While AI hospitals remain a new concept for many, China on Thursday announced its first "super AI hospital," further pushing the integration of artificial intelligence into the healthcare system.

The announcement was made at the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum, a forum named after the innovation hub in Beijing. 

Just less than a year ago, one of the country's top universities, Tsinghua University, launched the world's first AI hospital: Tsinghua AI Agent Hospital. Compared with conventional ones, the hospital blends virtual AI agents, clinical care, and real-world deployment into one tightly integrated system. 

A document released at the forum, named AI Hospital International Alliance Consensus, shows an AI hospital is designed to be AI-native, which means that artificial intelligence is not just a "plugin" or an extra feature added to an old system – it is the foundation upon which everything else is built.

The super AI hospital, located in Boao Town of China's tropical island of Hainan, is reportedly built on a self-developed "Alliance MaaS (Model as a Service) Platform" as its technological foundation. It integrates three core engines – cutting-edge medical knowledge graphs, evidence-based medicine data, and real-world evidence – while connecting multiple international alliances across fields such as global hospitals, physicians, technologies, medical devices, pharmaceuticals, payment systems, and medical tourism, to form a cross-institution, cross-region, and cross-border healthcare resource network.

While AI has been rapidly transforming healthcare in recent years, experts have raised concerns over its accuracy and ethical issues. A report from World Economic Forum last year shows that AI in healthcare risks could exclude 5 billion people living in low and middle-income countries, deepening global health inequalities.

(Cover: A visitor shakes hand with a robot at the 2026 Zhongguancun Forum, Beijing, March 24, 2026. /CFP)