Online hospitals – the journey from East to West

Imagine a world where you are sitting at your desk in the offices of a large company and you start to feel unwell. You take the lift to the ground floor to a vending machine in the lobby. You login and explain your symptoms to the machine. It gives you a diagnosis, prescribes your medication, you pay for it and it dispenses it on the spot. Far-fetched? No. This is the Ping An Good Doctor ‘One Minute Clinic’ launched by Chinese health-tech company Ping An Healthcare and Technology in April last year. Powered by Artificial Intelligence (AI), when a patient makes an inquiry, an algorithm identifies and sorts the symptoms into a diagnosis, which is confirmed by a human doctor behind the scenes. Ping An ’s plan is to install its One-Minute Clinics in shopping malls, airports and other public spaces providing onsite medical and pharmaceutical services around the clock to as many people as possible. In 2018 the Chinese government gave the legislative green light for online hospitals and many companies in China have since started using internet-based solutions and AI to meet the country ’s medical and health service needs, contributing to relieving the imbalance between supply and demand.  Scaling upClearly these services are from being in the pilot stage and this approach is rapidly becoming mainstream. According to China Daily, PingAn in concert with Ali Health, Dingdang Kuaiyi and 3gujk.com, attracted 400,000 visits within 24 hours to free online consultations and li...
Source: EyeForPharma - Category: Pharmaceuticals Authors: Source Type: news