BackgroundThe Internet hospital, an innovative approach to providing health care, is rapidly developing in China because it has the potential to provide widely accessible outpatient service delivery via Internet technologies. To date, China’s Internet hospitals have not been systematically investigated.ObjectiveThe aim of this study was to describe the characteristics of China’s Internet hospitals, and to assess their health service capacity.MethodsWe searched Baidu, the popular Chinese search engine, to identify Internet hospitals, using search terms such as “Internet hospital,” “web hospital,” or “cloud hospital.” All Internet hospitals in mainland China were eligible for inclusion if they were officially registered. Our search was carried out until March 31, 2017.ResultsWe identified 68 Internet hospitals, of which 43 have been put into use and 25 were under construction. Of the 43 established Internet hospitals, 13 (30%) were in the hospital informatization stage, 24 (56%) were in the Web ward stage, and 6 (14%) were in full Internet hospital stage. Patients accessed outpatient service delivery via website (74%, 32/43), app (42%, 18/43), or offline medical consultation facility (37%, 16/43) from the Internet hospital. Furthermore, 25 (58%) of the Internet hospitals asked doctors to deliver health services at a specific Web clinic, whereas 18 (42%) did not. The consulting methods included video chat (60%, 26/43), telephone (19%, 8/43), and graphic message (28%, 12/43); 13 (30%) Internet hospitals cannot be consulted online any more. Only 6 Internet hospitals were included in the coverage of health insurance. The median number of doctors available online was zero (interquartile range [IQR] 0 to 5; max 16,492). The median consultation fee per time was ¥20 (approximately US $2.90, IQR ¥0 to ¥200).ConclusionsInternet hospitals provide convenient outpatient service delivery. However, many of the Internet hospitals are not yet mature and are faced with various issues such as online doctor scarcity and the unavailability of health insurance coverage. China’s Internet hospitals are heading in the right direction to improve provision of health services, but much more remains to be done.

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Semiconductors and metals can form an Ohmic contact with an electric field pointing to the metal, or a Schottky contact with an electric field pointing to the semiconductor. If these two types of heterojunctions are constructed on a single nanoparticle, the two electric fields may cause a synergistic effect and increase the separation rate of the photogenerated electrons and holes. Metal Ni and Ag nanoparticles were successively loaded on the graphitic carbon nitride (g‐C3N4) surface by precipitation and photoreduction in the hope of forming hybrid heterojunctions on single nanoparticles. TEM/high‐resolution TEM images showed that Ag and Ni were loaded on different locations on C3N4, which indicated that during the photoreduction reaction Ag+ obtained electrons from C3N4 in the reduction reaction, whereas oxidation reactions proceeded on Ni nanoparticles. Photocatalytic hydrogen production experiments showed that C3N4‐based hybrid heterojunctions can greatly improve the photocatalytic activity of materials. The possible reason is that two heterojunctions could form a long‐range electric field similar to the p‐i‐n structure in semiconductors. Most of the photogenerated carriers were generated and then separated in this electric field, thereby increasing the separation rate of electrons and holes. This further improved the photocatalytic activity of C3N4.