About 350 doctors from China’s top-tier hospitals agree that AI doctor services can be beneficial for patients in everyday health questions and routine health management.
A recent survey by Life Times, a well-known Chinese public health media outlet, has illustrated that emerging AI doctor solutions are widely recommended by local doctors when it comes to daily healthcare routines.
A study that surveyed 500 medical professionals from top (tertiary) hospitals in China discovered that 70% of the respondents do not mind to suggest AI doctor services to their patients. Furthermore, over 60% of doctors already use AI doctor services to support their work. Almost all (90%) of respondents feel optimistic about the future development of AI doctors.
One of the most recommended AI health tool was Ant Group’s AQ, known in Chinese as Ant A-Fu. The app has accumulated 30 million monthly active users since its launch in June last year. Per company’s reports, the solution today handles over 10 million health-related questions daily. It is highly-rated domestically, being one of China’s top seven AI-native applications overall, and leading AI-native health app.
Ant AQ was created as an AI health companion rather than a diagnostic tool. It can provide instant, reliable health guidance in non-emergency situations for those people who cannot address their queries in traditional clinical settings.
The app connects users to digital services from 5,000 hospitals, helps schedule online consultations with 300,000 doctors nationwide, and offers automatic real-time assistance from over 500 AI Doctor Agents co-developed with top physicians and key hospital departments across China. These agents are trained on real leading doctor’s clinical experience and provide free responses to users’ health questions. All together, the AI Doctor Agents have answered more than 27 million users’ health inquiries in 2025.
A common person may get dozens of health-related questions each day and not all of them need to be escalated to doctor’s consultation. In other cases, a doctor’s consultation is needed, but while it cannot be accessed immediately, AI services may offer a temporary assistance and help ease patient anxiety in the meantime. Besides, Ant AQ may guide a person towards healthier lifestyle, providing advice on healthy habits.
Naturally, AQ cannot substitute real doctors. It does not provide medical diagnoses or replace licensed physicians. Yet, doctors surveyed said they value AI doctor services for their ability to handle large volumes of simpler patient questions without time or location constraints so that professionals had to deal with more urgent and complicated healthcare cases. When human and AI teams unite, jointly they can serve far more people’s concerns.
One example provided is Mao Hongjing, Deputy Director of Hangzhou Seventh People’s Hospital and a nationally recognized sleep specialist. Mao alone could treat only about 10,000 patients per year in person. However, his AI Doctor Agent on AQ, trained on his own expertise, has responded to inquiries from 3.68 million users within a single year.
The need to increase consultation volumes is driven by China’s swiftly ageing population that drives demand for healthcare services. According to the National Bureau of Statistics, in 2024, China had 310 million people aged 60+, roughly 22% of the population. Projections from the World Health Organization indicate that this share could rise to nearly 28% by 2040.
Since raising a whole new generation of experienced doctors takes years, and creating AI versions of existing physicians is so much quicker, China’s AI in healthcare market is projected to grow from $1.6 billion in 2023 to nearly $19 billion by 2030.
