Alibaba-affiliate Ant Group launched a brand new AI-powered healthcare app on June 26, 2025.
Ant Group
BEIJING — Alibaba-affiliate Ant Group is doubling down on well being care with a brand new smartphone app, based mostly on synthetic intelligence expertise that the corporate says could possibly be rolled out abroad.
It is the newest signal of how China-developed AI is shortly constructing shopper purposes. Ant, operator of the favored Alipay cellular funds app, has centered a lot of its AI improvement efforts on well being care based mostly on giant language fashions from DeepSeek, Alibaba and Ant.
In a telling signal of worldwide aspirations, the brand new health-care app launched on Thursday has a simple English title — AQ — which stands for “reply your query,” mentioned Zhang Junjie, normal supervisor of health-care enterprise at Alipay.
Customers can seek the advice of AI avatars of real-life medical specialists earlier than getting precedence entry for a diagnostic appointment or hospital care if the state of affairs is critical sufficient, he mentioned. AQ can faucet greater than 5,000 hospitals and practically 1 million docs in China, based on Ant.
Whereas Ant’s focus is on the mainland China marketplace for now, the brand new app or its tech could possibly be licensed out to a 3rd get together, Zhang mentioned, with out specifying a time-frame. He mentioned many foreigners in China have already used a pilot model of the app, and that Ant plans to launch variations of the app in different languages.
Chinese language corporations from startups to extra established corporations corresponding to Tencent and Ping An Insurance coverage have lengthy sought to capitalize on the combination of web and software program with well being care. Within the final a number of months, U.S.-based tech giants corresponding to Microsoft and Amazon.com have additionally introduced progress on AI-powered health-care instruments.
In China, a big information pool and nationwide emphasis on digitalization have helped present a basis for AI-powered health-care capabilities, in accordance to a report final month from the Cheung Kong Graduate College of Enterprise. It identified that China’s nationwide medical insurance system covers greater than 95% of the nation’s 1.4 billion folks, whereas about 70% of hospitals have digital record-keeping programs.
A confirmed person base
Alipay is without doubt one of the two main cellular funds apps in mainland China. Along with funds, the app can be utilized to pay the water invoice, hail a taxi or order groceries from Alibaba’s grocery store chain.
The funds app has additionally branched into well being care during the last decade, with options corresponding to permitting customers to digitally make an appointment at considered one of China’s notoriously crowded public hospitals, as a substitute of getting to attend in line for a ticket.
These Alipay health-care providers have already reached practically 800 million customers in China, Zhang mentioned.
The standalone AQ app incorporates these options, together with AI-powered capabilities corresponding to physician suggestions, medical report evaluation and customized medical recommendation.
Alipay has expanded to customers exterior China, as has its cellular funds rival WeChat.
— Correction: This story was up to date to replicate the proper variety of customers in China that Alipay health-care providers have reached.
