The world is making significant inroads into utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) technology to advance functions in various domains, especially healthcare.
We have seen AI technologies helping to advance personalized medicine, predictive analytics, drug discovery and development, smart virtual health assistants, and furthering medical imaging and diagnostics.
Now, a Chinese state media outlet reports that the country has developed its first AI hospital town, a concept in which virtual patients are attended to by AI doctors.
The system, developed by a team at Tsinghua University in Beijing, aims to advance medical consultation by training doctor agents in a simulated environment. The team says this will equip them to evolve independently and enhance their ability to treat diseases.
According to Global Times, researchers claim the model will help further AI doctors’ diagnostic capabilities from the virtual realm to real-world applications and the potential for high-quality, affordable, and convenient healthcare services for the public.
Virtual patient simulation
The Agent Hospital concept enables real doctors to treat virtual patients, offering medical students advanced training opportunities. By simulating a diverse array of AI patients, medical students can confidently devise treatment plans without the risk of harming real patients due to decision-making errors.
In this virtual world, all doctors, nurses, and patients are driven by large language model (LLM)–powered intelligent agents capable of autonomous interaction.
According to Global Times, evolved AI doctor agents in the Agent Hospital have achieved an impressive 93.06 percent accuracy rate on a MedQA dataset (US Medical Licensing Exam questions) covering major respiratory diseases.
These intelligent agents can simulate the entire process of diagnosing and treating patients, from consultation and examination to diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up.
According to the team, AI doctors can treat 10,000 patients in just a few days—a task that would take humans at least two years to complete.
The university team points out that AI hospital town can simulate and forecast various medical situations, including the emergence, spread, and containment of infectious diseases within an area.
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