The unexpected COVID-19 pandemic has raised the public awareness on online medical treatments and meanwhile prompted the development of internet-based medical services in the country, according to industry insiders citing a latest ranking.

"Hospitals that have a relatively higher influence on the online platform are mostly located in cities with high-quality medical resources, which reflected people's rising demand for these top resources," said Fu Hongqiao, deputy researcher of School of Public Health at Peking University.

"It is especially the case after the outbreak of the epidemic, where online medical platforms offer a great supplement to traditional offline hospitals," Fu said.

According to a ranking launched by the healthcare development center of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences and online healthcare giant haodf.com, a total of 133 hospitals from 17 provinces made the most influential online hospital list this year.

More than half of them come from top-tier cities. A total of 35 hospitals in the list are from Beijing, with 25 from Shanghai and 14 from Guangzhou, Guangdong province.

Peking Union Medical College Hospital, Chinese PLA General Hospital and West China Hospital of Sichuan University were ranked as the top three online hospitals, in terms of the top ranking numbers.

The ranking is based on the 61.16 billion patient browsing trajectories of haodf.com. It was carried out after analyzing an online consultation record of 66.48 million patients, 470 million doctor-patient exchanges, and 4.549 million online evaluations of patients after their hospital visits.

"In the current internet era, public hospitals must keep pace not only with excellent diagnosis and treatment technology, but also with innovative service methods, so that patients can also realize their pursuit of a better life and make patients' medical treatment more efficient," said Xu Congjian, director of Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital of Fudan University.

Xu said that at the same time, third-party online healthcare platforms and public hospitals should complement each other to achieve a win-win situation. "This is a trend," he added.