Artificial intelligence gives edge to health consultations, disease prevention

"Hi Bob! Tell me how to choose a facial mask."

"Sure. Here are a recommended list of facial masks for you to wear on various occasions..."

This is part of a conversation between Wang Ying, a 30-year-old office clerk in Beijing, and AskBob, an artificial intelligence-enabled consultation platform developed by Ping An Smart Healthcare, a section of Ping'an International Smart City Technology Co Ltd under Ping An Insurance (Group) Co of China.

To fight against the novel coronavirus epidemic, the platform now provides free information services such as a health condition self-check, epidemic Q&A, psychological self-assessment, and an epidemic community search.

During the outbreak of the epidemic, as medical human resources are limited, AI has greatly relieved the burden of medical staff.

For example, AskBob's epidemic Q&A section currently summarizes various types of questions and authoritative answers. Based on AI technology, the platform solves perplexing issues for the public, very much like a real doctor.

The company said that using text understanding technology combined with a language model and knowledge graph, the smart platform offers full-process medical services covering pre-, during-and post-diagnosis to the public.

Working with the official new media platform health.people.cn under People's Daily, AskBob was launched in many regions, including Beijing and Chongqing municipalities and Hubei, Heilongjiang, Liaoning, Shandong, Fujian, Jiangsu and Guangdong provinces.

Apart from medical consultations, AI is also assisting local governments in decision-making for epidemic prevention and control.

On Feb 14, the management system developed by Ping An Smart Healthcare was shortlisted for "recommended epidemic prevention and control products" by Chongqing in Southwest China.

On Feb 18, it also entered the second batch of a recommended free service catalog issued by the Department of Economy and Information Technology of Hubei province, the epicenter of the epidemic.

Using AI, the management system dynamically tracks epidemic information, quickly completes the statistics of viral clues in the areas under jurisdiction and tracks the situation of home observation patients in real time.

In this way, it is able to estimate and evaluate the effects of government prevention and control measures, predict the development trend of the epidemic and assist management decision-making.

Currently, the system has been applied in many cities such as Wuhan, Xi'an, Chongqing, Harbin and Fuzhou.

"The system is capable of establishing a long-term mechanism for sustainable epidemic prevention and control. In the future, with continuous improvement, the system will become one effective way of increasing local scientific governance," said Zhao Gang, head of the Xiangfang district government in Harbin.

"As an AI company, our goal is to meet the most urgent needs from the public. Taking advantage of AI technology, the company will spare no efforts to help residents, as well as governments and medical institutions at all levels, overcome difficulties during the special period," said Geoff Kau, co-president and chief strategy officer of Ping'an International Smart City Technology.

"Using technological advantages, we will continue to help increase the scientific level of local governance when the epidemic ends," he said.