The last few years have seen a number of domains experiment with human-less environments, with perhaps Amazon’s Go stores the most evident example. These examples are very much on the margins however, and none are operating in a domain as sensitive as healthcare.
Nonetheless, Chinese startup Ping an (sic) Good Doctor aim to offer just that, with their one-stop healthcare platform with no staff. The company recently showcased a small, unstaffed clinic that utilizes AI to offer advice to patients. People enter the three-square meter clinic and have a virtual consultation with an AI-powered avatar.
The chatbot aims to gather enough information about the medical history and symptoms of the user to come up with a suitable diagnosis plan, at which point the user is offered a teleconsultation with a real doctor. The clinics are being branded as a “one-minute clinic” and are designed to offer service in areas that are traditionally poorly served by more standard healthcare systems.
Each clinic comes with a smart medicine cabinet that will enable users to pick up prescriptions, with the company saying that the cabinet will stock around 100 commonly used medications.
Big plans
The company plan to develop a network of hundreds of the clinics across China in the next few years, but for now, the only facility is the pilot clinic just outside of Shanghai.
“When the patient starts the consultation, first, they interact with AI Doctor through their voice and photos. Then, AI Doctor guides the patient to accurately describe the disease, form a structured medical history, and provide an intelligent diagnosis plan for subsequent specialist consultation. After a doctor’s consultation, AI Doctor can also be combined with the doctor’s corresponding diagnostic structure to issue intelligent prescriptions, which makes the whole consultation smarter and improves the efficiency of the consultation,” the company explain.
There is a modicum of sense in the service, as China has significantly fewer doctors per 1,000 people than most developed countries. What’s more, this is a problem that blights many developing nations, with countries such as India in even worse shape. Being able to offer services remotely therefore could be hugely beneficial, but the key will be in the reliability of the service.
The company has achieved a lot in a relatively short timeframe, and recently raised 1.1 billion via an IPO in Hong Kong. Time will tell whether their combination of unmanned clinics and telehealth help to bring healthcare to the under-served.
