Search engines have changed the way we get information and interact with the world. Countless industries have benefitted from this transformative technology, and it has great potential in medicine.

The AskBob Smart Healthcare Database is a specialized search engine driven by artificial intelligence (AI), developed by a team of more than 20 engineers. AskBob uses Ping An Group’s Smart Medical Knowledge Graph, which combines millions of medical concepts, medical correlations and evidence in an unprecedented knowledge base across the health care ecosystem.

Developed by Ping An Smart City Smart Healthcare and launched in late April, AskBob now covers thousands of medical organizations in China. It helps to streamline the often difficult process to obtain accurate medical and healthcare information, which is expected to save about 50 per cent of doctors’ time in researching prescription information.

Delivering Better Outcomes for Professionals and Patients

Doctors spend an average of 15 to 20 hours per week on continuous learning, research and exchange with other medical professionals, according to iResearch Consulting Group’s “2016 Report on Chinese Doctors’ Demand in Internet Medical Service Sector”. Most of that time is spent organizing and interpreting information – time that could be better spent on more valuable patient-focused tasks.

AskBob provides users with a one-stop medical and healthcare database and a resource for intelligent clinical decision support. Its AI is programmed to interpret the question or problem posed by the user and offer answers in a more accurate and efficient manner than time-consuming manual methods.

Using natural language processing and knowledge-mapping techniques, AskBob accesses and analyzes information on various diseases, symptoms, medical examination encyclopedias, drug specifications, clinical guidelines and more.

AskBob comes in two versions, Basic and Professional. The Basic version is for primary health care practitioners and village doctors, and the Professional version is for specialists and other practitioners in large hospitals.

Improving Efficiency in China’s Health Care Sector

As AskBob is deployed on a larger scale, it has significant potential to support medical professionals to enhance the quality of patient care and the efficiency of the health care system.