Twenty provincial-level remote medical centers have been connected with 56 counties in less developed northern, eastern and western parts of Guangdong province in an aim to strengthen healthcare services in those regions.

Guangdong Health and Family Planning Commission also uses big data technology to analyze the patients living in these less developed counties of Guangdong but receiving treatment outside their counties, in order to help local medical institutions improve their services, according to Duan Yufei, director of the commission.

Internet technology in the healthcare sector serves to empower grassroots and remotely located medical institutions, allow patients to receive continuous and systematic services, and facilitate the management of the healthcare sector, said Chen Qiulin, a researcher with the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences.

Medical institutions in Guangdong received 812 million visits from patients last year, accounting for approximately 10 percent of the national total, Duan said when reviewing the achievements in the province's reform in the healthcare sector on Dec 22.

Personal spending accounted for 24.5 percent of the total healthcare spending last year, down from 40.5 percent in 2010.

About 96.2 percent of the households in the province have access to a medical institution within the range of 20 minutes' commute, he said.

In the first 11 months of this year, the authorities in the province spent 116.1 billion yuan ($17.66 billion) in healthcare, exceeding the amount of the entire last year and representing a marked increase over the 25.3 billion yuan in 2009.

Early last year, the provincial authority arranged funding of 11.2 billion yuan for a three-year program for strengthening county-level hospitals and in January of this year, another three-year program for empowering grassroots medical institutions was launched involving funding of 50 billion yuan, Duan said.