Ant Group upgrades physician platform into AI workstation for millions of doctors

Ant Group has relaunched its physician platform Haodf for Doctor as AQ for Doctor, an AI-powered workstation intended to support clinicians across consultations, patient management, clinical decision support and research. The platform is integrated with Ant Group’s consumer health app AQ, which the company says has more than 100 million users as of August 2026.

Haodf, one of China’s longest-running online doctor consultation platforms, was acquired by Ant Group in January 2025 and has since been folded into the company’s AQ health ecosystem.

Zhang Junjie, vice president of Ant Group and head of its health business, said the company’s aim is to build an AI workstation for China’s more than five million physicians, framing the technology as a support tool rather than a replacement for doctors: “AI will never replace doctors.”

The AQ consumer app already runs an “AI response plus doctor review” model, under which AI-generated health guidance can be checked by physicians from leading hospitals when users request professional confirmation. Ant Group says this model, first introduced in dermatology, now covers 16 specialties including obstetrics and gynaecology and ear, nose and throat care. With AQ for Doctor now connected to the consumer app, the company says patient requests can be matched with available physicians more efficiently.

The upgrade also opens the platform to hospitals and healthcare institutions for the first time, allowing them to operate their own online hospitals through AQ for Doctor as institutional partners. Previously, only physicians affiliated with Haodf’s existing online hospital network could offer consultations through the platform. Guangzhou Women and Children’s Medical Centre is the first hospital to join under the new arrangement, which the company says will let institutions coordinate and deploy medical resources across the platform.

Two AI capabilities sit at the centre of the platform: an AI Medical Assistant for clinical decision support, and an AI Doctor Agent that individual physicians can configure for patient management. The agent is designed to run pre-visit interviews, answer routine questions and support follow-up care around the clock, gathering patient history and flagging clinical findings ahead of appointments, then generating follow-up summaries synced to patient records afterwards.