Chinese web company Baidu launches medical chatbot for doctors and patients

In an effort to a facilitate faster, more efficient flow of information between doctors and patients, Chinese search engine Baidu is introducing Melody, an AI-powered conversational bot. Melody gathers information, responds to patients about medical conditions and gives feedback to the real-life doctors. The service is available immediately in China. Melody builds on the Baidu Doctor app, which launched in China in 2015. Essentially, she is the chatbot equivalent of the app coming to life – patients can open the app and ask a question, and Melody will respond with context-relevant questions to clarify information such as symptom frequency or duration.