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Researchers from Tsinghua University's Institute for AI Industry Research (AIR) have unveiled what they call the world’s first AI hospital, known as Agent Hospital, featuring 42 AI-powered doctors across 21 departments. Led by Liu Yan, the project is described in a blog post by AIR and marks a significant step forward in applying large language models (LLMs) to healthcare.
The AI agents—acting as doctors, nurses, and even patients—can autonomously simulate an entire patient care journey. This includes pre-hospital tasks like triage and registration, in-hospital services such as consultations and diagnoses, and post-hospital follow-up and rehabilitation. These virtual doctors are capable of learning by experience and refining their medical decision-making skills by reviewing literature and processing patient cases.
In a high-speed test, the system diagnosed over 10,000 virtual patients in just a few days—a workload that would take a human doctor about two years. On a benchmark test (MedQA) covering major respiratory diseases, the AI doctors achieved an impressive 93.06% accuracy rate.
While this technology has the potential to significantly transform healthcare delivery, researchers emphasize the need for strict adherence to national medical regulations and human-AI collaboration standards before real-world deployment. According to Liu Yan, the system is close to being ready for practical use and could offer major benefits to both healthcare providers and patients.
