From in-hospital to out-of-hospital, from software to insurance: Yide Health aims to use AI to fill the "gap" in cardiac rehabilitation.
AI fills the gap in cardiac rehabilitation, Yide Health is seeking a new round of financing
China performs more than 1 million cardiac stent surgeries every year. The technology in the surgical procedure is quite mature, but the rehabilitation stage after successful surgery has long been an insufficiently extended part of the medical service chain. Cardiac rehabilitation spans cardiology and sports medicine, and the connection between in-hospital and out-of-hospital services is not close, leaving a large number of patients without access to professional rehabilitation guidance after discharge. Nanjing Yide Health Management Co., Ltd. (hereinafter referred to as "Yide Health") has focused on this "gap", using an AI-centered system to extend in-hospital rehabilitation capabilities beyond hospital walls. At present, its core product, the CardioGuard platform, has settled in 321 hospitals across the country, serving a total of 150,000 patients with chronic diseases and sub-health people; the company has opened negotiations for a new round of financing, hoping to find partners for its next stage of expansion.
I. The "gap" in post-operative rehabilitation, a real demand that has long been ignored
China performs more than 1 million cardiac stent surgeries every year. The technology in the surgical procedure is quite mature, but the rehabilitation stage after successful surgery has long been an insufficiently extended part of the medical service chain. Cardiac rehabilitation spans two disciplines of cardiology and sports medicine, and the connection between in-hospital and out-of-hospital services is not close. Shao Zhe, Chairman of Yide Health, once calculated an account for reporters: doctors in the rehabilitation departments of large hospitals have long been working at full capacity, one doctor can take care of at most 8 post-operative patients a day, and it is difficult for services to extend to patients after discharge; grassroots doctors are mostly trained according to a single department system, and often lack confidence when facing interdisciplinary rehabilitation guidance; after patients return home, it is difficult to get timely answers to the most practical questions such as "whether you can exercise and how many steps you can walk safely".
The gap on the demand side comes from both the supply and perception ends. According to the company, standardized cardiac rehabilitation can reduce the recurrence rate of cardiovascular events by about 30%, but there are still a limited number of departments across the country that can carry out standardized cardiac rehabilitation, and a large number of patients are in a state of "no one in charge" after discharge. With the intensification of population aging and the trend of younger cardiovascular diseases, the demand for out-of-hospital rehabilitation and scientific exercise guidance from post-operative groups, chronic disease groups, and even groups with exercise risk screening needs continues to rise, and a real and huge market is taking shape.
II. CardioGuard: Put the whole rehabilitation process into an AI system
In response to the above pain points, Yide Health's core product "CardioGuard Cardiac Rehabilitation Management System" chooses to cut in from in-hospital departments. Different from most single-point tools on the market, this system can seamlessly connect various assessment hardware of cardiac rehabilitation departments, automatically collect data generated by examination equipment and conduct comprehensive analysis to provide decision support for doctors. According to the company, after accessing the platform, the number of patients that a rehabilitation doctor can take care of in one day has increased from 8 to 30, and the extra energy comes from this tireless AI assistant. For primary medical institutions, the value is more direct: the clinical experience accumulated by high-level hospitals for more than ten years is precipitated by AI into a standard knowledge base. When community doctors open the system, it is equivalent to bringing the expert experience of tertiary hospitals into the consulting room, and the service capabilities of tertiary hospitals are thus extended to communities, making two-way referral possible.
For patients, the system can assess exercise risks, generate personalized exercise prescriptions, and cooperate with wearable devices to monitor heart rate, blood pressure and blood oxygen in real time, and give immediate warnings once the indicators exceed the threshold; the cardiopulmonary exercise report that used to be like a "book from heaven" is "translated" into expressions that patients can understand at a glance, and it is clear at a glance whether it is suitable for exercise and how long to exercise. Around this main line, Yide Health has also built a submaximal fitness assessment system, an intelligent exercise training system and remote home follow-up services, which respectively respond to the three links of "how to assess", "how to train" and "how to manage after returning home" — the former supports 6-minute walk test, free-hand assessment, joint mobility assessment, and can capture data through the Internet of Things and intelligently assist in interpreting reports; the latter is responsible for remote collection of health data and push of personalized rehabilitation guidance, extending rehabilitation management from outpatient clinics to home scenarios.
The technical base is Yide Health's self-developed "Yide AI Large Model". Different from common general medical large models, this model is positioned as a vertical generative artificial intelligence product for the field of sports fitness and exercise training, which mainly generates text content such as personalized exercise plans, sports performance analysis reports and training progress feedback. It has launched the text AI-generated content identification function in August 2025, and passed the filing of the Cyberspace Administration of China in January 2026. Up to now, the CardioGuard platform has independent intellectual property rights, and has obtained a total of 53 software copyrights and 16 patents.
Supporting these capabilities is a technology-focused team. The founding team of Yide Health is core of talents who graduated from Tsinghua University with physics major and returned to China after studying in the United States, and jointly develops cardiovascular disease management systems with many tertiary hospitals in China. The 30+ team is dominated by technical personnel, who have followed front-line cardiac rehabilitation doctors to do clinical research for more than ten years. The cardiac rehabilitation departments of hospitals such as Chinese PLA General Hospital and Nanjing First Hospital have long been their "classrooms", and the team has also participated in the formulation of industry association construction standards and data quality control standards.
III. From in-hospital to out-of-hospital, from software to insurance: Business model and expansion path
Yide Health's customers are mainly medical institutions at all levels. Its products not only cover the cardiac rehabilitation centers of tertiary hospitals, but also extend service capabilities to primary community hospitals through AI, forming a health management chain of "institution - community - home"; the service population has expanded from post-cardiac surgery patients to people with chronic diseases, sub-health people and sports fitness people. Focusing on different diseases, the company has formed a matrix of more than ten systems including medical standardized diagnosis and treatment information system, integrated sports and healthcare chronic disease management system, hypertension chronic disease management system, and metabolic weight loss information system, and is supporting with health management service packages such as cardiopulmonary exercise assessment, fitness assessment, and external counterpulsation treatment, covering 20 different disciplines and disease types. Hospitals including Chinese PLA General Hospital, Guangdong Provincial People's Hospital, Union Hospital Affiliated to Tongji Medical College of Huazhong University of Science and Technology, and Cardiovascular Disease Hospital of Xiamen University are all on its served hospital list.
The integration of sports and medicine is the key expansion direction of Yide Health in recent years. Its integrated sports and healthcare chronic disease management system takes the deep integration of evidence-based medicine and sports science as the core, breaks through the data barriers between medical care and sports health, and builds a full-process intelligent chronic disease management closed loop of "assessment - prescription - intervention - monitoring - follow-up"; on the service side, the company has provided training and rehabilitation support for Jiangsu Swimming Team, Changzhou Sports Hospital and other institutions, and cooperated with the Sports Science Research Institute of General Administration of Sport of China, American College of Sports Medicine and other institutions to polish the scheme. The shared assessment and prescription logic for competitive sports and clinical rehabilitation is a significant feature of this system that distinguishes it from traditional in-hospital software.
After gaining a firm foothold in hospitals, Yide Health began to look for increment beyond hospital walls. Previously, the company jointly launched the first domestic cardiovascular post-operative rehabilitation insurance with Ping An Property & Casualty Insurance Jiangsu Branch, binding insurance protection with rehabilitation services — patients can get protection only after completing the rehabilitation process in accordance with the specifications, so commercial health insurance can cover the post-operative groups that were often rejected before, forming an integrated solution of "Technology + Medical Care + Finance". The business also extends to pre-diagnosis, and the integration of sports and medicine as well as post-examination intervention have become new application scenarios.
Growth data confirms this path. At present, the CardioGuard platform has settled in 321 hospitals across the country, with the market coverage ranking first in the AI segmented track of cardiac rehabilitation; since 2026, the company's business volume has more than doubled year-on-year, and it is expected that the new business in the second half of the year will exceed 30 million yuan. In terms of regional layout, the company's service territory extends from the eastern coast to Guizhou and Guangxi, and will enter Hainan within the year, and the strategies are also differentiated accordingly: in Jiangsu where doctor resources are dense, AI helps doctors improve efficiency; in areas with relatively weak medical resources, AI helps grassroots make up for capability shortcomings.
Yide Health was founded in Nanjing in 2013, and settled in Qixia District, Nanjing in 2015. At present, the company has opened negotiations for a new round of financing, and the funds will be mainly used for the iteration of the "Yide AI Large Model", the expansion of clinical knowledge base and the construction of service networks in newly entered provinces, with the goal of replicating the rehabilitation model that has been verified in Jiangsu to more regions. After successful surgery, patients still need someone to answer the question of "how many steps are safe to walk" — now in 321 hospitals across the country, in addition to doctors, a set of AI system from Nanjing is also answering this question.