Lately, three authorities including the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology have jointly issued the Action Plan for the Development of the Smart Health and Senior Care Industry (2017-2020) (the "Plan").
The Plan states that a smart health and senior care system covering the whole life circle will have basically taken shape by 2020, when over 100 application demonstration bases regarding the smart health and senior care will have been built up and more than 100 leading industrial enterprises that play a leading and exemplary role in such industry will also have been developed, with a number of brands in respect of the smart health and senior care services. Accordingly, the Plan ascertains a series of key tasks, including "promoting the research and development of core technologies and products", "popularizing smart and senior care services", and "developing the standardized system for smart health and senior care". According to the Plan, efforts will be made in the future to push ahead the innovation of smart health and senior care business model, give full play to the role of market participants, exploring ways to realize multiple operation patterns, such as the establishment with non-governmental funds and supported by governmental subsidies, the self-establishment and self-operation by enterprises, and the establishment with government funds but operated privately, encourage social capital investment, and promote the operation mechanism under which fundamental and security services are purchased by the government at least, while high-end and customized demands are allocated by the market.