Last year, Ping An Good Doctor, a one-stop healthcare ecosystem platform from China, piloted unstaffed clinics that employ artificial intelligence called “One-minute Clinics” in the Wuzhen Scenic Area outside of Shanghai, which connect patients with a clinician on Ping An Good Doctor’s in-house medical team. Just last week, the company announced that it had placed its One-minute Clinics across 8 provinces and cities in China and signed service contracts for nearly 1,000 units, providing healthcare services to more than 3 million users.

The clinics currently provide online consultations for more than 2,000 common diseases, and can immediately answer tens of thousands of medical and health queries for users, with an international standard accuracy level.

Every One-minute Clinic has more than 100 categories of common drugs, all of which are cryogenically refrigerated to ensure their quality. If a user needs a drug that is not stored at the booth, they can purchase it online through the Ping An Good Doctor App and enjoy the one-hour drug delivery services provided by nearby cooperative pharmacies.

A Ping An Good Doctor spokesperson said, “The Company’s One-minute Clinics feature accurate and efficient online consultation services. Our ‘AI Doctor’, Ping An Good Doctor’s world-leading technology, plays a key role. ‘AI Doctor’ was developed by the R&D team with over 200 world-class AI experts and has accumulated more than 300 million pieces of consultation data. When patients use the consultation service in One-minute Clinics, ‘AI Doctor’ acts like a real doctor and collects the users’ symptoms and illness history before providing a preliminary diagnostic suggestion. The experienced real doctor then joins the consultation with supplementary recommendations to ensure the accuracy of the whole consultation process.”

Application in diverse environments

Located in the scenic area of Xizha in Wuzhen, the One-minute Clinic at the Dingtai Pharmacy is very popular with residents and tourists who visit it every day for consultations. Ms. Liu, a resident living in Wuzhen, said, “The weather has been cold recently and my child got sick, so I tried the one-minute clinic. The online doctors are very thorough, and they save a lot of registration and queuing time. Besides, the One-minute Clinics are open 24 hours and it is convenient to buy medicine at night. If such services can be popularised, it will make life more convenient.”

In addition to being placed in communities and pharmacies, a One-minute Clinics booth was also placed in the Volkswagen factory in Jiading district of Shanghai to provide services to tens of thousands of employees. This clinic offered common drugs for injuries and bruises after learning the nature of work of Volkswagen employees.

Designed in a ACG (Animation, Comic and Game) style, the one-minute clinic at the headquarters of BiliBili, a video sharing website company, has so far provided nearly 4,000 medical and healthcare services to employees, which not only saves employees’ time, but also replaces the traditional infirmary and medical staff (2 doctors and 2 nurses) at the headquarters, reducing huge medical and labour costs for the company every year.