AI has finger on pulse of healthcare advances

Song Jiayi, a 32-year-old white-collar worker in Beijing, usually goes to the gym after work. She likes running on a treadmill for more than an hour and attending various fitness classes with a focus on personal health and weight management.

Like most of her peers, Song keeps abreast of the latest development in artificial intelligence technology, and recently downloaded a health-related application on her smartphone.

"I can record my health status through uploading images or inputting text and my voice to the app. The AI-powered health tool can provide real-time responses to medical questions and formulate customized health management plans, including daily exercise, diet and sleep for me," she said.

Song said the digital health assistant also functions as a friendly doctor, personal nutritionist and sports coach. Apart from personalized health management, the app offers online medical consultation services through a network of doctors nationwide.

Song is one of tens of thousands of people turning to AI-driven apps that help them track and analyze their health and issue medication reminders.

Leading Chinese tech companies are racing to enter the AI healthcare sector to accelerate the commercial application of the cutting-edge technology and address the growing medical demands of a rapidly aging population.

China's elder care industry is expected to surpass 20 trillion yuan ($2.8 trillion) by 2030, according to a report by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology.

Ant Group has rebranded its AI health app AQ as Ant Afu, and released a new version of the app, upgrading its three major functions — health companionship, health Q&A and health services.

The company said Ant Afu focuses on a "health plus" strategy, repositioning the product from an AI "tool" to an AI "friend" that provides healthcare services and helps users manage their own and family members' health issues.

The number of active monthly users has surpassed 15 million, making it China's largest AI healthcare app. It answers more than 5 million health questions every day, with 55 percent of users coming from third-tier cities and below.

Zhang Junjie, vice-president of Ant Group and president of the company's health business unit, said the biggest change to the app is the addition of a health companion function, which aims to help users develop healthy daily habits.

Users can record their health status and upload their information by taking photos and uploading images.

The app can access smart devices from Apple, Huawei, Vivo and Omron to synchronize users' daily health data and let them view their exercise levels, heart rate, blood pressure and sleep time.

It can also create health records for family members, and set multiple goals such as exercise, diet and lifestyle habits. Afu acts as a "personal coach" to customize a tailored plan for users based on their goals.

"The professionalism and usefulness of the answers are the foundation of an AI tool," Zhang said, adding that a health app should be able to have a dialogue with users and provide a personalized solution for each individual.

However, the company stressed Afu's responses are not medical diagnoses and will never replace real doctors. For users with medical needs, Afu connects with 300,000 doctors nationwide to provide online consultation services.

Meanwhile, Baidu Inc recently announced the official upgrade of its AI-powered health assistant.

"We aim to provide every family with a one-stop service for disease prevention, knowledge acquisition, and health management through an intelligent, reliable and always-available AI partner," said Yang Minglu, general manager of Baidu Health.

The company's aim is to integrate professional healthcare into every aspect of users' daily lives, Yang said. The total order volume of its healthcare services has exceeded 47 million, which represents a shift from a health assistant to a 24/7 all-in-one family doctor.

Lu Mei, head of Baidu Health's AI app products, said the application covers a full range of services from light consultations to complex disease treatments and comprehensive health management. It can accurately process multiple input forms such as text, image, audio and video, with a recognition accuracy rate of over 95 percent.

Baidu Health has opened up its vast resources — including 600 million pieces of professional health content, 360,000 doctor services and over 100 AI tools — to a wide range of partners. These partners include hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, insurance institutions, smart hardware manufacturers, and health app developers.

"AI has become a key engine for improving efficiency and driving innovation in the health sector," said Jiang Han, a senior analyst at market consultancy Pangoal.

"The core competition among tech giants in the health industry has shifted from simple traffic acquisition to a contest centered on the building of comprehensive capacities covering data, application scenarios and the ecosystem."

Jiang said enterprises that can integrate health management, diagnosis, payment and pharmaceutical delivery and also create a user-centered service loop will gain a competitive upper hand. "This involves the ability to combine medical resources, ensure regulatory compliance, and foster cross-industry collaboration," Jiang said.

Chinese tech giants, with their massive user bases and data assets, are well-positioned to leverage their platform traffic to drive the development of the health business, he added.