Ant Group has officially upgraded its physician platform, Haodf for Doctor, into AQ for Doctor—an AI-powered workstation built to support doctors across every stage of clinical practice.
The platform spans online consultations, patient management, clinical decision support, and medical research, and is fully integrated with Ant Group’s consumer health app, AQ, which serves more than 100 million users as of August 2026.
“AI will never replace doctors,” said Zhang Junjie, vice president of Ant Group and head of the health business. “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.”
One platform connecting doctors and patients
The integration of AQ for Doctor with the AQ app creates one of the world’s first AI platforms designed to serve both physicians and patients through a deeply connected experience.
The AQ app previously introduced an “AI response + doctor review” model in dermatology, allowing AI-generated health guidance to be verified by physicians from leading hospitals. That model has since expanded to 16 specialties, including obstetrics and gynecology and otolaryngology (ENT).
With AQ for Doctor now linked to the AQ app, patient requests can be matched with available physicians more efficiently, creating a smoother experience for both sides.
The upgrade also opens AQ for Doctor to hospitals and healthcare institutions nationwide for the first time, enabling them to establish and operate their own online hospitals on the platform as institutional partners. Previously, only physicians affiliated with Haodf’s online hospital could provide online consultations.
Now, hospitals can onboard directly, allowing their doctors to manage online consultations, follow-up care, and patient records through a single account and unified platform instead of switching between multiple systems.
Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Center, one of China’s leading women’s and children’s hospitals, is the first to join under the new model. The hospital said the partnership will make it easier for patients to access care while enabling better coordination and deployment of high-quality medical resources to serve those in need.
Less paperwork, more patient care
AQ for Doctor introduces two core AI capabilities: the AI Medical Assistant and the AI Doctor Agent, supporting physicians throughout the care journey—from consultations and long-term patient management to evidence retrieval and academic research.
For patient management, physicians can create their own AI Doctor Agent on the platform. Available around the clock, the agent can conduct pre-visit interviews, answer routine health questions, and support post-treatment follow-up.
Before an appointment, it gathers relevant patient information, organises medical histories, and highlights key clinical findings to help physicians prepare more efficiently.
After the consultation, it continues to answer routine patient questions, automatically generates follow-up summaries, and synchronises them with patients’ health records—extending care beyond the clinic while giving patients more continuous support.
For clinical decision support, the AI Medical Assistant enables physicians to search medical knowledge instantly via text or voice, delivering free, accurate, and fully traceable evidence-based references.
AQ for Doctor has formed a strategic partnership with Wolters Kluwer to provide physicians with more reliable, evidence-based clinical insights. AQ for Doctor is also exploring deeper collaboration with UpToDate, Wolters Kluwer’s renowned evidence-based clinical decision support solution.
In parallel, Ant Health is leveraging DP Technology’s Science Navigator platform for deep scientific literature search and evidence-based knowledge retrieval, the collaboration will support AQ for Doctor with quality medical scientific data.
Today, the platform gives physicians access to more than 60 million medical publications, clinical guidelines, leading medical journals, and over 140,000 drug labels, enabling clinicians to quickly retrieve the latest medical evidence for both clinical decision-making and research.
Doctors participating in early testing reported that by automating routine tasks such as collecting and organising patient histories, AQ for Doctor significantly improved efficiency, allowing them to spend more time on complex cases and direct patient care.
As of August 2026, AQ for Doctor has connected more than 300,000 verified physicians in China. As more hospitals and healthcare organisations join following this upgrade, that network is expected to continue expanding, bringing high-quality medical expertise to even more patients.
