Background Ping An
Ping An Healthcare’s “Good Doctor” now has over 225 million users and is the world’s leading online healthcare eco-system platform. The disruptive digital business model of Ping An Good Doctor (PAGD) is very interesting – it is the Freemium model, the marketplace model, the platform model and the experience model all rolled into one platform eco-system. PADG was founded in 2014. Since then, the Ping An Group has filed more than 14.000 patent applications which are published. In 2019, it is one of the top 100 PCT applicants worldwide, alongside telecommunication technology leaders like Huawei, Samsung, and Qualcomm.

It is of interest to examine if and how elements of a digital healthcare consumer journey can be made exclusive with patents to protect specific aspects of the journey, such as consumer safety and medical diagnostics methodology. By managing the customer journey as a product, PAGD succeeds in making a part of the journey tangible, legally enforceable and profitable for the company. Apart from enjoying first mover’s advantage in a COVID-19 context, the black ocean platform eco-system strategy of PAGD supported with a solid patent portfolio rendered it almost impossible for competition to compete.

Protecting Customer journeys

The customer journey of a patient-doctor consultation is one as old as the hills. On the one hand, the actual journey is probably non-technical, trivial, and hence non-patentable. Therefore, to file for a patent protection, novelty and inventive step(s) must be identified, perhaps leveraging on the “digital” aspects of their use of “computer programs”. Business methods and computer programs as such are not patentable according to the EPO/EPC. In contrast, in the US courts and USPTO, the approach is much more liberal.

From the legal point of view, it is interesting to examine how PAGD (Ping an Good Doctor) threads together patent protection of their digital inventions and customer journey in a way which inherently holds a technical character with an inventive technical solution; and not just merely a non-technical method which produces a technical effect. From the management point of view, insights can be derived in the examination of how PAGD uses patents to protect its unique consumer journey to create exclusivity and safeguard safety/security in the journey for their customers.

Questions:

1 . Please describe the classical customer journey of a patient during a doctor’s visit and describe the customer touchpoints in a digital, AI-based customer journey with Ping An.

2 . Please identify options to make the relevant digital customer touchpoints, e.g. regarding diagnostics, finding a fitting doctor, pharmacy, follow-up care, exclusive with IP. Also identify options to use IP to protect lock-in effects on the healthcare platform of Ping An.

3 . Please describe the role of the following patent for the protection of aspects of the customer journey:

1 . Group 1: WO2018149300A1 DISEASE PROBABILITY DETECTION METHOD, APPARATUS AND DEVICE, AND COMPUTER READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM

2 . Group 2: WO2020119151A1 HEALTH EVALUATION METHOD, HEALTH EVALUATION DEVICE, AND COMPUTER READABLE STORAGE MEDIUM

3 . Group 3: WO2020082582A1 ONLINE INSURANCE PURCHASE METHOD, DEVICE, TERMINAL, AND SERVER

4 . Group 4: WO2019196279A1 DISEASE OUTLIER DATA DETECTION METHOD AND APPARATUS, COMPUTER APPARATUS, AND STORAGE MEDIUM

5 . Group 5: WO2020119175A1 METHOD FOR MONITORING MEDICAL EXPENSE ABNORMALITIES, MONITORING SERVER AND STORAGE MEDIUM

Group 1:

The presenting students are: Nguyen Hoa Binh, Vincent Boittiaux, Elisa Buoso, Ana Claudia Marques, Luca Pusterla

Group 2:

The presenting students are: Nina Petkovska, Faten Sadaka, Marlo Sedlmair, John Titan, Grégory Robin

Group 3:

The presenting students are: Lionel Parisot, Thorsten Dierkes, Wee Chai Kiat, Veravej Guy Ornthanalai

Group 4:

The presenting students are: Jacob Watfa, Thanh Thuy Nguyen, Anne-Raphaelle Aubry, Melis Ezgi Engin

Group 5:

The presenting students are: Ewan Van Minnebruggen, Victor Lisovenko, Hans-Jörg Schaller, Larry Bond