(Yicai Global) Aug. 3 -- Tencent Holdings will embark on an exclusive Chinese partnership with WebMD, the world's leading and most authoritative medical and health information platform, the former announced at a joint press conference in Beijing yesterday.

Qi'e Yidian, the first medical information service product developed by the Chinese internet giant, will bring together professional, straightforward, user-friendly and reliable public-oriented medical content available in China and abroad, based on specialist medical and healthcare information licensed by New York-based WebMD, Tencent-run news website qq.com reported.

Shenzhen-headquartered tech titan Tencent will build an intelligent medical information platform in collaboration with WebMD, with well-established medical professionals, leading industry associations and foundations, and usher in a new campaign to select 100 interdisciplinary 'star physicians' via national and international exchange activities, training programs and competitions, encouraging the creation of high-quality content to popularize medical science, it said. 

The internet has become the most important source of medical information for the public, a survey conducted by Tencent's professional internet market research, case study and data analysis organization Penguin Intelligence shows. 

Pseudoscience, fragmentary information and marketing ploys make reliable and useful medical information less accessible to consumers.

With the exclusive content licensing deal, WebMD authorized Tencent to use the Chinese versions of more than 60,000 medical popularization articles, and Qi'e Yidian will establish a network of comprehensive, systematic and in-depth medical content in partnership with over 800 Chinese clinical experts and some 40 top-rated Chinese hospitals, noted Zhang Meng, vice president of Tencent Medical.

Leveraging the resources of Tencent and its QQ and QQ browser, Tencent's intelligent medical information platform will apply innovative digital technology to bring users various use cases to access a diverse range of medical content based on high-precision recommendations from big data and artificial intelligence.

Editor: Ben Armour