GC Community

There are 300 million people living with a rare disease worldwide(Spotlight on rare diseases - The Lancet Diabetes & Endocrinology), and it has approximately 49–82 million Chinese suffering from a rare disease(National Rare Diseases Registry System (NRDRS): China’s first nation-wide rare diseases demographic analyses | Orphanet Journal of Rare Diseases | Full Text (biomedcentral.com)). Because around 80% of rare diseases have a genetic basis, recent advances in genomic sequencing technologies has enhanced diagnosis, thus there is a huge shortage of genetic counselors engaged in direct patient care such as the preconception counseling, prenatal genetic counseling, pre-test or post-test counseling and genetic testing report interpretation.

It is assuming demand of one genetic counselor per 100,000 people in the United States, supply is expected to reach equilibrium in 2023 or 2024. If the demand assumption is based on one genetic counselor per 75,000 people, then equilibrium is not reached until 2029-2030(Workforce_Study_Executive-Summary_FINAL.pdf (abgc.net)). While the demand in China is much more bigger, there are 50% of rare diseases affect children(Spotlight on rare diseases (thelancet.com)), China has a shortfall of more than 200,000 pediatricians(Pediatrics in China: challenges and prospects | SpringerLink) , besides China will need at least 100,000 genetic counselors to fulfill the increasing demand(China will need at least 100,000 genetic counselors - Asia Times).

Our solution aims to bridging professional genetic counseling service and people who suffering rare disease.

The solution has set up as a mobile platform via WeChat APP, it is a applet tool（Mini Program） with real-time communication technology, the public can easily access it through their mobile phone without any registration procedures, the function interface supports text and graphic consultation, users could leave their messages or upload the genetic testing reports and raise any genetic questions, the genetic counselors from the platform will feedback the professional advice by text.

The target population:

1.The patients with rare disease and their families. 

2.The healthy couples who are preparing for having a child and they want to avoid genetic risks for their next generation.

The situations that they currently underserved:

1. They may have difficulties to meet a genetic counselor face to face for the reasons of illness, distance, medical resource or the impact of COVID-19 epidemic.

2. Most patients with rare disease and their families have very short time to communicate to clinical geneticist or doctors in clinic, actually they need more information to understand about the disease, the genetic testing results, the genetic status, and the family influence.

How will the solution address their needs:

The patients with rare disease and their families or the public could obtain the  professional genetic counseling advice from our platform in a simple way(for real-time online, easy-using mobile applet).

Our team of over 12 experienced genetic counselors combines a multi-cultural perspective and a well-trained  background in clinical subspecialties, with deep roots in local communities and hospitals.

Our team work in Genokon Medical Laboratory(Xiamen China), Genokon is a commercial testing laboratory that providing genetic testing service in domestic China, our team are in charge of genetic data analysis, genetic testing report generation and clinical genetic counseling.

We found some problems that need to be solved better in our counseling working:

1. We frequently receive consulting requirements in our serving hospitals about genetic testing report interpretation from other laboratories, then we give a detailed counseling advice of those reports to the attending doctors and rare disease patients or their families.

2.We often received phone calls with genetic counseling questions from the patients or even just the public, we replied all the questions as well.

However, sometimes we could not answer every single inquiry in time, because we have to solve problems from our own lab first, Thus, we began to think we could create a genetic counseling platform, so that we would not miss the chance to help those people in need.

Then we designed the "GC community" applet, it could collect genetic counseling questions from users in a one platform, and those questions could be well answered by our genetic counselors.

To make it easy using, the platform was set up in WeChat APP applet （The daily active users on WeChat Mini Programs reached 450 million and and over 500 million users access Mini Programs (Q1 2022) daily according to WeChat official data in January 2022：WeChat by Numbers in 2022: MAU, Payment, Mini Programs – China Internet Watch），and the user interface was designed as a direct input form, the user could easy to find the applet, and it is also easy to input message on it without any registration procedures, after the inputting, there is an auto reply to remind users to give detailed information including uploading reports and other general advice.

The Challenge may help us promote the conception worldwide that the professional genetic counseling service could move to online, and it could help improving the efficiency of diagnosis and treatment in rare disease.

1.Our solution rolled out the first online platform of genetic counseling service within China.

2.Our solution played a bridge role in lab to lab and lab to hospital by providing supplementary genetic counseling service.

3.Our solution simplified the genetic counseling medical processes by easy to use interface on mobile applet.

We hope share our ideas to all the labs and hospitals, and we hope their manpower resource of genetic counselors could join in our platform. So that we could balance and undertake more consulting assignments nationwide or even worldwide.

Currently, our solution has been formally and normaly public launched, there are over 6000 people(including more than 500 genetic counseling cases) have been served by our platform. Now we are working by welfare form to operate the platform, and there is no fees payed from users. Further more, we have not made any promoting or advertising of it, all the users come from the organic search.

Goals for next one year: 

1.Establishing charging standards to make a necessary business logic.

2.Advertising to seek an increase in access traffic to 1000 users.

Goals for next five year: 

1.Becoming the biggest commercial online platform of genetic counseling worldwide.

2.Opening genetic counselor register system nationwide.

Main indicators in five year: 

1.Obtaining 1 million users online.

2.Collaborating with more than 500 big hospitals or other labs. 

3.Providing 5000 jobs for genetic counselor, operating all the manpower.

Logical framework:

1.The online genetic counseling working could save medical cost from both hospitals or labs and patients.

2.People have been used to pay medical service online  in COVID-19 pandemic times.

Some survey data:

1.It estimated reduced time and costs by online counseling with about 8% and 10–12%(Online genetic counseling from the providers’ perspective: counselors’ evaluations and a time and cost analysis | European Journal of Human Genetics (nature.com)).

2.During the prevention and control of this epidemic, online diagnosis and treatment has filled the gap of family doctors in epidemic prevention and control, it has reduced the chance of cross-infection of patients with a mild infection, and it has overcome the geographical limitations of medical resources(COVID-19 in China: the role and activities of Internet-based healthcare platforms - PMC (nih.gov))

The core technology and idea:

1.There is a "real-time communication system" was used in the APP platform which can support graphics and text information, and it is a free registration interface.

2.Besides, we also created and reserved a "background operating system" which can provide independent account for intrant genetic counselors.

We hope construct a center platform that can provide professional, in-time and price favorable genetic counseling service.

Diversity: Genetic counselors in our team are from different province or universities, we believe that everyone should have a act with a high sense of responsibility as masters in our platform and operate every case by the idea of "patient-oriented" in service.

Equity: We design our counseling principle,  ethics principles , and resources with the goal of providing every patient with rare disease a same high standard service. 

Inclusion: We strive to create a platform for every genetic counselors from labs and hospitals nationwide or even worldwide, we hope our solution could make a better change for helping patient with rare disease by this novel form of genetic counseling service. 

The business model of "GC Community":

Customer segments: It has approximately 49–82 million Chinese suffering from a rare disease and the increasing number is 200,000 each year, besides, there are over 15 million pregnant and birth-giving women every year in China, the demands for genetic counseling is extremely huge, and the existing medical path could not satisfy it. In addition, the total market of internet medical service was over 30 billion dollars in 2021 in China, people have been used to pay online medical service, while now there is no formal and mature genetic counseling service provided in the online market in domestic China.

Value propositions: GC Community is a mobile APP based online platform to providing genetic counseling service that of highly specialized, cost-effective and timely.

Revenue streams: 1.The payment for genetic counseling service from patients and the public users. 2.The commercial share of settled platform from external genetic counselors and hospitals by their offline appointment consultation service. 3.The internet advertising revenue in the platform.

Channels: 1. The contact in service process: Every users of in the platform will be distributed an unique account automatically as he or she submit the advisory questions, the backstage supporter of the platform will allot consulting orders to the genetic counselors, both the management and the genetic counselors could connect with the users by their specific identified account. 2.The user touchpoint in market: The platform is developed and based by WeChat APP, the users could search our applet application on WeChat very easily, and the applet would retained as recent usage tool so that the users could relogin by a "one touch"action for next counseling. 3.We can also advertising the "two-dimensional code" of the platform by online and offline areas(such as in hospitals, in newspapers or TV programs etc.), the users could scan the code by mobile phones.

Customer relationships: There are some functions besides genetic counseling service in the platform interface to create and maintain customer relationships. One is called the "AI diagnosis", as long as the users, including doctors and patients, input the phenotypes of patients with unknown rare disease, the AI tool will output the predictable disease list, which can help the users get more directions about disease diagnosis. The other functions contains knowledge retrieval such as"disease searching, gene searching" that integrated genetic knowledge bases, which can help the users get more professional information about diseases.

Key activities: 1.The genetic counselors works in our platform and provide genetic counseling service. 2.The backstage supporter system management. 3.The partners seeking.

Key resources: 1.The genetic counselors recruiting and management, 2.The data management of the backstage supporter system.

Key partners: The genetic counselors from internal and external lab and hospital.

Cost structure: 1.The fixed cost is on the system maintenance of the APP appletplatform. 2. The variable costs is depending on the number of genetic counselors, which will influence the management cost.

We believe our platform will become financially sustainable as it launch to the commercial market, our plan is mainly what below:

1. Firstly, according to our operating experience of the platform, we could cover our cost of the platform by "B to C"service, we can create a big user number in a short time, the online medical consultation is the big trend globally.

2. Secondly, the genetic counseling service can be re-purchased even by one user, we can roll out service package by annualy or by seasonally to obtain a part of pre-sale funds.

3.Thirdly, we can also integrate our service package to hospitals by"B to B" to seek a new business growth model.

There is no formal investment funding received by now for we have not made the platform commercialized.

But here we want to emphasize that there are over 6000 people have been served by our platform, and we have been working by welfare form to operate the platform up to now, and there is no fees payed from users, although usually some users contact us to seek for payment forwardly, further more, we have not made any promoting or advertising of it, all the users come from the organic internet searching. What above makes it clear that as long as we push the platform into business way, it will achieve success unquestionably.