These Robot Doctors At The World’s 1st AI Hospital Can Treat 3,000 Patient’s A Day

The world is making significant strides in utilizing artificial intelligence (AI) technology to enhance various domains, particularly healthcare. AI technologies have revolutionized personalized medicine, predictive analytics, drug discovery, virtual health assistants, and medical imaging.

A groundbreaking development in this field is China’s first AI hospital town, as reported by a Chinese state media outlet. Developed by a team at Tsinghua University in Beijing, this innovative concept involves virtual patients being treated by AI doctors. The system aims to advance medical consultation by training doctor agents in a simulated environment, allowing them to evolve independently and improve their disease treatment capabilities.

According to Global Times, researchers claim this model will extend AI doctors’ diagnostic capabilities from the virtual realm to real-world applications, offering high-quality, affordable, and convenient healthcare services to the public. The Agent Hospital concept allows real doctors to treat virtual patients, providing medical students with advanced training opportunities. By simulating diverse AI patients, students can confidently devise treatment plans without risking real patients’ safety.

In this virtual world, doctors, nurses, and patients are powered by large language model (LLM)–driven intelligent agents capable of autonomous interaction. These AI doctor agents in the Agent Hospital have achieved a remarkable 93.06 percent accuracy rate on a MedQA dataset (US Medical Licensing Exam questions) covering major respiratory diseases.

These intelligent agents simulate the entire process of diagnosing and treating patients, from consultation and examination to diagnosis, treatment, and follow-up. The team reports that AI doctors can treat 10,000 patients in just a few days—a task that would take human doctors at least two years to complete.

The AI hospital town can simulate and forecast various medical situations, including the emergence, spread, and containment of infectious diseases. Within this simulated environment, GPT-3.5 generates the roles of patients and medical professionals, allowing for infinite expansion. A configuration of 14 doctor agents and four nurse agents handles diagnosis, treatment plans, and daily support tasks.

Liu Yang, the research team leader, told Global Times that the AI hospital town will revolutionize patient diagnosis and treatment, offering substantial benefits to healthcare providers and the public. Following six months of intensive research and development, the AI hospital town is nearing completion and is expected to be operational by the latter half of 2024.