Empowering chronic disease management with smart healthcare in China: a policy effectiveness evaluation by PMC index model

Introduction: Population aging has driven a sustained increase in chronic diseases, creating major challenges for management, while the development of smart healthcare technologies offers new approaches for chronic disease prevention and control. Systematic analysis of existing policies on intelligent chronic disease management remains insufficient in China, necessitating detailed scrutiny of such policies. Methods: This study systematically reviewed China's national-level policies on chronic disease management over the past decade, using the PMC index model and text mining techniques to analyze the policy texts and construct a comprehensive evaluation index system for intelligent chronic disease management. Results: The 18 policies analyzed focus on chronic disease management, data sharing, telemedicine and multi-party collaboration. The average PMC index score of the policies is 7.31 (on a 0–10 scale). Among them, five policies are rated as “excellent” and 13 as “good,” reflecting a generally high overall quality, with P14 performing the best. However, the implementation details and regulatory framework of the policies are still vague, and there are large differences in the implementation progress between regions. Conclusion: These existing policies align well with the requirements of contemporary medical development and are conducive to improving the quality of chronic disease management and its effectiveness, but ambiguities and deviations still exist in the policy implementation, requiring more specific classification and guidance. Future work should target these gaps to improve patient care outcomes.