Tasly's "Heartfelt Protection": From a single droplet to a life-saving safety net

"When we see patients with coronary heart disease blinded by diabetic retinopathy and left to languish in darkness, or cardiovascular patients collapsing before dawn due to sudden myocardial infarction, should we give them isolated pills or a complete life-saving defense?" In August 2025, under the spotlight of the Xipu Conference, Chen Yahong, Marketing Planning Director of Tasly Retail Business Unit, posed this difficult and urgent question.

"There is only one answer: chronic disease management must move from fragmented treatment to systematic protection." This is Chen Yahong's answer, and it is also the solution that Tasly provides to China's 330 million cardiovascular patients and 233 million diabetes patients.

In a keynote speech titled "Starting from the Heart, Envisioning the Future-Compound Danshen Dripping Pills Empowering a New Ecosystem for Prevention and Treatment with Dual Indications," Tasly provided an in-depth analysis of the groundbreaking application of modern TCM in chronic disease management. Two sets of data were mentioned:

-According to data published in The Lancet, in 2023, there were 578 million people with diabetes worldwide, of whom 233 million were from China. That is to say, one in six Chinese people has diabetes, and 34.6% of them are threatened by diabetic retinopathy.

-The "Report on Cardiovascular Health and Disease in China" points out that the number of people suffering from cardiovascular diseases in China has reached 330 million, and two out of every five deaths are due to myocardial infarction, cerebral infarction, and heart failure.

What many people don't realize is that for diabetic patients, the most terrifying aspect isn't high blood sugar itself, but rather its erosion of the entire vascular system. Vascular lesions lead to coronary heart disease, stroke, diabetic retinopathy, and diabetic nephropathy. Clinical data shows that 59.8% of patients also suffer from coronary heart disease or diabetic retinopathy, requiring them to take 4.3 different medications daily, with annual medical expenses 2.7 times higher than the average person. Yet, they still succumb to the fragmented treatment trap of "treating the heart but neglecting the eyes." Even more distressing is that the median secondary prevention period for coronary heart disease patients in my country is only 5.2 months, less than half the duration of international guidelines. Fragmented treatment is causing the health defenses of millions of patients to gradually crumble.

In this battle concerning the quality of life, Tasly is rewriting the rules of chronic disease management and prevention by driving the development of a three-dimensional protection network and the modernization of traditional Chinese medicine.

For patients with chronic diseases such as diabetes and cardiovascular disease, comprehensive management of metabolic abnormalities and the development of integrated prevention and treatment plans that span the entire diagnostic and treatment system are crucial. So, what could a more professional medical solution look like?

First, there needs to be protection with medications and diagnostic equipment. Tasly's Compound Danshen Dripping Pills, through a dual mechanism of "anti-inflammatory + improving microcirculation," can both dilate large blood vessels and repair microvessels in the fundus, providing a new treatment option for patients with diabetic retinopathy. To make protection more precise, Tasly has introduced an AI fundus screening instrument, which can identify early lesions in just one minute and predict cardiovascular risk through fundus vascular morphology.

Secondly, we must move from fragmented treatment to systemic protection. At the Xipu Conference, the launch ceremony of Tasly's "Heartbeat Guardian" project attracted industry attention. This project addresses the serious situation in China where the annual incidence of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases is increasing by 5% and the early intervention rate is less than 30%, transforming the "Healthy China 2030" strategy into a feasible solution. The project innovatively constructs a three-dimensional protection system: river protection line, urban fire protection line, and metabolic vitality line.

-River Protection Line: Taking the Chongqing Yangtze River Cableway and Wuhan River Beach as landmarks, it uses the analogy of river dredging to improve microcirculation with Danshen (Salvia miltiorrhiza), and visualizes vascular health as a dredging project of the long river of life, transforming professional medical knowledge into life wisdom that is easy for the public to understand.

-Urban Vibrancy: Deeply rooted in the everyday spaces of Chengdu's Yulin Road teahouses and Guangzhou's Xiguan arcade buildings, we creatively integrate diabetes prevention guidelines into local culinary cultures. Pairing Cantonese morning tea with sugar-controlled recipes and Sichuan snacks with health-modified solutions demonstrates that cardiovascular protection can coexist with the vibrant atmosphere of everyday life.

-Metabolic Vitality Line: Focusing on areas with a high concentration of internet companies such as Tencent in Shenzhen and Alibaba in Hangzhou, we have launched a vascular decompression pack for people who work overtime. The pack contains practical items such as heart-protecting tea and a decompression bracelet. It combines the concept of a balanced approach to health maintenance with the office environment, precisely targeting people under high pressure.

In traditional chronic disease management models, hospital prescriptions are like isolated islands; while patients self-medicate at home, microvascular complications are quietly eroding their quality of life. Tasly's transformation begins with a disruptive restructuring of the treatment scenario: extending chronic disease management from hospital clinics to everyday life. In implementing these three initiatives, Tasly will collaborate with local chain pharmacies, using a "screening + free clinic" experience to make treating different diseases with the same approach commonplace and a health solution usable by office workers.

A more profound transformation is taking place in primary healthcare. Diabetes, a significant risk factor for cardiovascular disease, triggers a chain reaction of multi-organ complications, placing a heavy burden on patients and society. Therefore, strengthening public education on diabetes and raising awareness of early screening and standardized treatment is crucial. Primary healthcare is the main battleground for meeting the needs of a large number of patients and is also the core area where Tasly focuses its efforts on chronic disease management.

In 2024, Tasly Pharmaceutical Group, in partnership with the China Medical Education Association, launched the "Heartbeat Power - Retracing the Long March" series of activities. This innovative practice brought together hundreds of top experts in cardiovascular, endocrine, metabolic, and infectious diseases to conduct free clinics and ward rounds at the grassroots level. It streamlined the chain from academic discussions to clinical practice to empowering grassroots healthcare, transforming collaborative medical concepts into implementable prevention and treatment plans. This helped grassroots doctors overcome clinical challenges in microcirculation intervention, allowing systematic prevention and treatment to take root in county-level medical settings. Currently, the "Heartbeat Power - Retracing the Long March" series of activities has reached 16 revolutionary cities across China, leaving its mark nationwide.

The prevention and treatment of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular diseases is a long and arduous task. As a leading enterprise in innovative traditional Chinese medicine for the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular diseases, Tasly is deeply implementing the "Healthy China 2030" Plan and contributing to the cause of cardiovascular and cerebrovascular health in its own way.

Innovation from pharmaceuticals to management

The ability to provide comprehensive prevention and treatment solutions for patients with chronic diseases throughout the entire diagnosis and treatment system is inseparable from Tasly's continuous innovation in drug research and development and disease management models.

At the Xipu Conference, two core products of Tasly were selected for the "2025 Healthy China Brand List". Among them, Compound Danshen Dripping Pills won the "Top Brand in Heart Disease Treatment Drugs" list, and Andrographolide Dripping Pills won the "Top Heat-Clearing and Detoxifying Drugs" list.

Tasly focuses on innovation, continuously exploring the clinical value of its major traditional Chinese medicine products such as Compound Danshen Dripping Pills, expanding their indications, and contributing to the prevention and treatment of cardiovascular and metabolic diseases. As the first traditional Chinese medicine product with international evidence-based medicine for the treatment of diabetic retinopathy (DR), and the only one with dual indications for coronary heart disease and DR, Compound Danshen Dripping Pills has passed rigorous evidence-based medicine verification and was ultimately transformed into a formally approved traditional Chinese medicine product. In October 2021, the indication for Compound Danshen Dripping Pills to treat stage I (mild) and stage II (moderate) non-proliferative diabetic retinopathy caused by type 2 diabetes was officially approved, bringing new treatment options to patients with diabetic retinopathy.

Diabetic complications often involve damage to multiple organ systems, while traditional Western medicine treatments often target single points, making comprehensive intervention difficult. In recent years, compound traditional Chinese medicine, due to its multi-component and multi-target characteristics, has demonstrated advantages such as regulating glucose and lipid metabolism holistically, improving microcirculation, and reducing oxidative stress, providing a new approach for the systemic prevention and control of diabetic complications.

The value creation of Compound Danshen Dripping Pills reflects two points: First, the expansion of indications from the cardiovascular field to diabetic complications essentially extends the value of a single drug to the management of the entire disease process, and the unique advantages of the overall regulation of traditional Chinese medicine have been verified through rigorous clinical trials; Second, it reflects Tasly's innovation leadership and adherence to clinical needs, which actually implies the key logic of the transformation of the pharmaceutical industry, and its development trajectory is deeply in line with the main theme of the era of medical ecosystem value chain reconstruction.

For many years, Tasly has consistently prioritized innovation as its strategic focus. Leveraging its cardiovascular brand advantages built on core products such as Compound Danshen Dripping Pills, Tasly maintains high R&D investment and continuously strengthens the secondary development of major products and the research and development of innovative traditional Chinese medicines. Tasly explores more possibilities for clinical applications, forming an innovative traditional Chinese medicine system that meets clinical needs and possesses strong market resilience.

In 2024, despite numerous uncertainties in the external environment of the traditional Chinese medicine industry, Tasly maintained stable growth in its pharmaceutical industrial performance while upholding a high level of R&D investment, placing it at the forefront of the industry. Following its strategic cooperation with China Resources Sanjiu, the synergistic effect of the industrial chain between Tasly and China Resources Sanjiu has become increasingly prominent, with a surge of innovation vitality, further consolidating Tasly's leading position in the R&D of innovative traditional Chinese medicine drugs.

Located in a China undergoing transformation, Tasly's innovation has always been based on the health needs of the people. By 2030, China's population aged 65 and above will reach 247 million. At that time, the improvement of living standards and changes in lifestyle will bring about an ever-evolving spectrum of diseases and increasingly diversified medical and health needs. Amidst these needs, Tasly has consistently adhered to innovation from drug use to management, using an integrated diagnosis and treatment model to help patients overcome illness and move towards recovery.

For Tasly, joining China Resources is not simply about expansion, but also about an upgrade in responsibility. Tasly will safeguard patients' health with more professional medical solutions, embark on a new journey in the dual indications of coronary heart disease and diabetic retinopathy, and achieve groundbreaking innovations in the management of comorbidities of cerebrovascular and fundus diseases.

After upgrading chronic disease management into a social responsibility project with the characteristics of a central state-owned enterprise, Tasly has built a new paradigm for ESG practices in the pharmaceutical industry. In the "Heartfelt Protection" project, corporate governance, patient value, and ecological protection are formed into an organic whole.

As a leading enterprise in the Chinese medicine industry, Tasly has always adhered to the principle of giving equal importance to creating economic value and fulfilling social responsibility, and has achieved remarkable results on the path of ESG sustainable development. Since 2008, Tasly has voluntarily disclosed its "Social Responsibility Report," and has now disclosed the report for 17 consecutive years.

In terms of social responsibility, Tasly Pharmaceutical has always regarded giving back to society and caring for health as one of its core values. Tasly actively participates in public welfare activities such as poverty alleviation and flood relief, bringing warmth and hope to vulnerable groups through donations of medicines and support for environmental protection projects. The "Heartbeat Power – Retracing the Long March" series of activities launched in 2024 is a prime example. This large-scale public welfare project won the 2024 "CSR Competitiveness" Outstanding Case Selection Award for Corporate Social Responsibility Contribution and the People's Daily 2024 People's Enterprise Social Responsibility Award.

Tasly advocates for inclusive healthcare, improving the accessibility and affordability of its products, and providing patients with more medication options through research and development innovation. Currently, Tasly has a pipeline of 83 products under development, including 5 products related to women's and children's diseases and rare diseases.

Tasly has been continuously building a full-chain quality control system. In 2024, the pass rate of quality system certification/GMP compliance inspection was 100%, and the pass rate of drug market spot checks was 100%. Injectable Danshen Polyphenolic Acid is the first Chinese patent medicine product in the country to add the "medicinal materials meet GAP requirements" mark on the packaging surface.

From a nationwide three-dimensional protection system to the innovative protection of Compound Danshen Dripping Pills, to AI-powered system solutions, Tasly's practices reveal a truth: true medical innovation must simultaneously address both scientific and social issues. When 233 million diabetic patients and 330 million cardiovascular patients share the same life-protecting system, and when grassroots doctors can handle the challenges of comorbidities with the same ease as urban specialists, China's chronic disease management is forging a distinctive path with technology as its foundation and humanity as its core.

On this path, Tasly has demonstrated with Compound Danshen Dripping Pills that the modernization of traditional medicine is not an imitation of the West, but a re-creation based on its own cultural genes; the responsibility of state-owned enterprises lies not only in scale expansion, but also in building a health ecosystem covering the entire population and the entire life cycle. As Tasly declared at the Xipu Conference: the value of pharmaceutical companies lies not in sales figures, but in the smiles of patients regaining their sight, in the peaceful steps of the elderly, and in every family's yearning for a healthy life!