Artificial intelligence technologies are empowering village doctors to offer better medical services in remote and rural areas.

Zhang Qifang, a 68-year-old village doctor in Pu'an county, Guizhou province, said AI — represented by healthcare management application Ant Afu — is benefiting him and the over 2,000 villagers that he has been serving for about 30 years.

"Village doctors deal with many senior patients and a wide variety of medical conditions, some of which are quite complex," Zhang said on Wednesday during the ongoing 2026 Inclusion Conference on the Bund in Shanghai.

Compared to their counterparts in cities, there were many illnesses in the past that they were barely aware of and thus unable to deal with. Zhang recalled how he encountered a patient with symptoms of hyperthyroidism back in 1999. However, at the time, he was unfamiliar with the condition and was therefore unable to diagnose or treat the patient, which has lingered in his mind to this day.

The village that Zhang lived in is about 45 kilometers from the county center, and the transportation was very poor in the 1990s, so the patient could not get effective treatment at that time, leaving Zhang at a loss for nearly three decades.

However, things are different now. This February, Zhang, together with other some 170 village doctors in the county, received comprehensive training programs on using Ant Afu, which equipped him with a large knowledge base and support in daily medical services.

Just a few days ago, Zhang encountered a patient with orthostatic hypertension, a diagnosis he made with the help of Ant Afu. This hypertension occurs when a person stands up from a seated or lying position and experiences a variation in blood pressure.

He added that the application is also helping effectively in reading medical reports.

"Generally, we village doctors are experienced in dealing with common illnesses, but we aren't well-versed in medical reports or lab tests," Zhang said. "So, when a patient brings in a report, we can now just take a photo of it and upload it to Ant Afu, and it will analyze the report clearly."

These practical functions have offered Zhang solid support and improved efficiency in his daily work. In his village, there are two doctors — himself included — responsible for providing daily medical care to more than 2,000 people. A majority of the patients are the elderly, and many of them have chronic conditions — such as high blood pressure and diabetes — that require long-term management.

In fact, such conditions are common in many remote and rural areas across China, which motivated Ant Afu to further expand their efforts to more villages. Since June, the project team has carried out two training programs in Meizhou's Meixian district in Guangdong province, covering two thirds of the local village doctors.

"The rural population is now predominantly elderly, and the frontline medical workforce in rural areas is also senior," Zhu Jianbin, a member of Ant Afu's project team, said. "With Ant Afu, we hope to broaden their knowledge and support them to offer better services."

To date, Ant Afu has partnered with four provinces nationwide and launched its services in 27 prefectures and cities, serving a total of 70,000 village doctors and family doctors, according to the team.

At the conference, the project team also unveiled a variety of new products and solutions to further empower village doctors, including intelligent medical diagnostic equipment, 24-hour online medical consultation service, and an AI-powered portable clinical kit designed for village doctors.