- System combines patient assistant and doctor-facing tools
- Adoption expands as hospitals seek efficiency and data compliance
The healthcare unit of Ant Group (蚂蚁集团), has rolled out an integrated AI solution for hospitals, aiming to streamline patient services and reduce administrative workload as digital transformation accelerates across China’s medical system.
The “smart healthcare AI” package, unveiled at the Chinese Hospital Association Information Specialized Committee (CHIMA 2026) on April 25, combines a patient-facing assistant with a doctor-oriented AI tool, alongside capabilities such as hospital-specific AI agents and on-premise large model deployment.
Hospitals using the system can create customized AI agents via the Ant-backed Afu app, allowing patients to complete tasks such as registration, payments and report inquiries through natural language interaction.
The platform also offers a full-service “virtual companion” covering pre-visit consultation, in-hospital navigation and post-visit follow-ups.
The rollout targets longstanding bottlenecks in hospital digitization, including fragmented patient experiences, operational inefficiencies and limited AI integration.
According to the company, the patient-side assistant can handle more than 90% of routine inquiries, easing pressure on front desks and nursing stations.
The system provides appointment reminders before visits, real-time guidance during hospital stays and continued services after discharge via the Afu app.
It has already been deployed in more than 400 hospitals nationwide, serving over 50 million patient visits and improving triage efficiency by up to 50%, the company said.
On the clinical side, the AI doctor assistant is designed to reduce time spent on administrative and research-related tasks.
It integrates modules for literature search, data analysis, office workflows and medical record support, covering clinical, research and operational scenarios.
The tool is offered through both cloud-based SaaS and localized deployment options. The latter allows hospitals to process sensitive medical data entirely on-site, addressing growing regulatory requirements around data security and compliance.
The Afu app, which underpins the system, has more than 100 million users and supports services including health consultation, report interpretation, online diagnosis and insurance payments, handling tens of millions of user queries daily, according to the company.
