Cambridge Healthcare has begun an exclusive licensing agreement that will see its revolutionary personal health record, How are you? (howareyou.com) adopted in China by the largest consumer website and brand, Sina.com.

The groundbreaking agreement for the UK company will allow Sina to integrate Cambridge Healthcare’s technology directly into its health channel, which already provides a number of key services.

These include basic and general information of main symptoms of 125 different kinds of diseases, a database with information on 219 kinds of diseases in sample disease cases, pathogens, clinical manifestation, check-up and testing and diagnosis and treatment.

As the country’s most popular healthcare platform, Sina Health Channel covers all of the top Chinese hospitals. Cambridge Healthcare’s technology will allow all of the registered doctors on Sina Weibo platform to provide online consultation services to patients as part of the new licensing deal.

The technology is being localised for the landmark project – in Mandarin.

Dawson King, founder and CEO of Cambridge Healthcare met with Sina’s Health Channel executives in May to demo the personal health record and discuss potential collaboration.

Sina swiftly moved toward a discussion around obtaining exclusive rights in China for the technology, as a white-labelled solution fully integrated into their consumer facing portal, sina.com.

King ended-up staying in Beijing for two-months negotiating the terms of the contract before flying back to the UK to collect the Health Investor Award for IT Innovation – the most prestigious award for technology in the healthcare sector.

The company beat several multinational companies to the award as well as the two leading electronic medical record and clinical software suppliers, EMIS and TTP System One.

The China licensing agreement provides further validation to Cambridge Healthcare’s unusual business model which sees it provide howareyou.com and its associated technologies free within England to NHS patients and health professionals while commercialising its technology internationally.

• PHOTOGRAPH SHOWS: Dawson King