The application of artificial intelligence (AI) in the medical field has helped grassroots medical institutions in the city of Yangquan in North China's Shanxi province to optimize their medical services. 

In Jucheng town, Yangquan, a patient recently hurried to the town health center, with his hand covering his right upper abdomen, and told Liu Guiping, a doctor at the center, about his condition. 

Liu input the patient's symptoms into an intelligent medical assistant system, and several suspected diagnoses then popped up, which caught his attention: acute cholecystitis, acute cholangitis, and gallstones with cholecystitis. He followed the system's prompts for further consultation, gave the patient an abdominal ultrasound checkup, and then determined that the patient had multiple gallstones. 

The intelligent medical assistant system Liu used is an intelligent auxiliary diagnosis and treatment system that was developed by Chinese AI pioneer iFLYTEK. It can diagnose 1,400 diseases, has knowledge on more than 50,000 medications, and is currently assisting 56,000 grassroots doctors in nearly 400 districts and counties across the country. 

"We mainly prescribe drugs based on the patients' current symptoms and medical history, which sometimes causes misdiagnoses," said Liu, "The AI system is a good counselor, and thanks to it, it did not delay the patient's treatment.” 

According to iFLYTEK, the intelligent medical assistant system combines medical semantic computing, language comprehension, knowledge reasoning, and data mining and analysis. It provides intelligent assistance for grassroots doctors in clinical decision-making, and improves diagnosis and treatment efficiency. 

Currently, the system has offered more than 560 million auxiliary diagnoses and corrected 1.25 million unreasonable diagnoses.