Baidu Health has upgraded its AI health assistant with a new health camera and a set of services that connect AI answers to real doctors, and said its AI services now have more than 50 million monthly active users, a figure the company describes as the largest in the sector. The announcement was made on October 24, according to Leiphone and China National Radio.
The health camera accepts typed text, dialect speech and photos, and Baidu says it is the first in China to let users upload video or talk while filming. The aim is to help people describe symptoms that are hard to put into words, such as skin changes, movement problems or the position of several symptoms. Baidu says the recognition was trained on 3 million professional multimodal images and more than 100 million pieces of diagnostic-logic data, with ongoing correction from practicing doctors. Users can also photograph lab reports; Baidu says report reading was used more than 27 million times in the past year with accuracy above 98%.
The second part of the upgrade is a matrix of doctor services. In an online consultation room, more than 150,000 doctors from top-tier hospitals are available around the clock, with responses in as little as one minute, according to Baidu. The AI first organizes a user's symptoms, test results and history, then matches them with a suitable doctor, who asks follow-up questions and gives the diagnosis. An appointment service lets users request extra slots up to 30 days ahead; Baidu says more than 50,000 doctors offer over 120,000 extra slots a day and nearly 6 million appointments have been arranged.
Baidu repeatedly stressed that AI does not replace diagnosis. Yang Minglu, general manager of Baidu Health, said doctors keep decision-making power and that AI should assist rather than lead. Fan Daiming, an academician of the Chinese Academy of Engineering and president of the China Anti-Cancer Association, said AI can extend medicine's reach but cannot replace a doctor's judgment.
Baidu also launched an open program that offers its doctor resources and AI capabilities free to partners such as chronic-disease apps, health hardware makers and online pharmacies through MCP, API and H5 integrations. All user and accuracy figures are Baidu's own.
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