Data-Driven Healthy China Pathway: Evolution, Framework, and Global Implications of National Digital Health Strategic...

Amid accelerating digital health transformation, China has developed a centrally coordinated data-driven healthy China pathway. This viewpoint conceptualizes this pathway as a hybrid continuous planning framework (HCPF) that links long-term strategic direction with short-cycle tactical adaptation. China's strategy has progressed through 3 overlapping periods: infrastructure-oriented periodic planning (2015-2018), emergency-driven digital acceleration (2019-2021), and institutionalized continuous planning (2022-2025). The HCPF emerged from cumulative policy layering: Healthy China 2030 set long-range goals, 5-year plans translated these goals into programmatic priorities, annual adjustments enabled recalibration, and emergency response mechanisms and technical iterations supported adaptive implementation. Official reports indicate that China approved more than 2700 internet hospitals by 2024, and by December 2025, a total of 9073 secondary and tertiary public hospitals and 503,000 primary-level public hospitals and grassroots medical and health institutions were connected to regional platforms. The HCPF has supported large-scale data governance, interdepartmental coordination, pilot-based implementation, platform connectivity, and rapid pandemic response. However, it also raises risks related to data privacy, regional disparities, performative compliance, and the burden of agility on grassroots institutions. The transferable lesson is not direct replication of China's model but the design of temporally layered strategies that combine central coordination local adaptation, data-informed feedback; and safeguards for privacy, equity, and frontline capacity. Digital health incentives should prioritize meaningful clinical value and system connectivity rather than infrastructure adoption alone.