Key points from article :
Researchers from Tsinghua University, led by Liu Yang, have developed Agent Hospital, China’s first AI-powered virtual hospital town. Published in the Global Times, the project simulates a fully autonomous healthcare system where AI agents act as doctors, nurses, and patients. These agents, powered by large language models like GPT-3.5, can diagnose and treat thousands of virtual patients with a reported 93.06% accuracy on the MedQA exam dataset.
The AI hospital town enables large-scale medical training by allowing real doctors and students to interact with simulated patients in a risk-free environment. It supports full consultation and treatment workflows, helping train medical professionals more efficiently than traditional methods. The system could also be used for telemedicine, where AI doctors assist in diagnosing real patients remotely.
While Agent Hospital shows great promise, researchers emphasize that AI will not replace human doctors. Experts such as Dr. Dong Jiahong note that medicine requires empathy, judgment, and ethical responsibility—qualities that AI lacks. The project is expected to move toward real-world application in the second half of 2024, pending regulatory approvals and further validation.
