A student team guided by Assoc. Prof. Xiaofei Zhang from the Department of Information Resources Management of Nankai Business School won the first prize of The 17th Challenge Cup National College Students Extracurricular Academic Science and Technology Works Competition, which is one of the top student competitions in China. The team is composed by seven undergraduates from business school under the supervision of Assoc. Prof. Xiaofei Zhang, Prof. Kai Li, and Ms. Qiyu Pan.

The project, one of Nankai University’s summer social practical projects, focuses on three major practical issues in the online health platforms. Three independent research were conducted to help the platforms to address the issues. In order to achieve the reliability of the research results, the team enlisted the data support of AliHealth and Haodf, two leading online health communities, combined with multiple data sources, and adopted cutting-edge data analysis methods, such as text mining to explore the crux of the above three practical issues.At the end, the team established a set of mechanisms to motivate physicians, transform patients to consumers, and mine the value of health information, providing a conducive proposal for the online health industry to optimize online health information and resources.

Assoc. Prof. Xiaofei Zhang and the instructed students carried out three stream of scientific research while addressing the practical issues. The team published 5 top journal papers and several conference papers, which have been widely recognized in the health industry and the research results have been put into practice in AliHealth and several online hospitals. It is worth mentioning that the team has provided assistance for patient triage and residents’ medical insurance during the Tianjin epidemic period in 2022. In addition, the People's Daily, China Central Broadcasting Network, China Youth Daily and other mainstream media also reported the team’s work and social influences.

Under the guidance of the basic principle of “Three Full Education”, the young professors in Business School, like Assoc. Prof. Xiaofei Zhang, integrate the whole process of scientific research and practice education, guide students to actively participate in scientific research training and various extracurricular innovation and entrepreneurship activities, transform knowledge into practice, and serve the society with professional knowledge. Until now, Assoc. Prof. Xiaofei Zhang has led the student teams to achieve prominent outcome in multiple international and domestic competitions, including the first prize of The 17th Challenge Cup National College Students Extracurricular Academic Science and Technology Works Competition, the first prize of The 4th Fangyu Cup National Future Business Exploration and Innovation and Entrepreneurship Practice Competition, the third prize of The Global Innovative Vitality Data Analysis Competition, the second prize of The Best Paper for Tianjin Chinese Information Society Year Second Prize, etc. This also reflects that Nankai students tell Chinese stories, show their youthful demeanor, be talents of the times, and understand the way of growth.