Objective  To sort out the digital health policy texts of China′s central government and its affiliated departments and analyze the characteristics and existing problems of the policies, thus providing suggestions for optimization of digital health policies.

Methods  A total of 37 digital health policies were collected from the websites of PKULaw, National Health Commission, and the State Council of China with the time interval from 2000 to 2024. A two-dimensional framework of policy tools-policy objectives was constructed for the quantitative analysis of the collected policy texts.

Results  In the dimension of policy tools, environment-based tools (67%) were dominant, of which "sound mechanisms" accounted for the highest proportion (40%), while the supply-based (22%) and demand-based (11%) applications were obviously insufficient. Supply-based tools demonstrated high dependence on "scientific and technological support" (84%), with insufficient attention to "talent support" (12%) and "financial support" (4%). In the dimension of policy objectives, the policy distribution was concentrated on "performance guarantee" (32.5%) and "institutional rules" (17.7%), while "data resources" (11.3%) and "platform support" (7.1%) received less attention. Cross-analysis further revealed that there was a structural mismatch between policy tools and policy objectives.

Conclusions  It is recommended that the future efforts should be made to optimize the structure of policy tools and coordinate the combination of tools, balance the distribution of objectives considering the existing policy shortcomings, and focus on the multidimensional synergy of policy tools and policy objectives.