Understanding unmet medical needs through medical crowdfunding in China

Online medical crowdfunding has gained popularity in recent years in China. The objective of this study was to identify unmet medical needs in the public healthcare system through analysis of Chinese medical crowdfunding data.

Text information extraction and statistical analysis based on large-scale data.

From 19 June 2011 to 15 March 2020, data from 30,704 medical crowdfunding projects were collected from Tencent GongYi, which is one of the largest Chinese medical crowdfunding platforms. Text mining methods were used to extract data on the medical conditions and locations of the applicants of medical crowdfunding. In addition, 125 medical crowdfunding projects initiated by leukaemia patients in Chongqing and Nanyang were further investigated through manual data extraction, and the factors impacting the fundraising goals were explored using a generalised linear model.

The most common conditions using medical crowdfunding to raise funds were as follows: cancer (31.87%), chronic conditions (18.14%), accidental injury (7.80%) and blood system-related conditions (7.75%). Treatments for cancer and blood system-related conditions are expensive and have serious long-term impacts on the lives of patients. Results showed that the cities of Nanyang and Chongqing had the largest number of crowdfunding projects.

This study found that the medical conditions that prompted individuals to apply for crowdfunding were those with long treatment cycles, complexities and expensive medical or non-medical costs. Furthermore, discrepancies in health insurance policies between different regions and residents seeking treatments outside their insurance locations were also important factors that triggered medical crowdfunding applications. Adjusting health insurance policies accordingly may improve the efficiency of utilising health insurance resources and reduce the financial burden on patients.