Ant upgrades AQ for Doctor in China health platform

Ant Group has upgraded its physician platform, Haodf for Doctor, into AQ for Doctor. The new system is integrated with the company's AQ health app, which has more than 100 million users.

The launch combines Ant's doctor-facing service and patient-facing app into a single platform for online consultations, patient management, clinical decision support and medical research. It is aimed at China's physician market, which Ant estimates at more than five million doctors.

Until now, the platform mainly supported physicians affiliated with Haodf's online hospital for remote consultations. Under the new model, hospitals and healthcare institutions across China can join directly and run their own online hospitals on the system, allowing doctors to manage consultations, follow-up care and patient records through one account.

Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Centre is the first hospital to join under the institutional model. The change is intended to make it easier for healthcare organisations to manage online services without switching between separate systems.

One platform

The combined setup links AQ for Doctor with the AQ app used by patients. Ant says that connection should help match patient requests with available physicians more efficiently and create a smoother workflow between online enquiries and medical review.

The AQ app already uses an "AI response + doctor review" model in dermatology, where AI-generated guidance can be reviewed by physicians from leading hospitals if users request professional confirmation. Ant says the model has since expanded to 16 specialties, including obstetrics and gynaecology and ear, nose and throat medicine.

Zhang Junjie, Vice President of Ant Group and Head of the Health Business, outlined the company's view of AI's role in healthcare. "AI will never replace doctors," Zhang said. "But AI can become a trusted assistant for healthcare professionals. Our goal is to build a reliable and practical AI workstation for China's more than five million physicians-helping them work more efficiently while enabling every leading doctor's expertise and experience to reach many more patients."

Doctor tools

AQ for Doctor includes two main AI functions: the AI Medical Assistant and the AI Doctor Agent. These tools are designed to support doctors in consultations, longer-term patient management, evidence retrieval and research.

For patient management, physicians can create their own AI Doctor Agent. The tool can conduct pre-visit interviews, answer routine health questions and support follow-up after treatment.

Before an appointment, the agent gathers patient information, organises medical histories and highlights key clinical findings. After a consultation, it can answer routine questions, generate follow-up summaries and synchronise them with health records.

The AI Medical Assistant is aimed at clinical decision support. Physicians can search medical knowledge by text or voice and receive traceable, evidence-based references free of charge.

Research links

To support the service, Ant has formed partnerships with Wolters Kluwer and DP Technology. The Wolters Kluwer agreement provides access to medical content, including journals, while the DP Technology partnership uses the Science Navigator platform for literature search and knowledge retrieval.

AQ for Doctor currently gives physicians access to more than 60 million medical publications, clinical guidelines, major medical journals and more than 140,000 drug labels. Ant says this information base is intended to help clinicians retrieve recent evidence for patient care and research.

The Wolters Kluwer partnership may also expand into deeper work with UpToDate, the group's clinical decision support product. Ant says that effort is focused on the use of trusted AI in healthcare.

Growing network

AQ for Doctor has connected more than 300,000 verified physicians. Combined with the AQ app's user base of more than 100 million, that gives Ant a substantial presence across both doctors and patients in China's digital health market.

Doctors involved in early testing told Ant that automating routine work, such as collecting and organising patient histories, improved efficiency and freed up more time for complex cases and direct care. The upgrade broadens the offer from a service for individual physicians to a platform that hospitals can also adopt institutionally.

The expansion reflects a wider shift in healthcare as providers test how AI can be used in day-to-day clinical work, from triage and administrative support to evidence search and patient follow-up. For Ant, the latest step is to bring those functions into one connected system for doctors and patients, with Guangzhou Women and Children's Medical Centre as the first hospital entrant and more than 300,000 verified physicians already on the network.