may still need to be continuously expanded.

In addition, in the drug classification section, after entering, you can actually consider referring to another product under Dingxiang - the medication assistant for classification, and classify the drugs according to the system to which they are used or their efficacy.

Because most patients and users, one, know the medicine and search directly, the other, know what disease they have and then explore which products can be used, and then consult a doctor and pharmacist for secondary confirmation before starting to implement their own medication plan. The current version of medication query is too shabby and the query efficiency is extremely low.

2) In terms of reading, a horizontal and vertical directory structure is also provided. The horizontal structure is the content segmentation, and the vertical structure is the question and answer list, which is convenient for retrieval and reading. The anchor mark facilitates quick positioning and is also a regular interaction.

But the core actually lies in the priority of displaying each field of medical entity words. This needs to be rolled out according to the level of concern of C-end patients for the content. The disease part is OK.

However, when it comes to medicines, most patients are first concerned about whether the medicine can cure their disease; second, if it can be used, how should they take it; third, what side effects will the medicine produce and whether they can tolerate it; and fourth, some other special precautions, as well as information such as how to store the medicine and its price.

Currently, Dingxiang’s content sorting is in line with the users’ mindsets and their desire to cure diseases as soon as possible, but it does not conform to the medical perspective of first ensuring the life, health and safety of the people. So my personal suggestion is to reverse the order of usage and dosage and adverse reactions, first consider the symptoms, then the risks, and only when you can eat it, then consider how to eat it.

3) Keyword highlighting and jumping: this is to mark some medical terms in the text, and then click to jump to other corresponding encyclopedia entries.

This function is actually designed to facilitate users to explore and discover based on the evidence-based context of medicine. It can link together related complications, examinations, treatment drugs, etc. based on the overall disease to give patients a global understanding. If possible, it is entirely possible to consider displaying the entire medical knowledge graph of the disease based on medical entity words, similar to a disease map, which can help users search by following the map.

4) Service association: Substitute it into the service in the corresponding scenario. For example, when querying the vaccine encyclopedia, you can jump to the vaccine appointment service. When querying the disease encyclopedia, you can associate it with the consultation service.

Currently, there are not many services that can be associated with Dingxiang. The only services found so far are medical consultation and vaccine appointment services.

However, the entire medical industry service can actually be linked. For example, in the physical examination interpretation section, we can cooperate with Meten and iKang Guobin to launch an experience appointment service. For example, in the medication guidance section, when the doctor prescribes after the consultation, we can cooperate with Jiuzhoutong, Yiyao.com, Dingdang Express Pharmacy, etc. to directly provide online prescription circulation services. Even in the inspection and testing scenarios, we can cooperate with some regional inspection agencies, etc., because the content is more of a guide and a grass-roots, which plays a role in influencing user decisions, and only real services can solve patients' real disease problems.

However, we must also note that it must first be evidence-based rather than commercially driven, as this will inevitably deviate from the original intention of medical treatment to cure diseases and save lives.

summary

The core of tool-type product design is efficiency-oriented. Classification and search are the main user operation methods. How to quickly enable users to locate the problems they want to solve is a question that product designers need to think about. Therefore, we should try to break down the classification according to the classification method that users can perceive, such as dividing it by human body parts and symptoms, which may be easier for ordinary people to understand.

In addition, at the search level, one of the factors is the granularity of the underlying data and whether the correlation is good enough. Another one is the optimization at the algorithm level, which involves recall and sorting logic.

At present, Dingxiang Doctor has relatively rich fields and labels based on the data dimensions at the bottom of the product. From the perspective of the front-end aggregation form, the granularity is relatively fine, not only to the entry level, but also to the paragraph level of the entry. Even the questions and answers in the paragraphs contain segmentation labels. Therefore, the data granularity is sufficient and the relevance is basically qualified, but the intention recognition at the algorithm level may need to be strengthened and upgraded.

The richness of content tags also represents the high reusability of the content. The front-end can aggregate thematic content in multiple dimensions, so you will see multiple themes aggregated for users. For example, most of the content in the following medication instructions, rehabilitation instructions, and first aid instructions are actually aggregated from paragraphs extracted from the entries in the disease encyclopedia. This is a very pleasing approach and deserves a thumbs up.

V. Development Suggestions

The advantages of DingXiang Health Encyclopedia are obvious. The underlying content foundation is very solid, and the content creation is highly readable and professional. After all, it has a very large editorial and medical team to back it up. The gaps in various medical entity entries can basically be solved in the later stage by time and manpower.

However, there is still room for improvement in industrial service resources and optimization of technical algorithms. We can consider using content as a leverage point to leverage other players in the industry, connect services to their platforms, control the upstream traffic entrance, and ultimately complete the service upgrade of the entire product closed loop, while also providing real solutions to problems for C-end patients.

Let’s go back to the definition that Dingxiang Health Encyclopedia gives itself: “Health Knowledge Solution”. This solution must be highly feasible, and Dingxiang has a promising future.

Author:囧囧有神

Source:囧囧有神