One-stop medical clinic requires no staff

The future of AI could inspire a revolution of the healthcare sector.

Spotted: Developments in AI have ushered in the streamlining of various industries. For example, Springwise has covered the media startup with no reporters, and the sports coaching that has adopted AI into video analysis tools. With smart technology taking on roles traditionally covered by humans, the workplace is rapidly changing. The most recent evidence of this is the opening of an unmanned medical clinic in China.

Ping an Good Doctor is a one-stop healthcare platform that recently announced their first physical clinic — a medical clinic that requires no staff. Named the ‘One-Minute Clinic’, it was recently unveiled in Wuzhen, a town in southern China. The clinic aims to provide high-speed, reliable, and convenient medical services for the town’s citizens. The AI technology required for its successful completion was based on research from over 200 world-class AI experts, using data from over 300 million consultations, covering more than 2000 common diseases.

It functions using various smart technologies, to provide basic diagnoses and advice. Patients can visit either the Independent Advisory Room (IAR) or the Smart Medicine Cabinet (SMC). Accordingly, the IAR can offer advice and a preliminary diagnosis via a cloud computing doctor. The SMC offers the ability to purchase basic medicines too. 100 common medicines remain stocked in the clinic as standard, with the option to order in further unavailable medicines on request. Orders placed on the app can be fulfilled via a one-hour delivery service from other nearby pharmacies.

The clinic was been visited by almost 100 visitors in the first week of its trial, and they hope to expand to 1000 units across China by the end of the year. They already have an offline network of 3100 new hospitals and more than 60,000 neighbourhood clinics.