(Yicai) Jan. 24 -- ByteDance is accelerating its expansion in the healthcare industry, as the Chinese tech giant’s subsidiary Amcare Medical Management received the regulatory approval to build a hospital in Beijing.

The Beijing Municipal Health Commission recently awarded Amcare’s Arion Cancer Center the construction permit for a third phase, which will make the specialized oncology hospital a tertiary general hospital with 800 beds.

Chinese hospitals are classified in a three-tier system. They are designated as primary, secondary, and tertiary, based on their size and ability to provide medical care, education, and research. Each category is further split into grades, with Grade-A being the top and Grade-C the bottom, based on standards, such as the level of services and medical equipment.

Founded in 2006, Amcare is a high-end gynecology and pediatric medical institution chain that has been transforming into a comprehensive medical platform after being acquired by ByteDance in 2022. Amcare has 11 medical institutions and four maternity and infant care centers in Beijing, Hangzhou, Shenzhen, and Tianjin, according to its official website.

During the Covid-19 pandemic, many Chinese internet companies forayed into the medical industry, including ByteDance, which established a large healthcare business department in 2020 and later acquired medical science popularization website baikemy.Com and internet medical startup 1024 to merge them into online consultation app Xiaohe Health Technology.

Afterward, ByteDance shifted its medical industry layout from online to physical hospitals. It first invested in Amcare in September 2021 and completed the acquisition in June 2022. According to National Business Daily, ByteDance spent a total of CNY10 billion (USD1.4 billion) for Amcare.

In April last year, Amcare’s founder and Chief Executive Hu Lan told Yicai that ByteDance did not intervene much in the company’s operations, as the two sides remained independent. ByteDance focuses on online medical care, and Amcare deals with the offline business.

Editor: Dou Shicong, Futura Costaglione