On March 26, 2026, the 2026 World Digital Health Forum was held in Beijing. Hosted by the Chinese Academy of Engineering and Tsinghua University, the event was co-organized by Beijing Tsinghua Changgung Hospital, Tsinghua University. More than 700 representatives, including 10 academicians and 40 hospital presidents, from countries such as the UK, Italy, and Indonesia attended and participated in in-depth discussions.
Through interdisciplinary and cross-border expert deliberation, the forum officially issued the International Consensus on the Intelligent Integrated Alliance of AI Hospitals (hereinafter referred to as the Consensus). As the world’s first international consensus on AI hospitals, it delivers a consensus definition of an "AI Hospital" at the global level, systematically elaborates its five core characteristics, and clarifies the essential differences between AI hospitals and existing healthcare models including AI-augmented hospitals, internet hospitals, and medical consortiums.
Consensus Definition of an AI Hospital
The Consensus clearly defines an AI hospital as a new paradigm of smart healthcare driven by service digital twins.
It is a healthcare ecosystem built with artificial intelligence as its fundamental operational logic. By deeply integrating the professional depth of offline medical services and the universal reach of online services, it enables all-time, all-region, all-dimensional and whole-process proactive health care.
It is worth emphasizing that an AI hospital is not a virtual hospital without real physicians. In an AI hospital, patient diagnosis and treatment are still delivered by real medical teams, and surgeries are still performed in physical operating rooms. The core essence of an AI hospital lies in the in-depth integration of artificial intelligence into every link of medical services, integrating the professional capabilities of physical hospitals with the extensive reach of online platforms to provide patients with far more continuous care than traditional models.
Simply put, an AI hospital is neither a traditional hospital merely equipped with several AI tools, nor a purely virtual system detached from physical medical services. Instead, it takes AI as the core driving force to reconstruct an integrated online-offline healthcare service system.
The Consensus also points out that the AI hospital represents an ideal healthcare model achievable in the artificial intelligence era. It is not yet a fully implemented reality, but a clear blueprint for the future healthcare system based on current technological trends and global medical practice exploration. The development direction is clear, the implementation path is taking shape, and core technical conditions are becoming increasingly mature.
Five Core Characteristics
From five dimensions — paradigm innovation, service digital twin, virtual-physical collaboration, integrated ecosystem, and proactive care — the Consensus elaborates the inherent attributes of AI hospitals.
1. Paradigm Innovation: From Renovating the Old to Building from Scratch
An AI hospital does not simply add AI functions to a traditional hospital; it is a brand-new system constructed with artificial intelligence as the underlying logic from the initial design. The Consensus defines this feature as AI-native: its data architecture, decision-making processes and service models are built around intelligent capabilities from the outset, endowing the system with autonomous perception, active decision-making and continuous evolution.
To draw an analogy: it is not merely installing smart home appliances in an old building, but designing and constructing an entirely new smart building from the foundation up.
This paradigm innovation brings fundamental changes at three levels:
The system evolves from relying solely on physical institutions to a virtual-physical symbiotic health service ecosystem;
The service model shifts from passive disease-centered response to proactive whole-life-cycle health management;
Medical services achieve qualitative improvements in quality, efficiency, cost affordability and accessibility.
2. Service Digital Twin: Integrating Online and Offline as One
In traditional healthcare, hospital visits and post-discharge rehabilitation management are often disconnected as two separate matters. By contrast, an AI hospital is fundamentally designed as a symbiotic whole for physical medical services and online health services, realizing in-depth mapping and collaborative operation via a unified data platform and intelligent hub.
For instance, after a patient is discharged following surgery, the AI system immediately takes over post-operative rehabilitation management: delivering personalized daily rehabilitation guidance, monitoring recovery data through wearable devices, and alerting attending physicians promptly upon detecting abnormalities. Offline surgery and online rehabilitation form a continuous and integrated process, rather than two disconnected service segments. This is fundamentally different from simply adding an online portal to an existing hospital system — the service digital twin achieves architectural-level integrated reshaping, with online and offline services designed as an indivisible organic whole from the start.
3. Virtual-Physical Collaboration: Distinct Roles with Seamless Coordination
Both offline and online services play irreplaceable roles in an AI hospital.
Offline medical care focuses on in-person services that require face-to-face delivery: complex surgeries, emergency and critical care, precision examinations, and on-site multidisciplinary teamwork.
Online services undertake time- and space-independent health care: daily health monitoring, early risk warning, chronic disease management, intelligent follow-up, rehabilitation guidance and medication reminders.
For patients, this means no need to rush to hospital for minor health issues, nor worrying about losing professional support after leaving hospital. Medical teams provide face-to-face diagnosis and treatment when surgery is needed, while the AI system offers continuous health monitoring at home. In case of sudden discomfort late at night, the AI health assistant can conduct real-time assessment and offer professional advice, with the system automatically arranging nearby offline medical treatment when necessary. Offline services meet definite demands for complex and severe illnesses, while online services satisfy continuous daily health needs, forming organic collaboration based on respective strengths.
4. Integrated Ecosystem: Unified Health Records, Unified System, Unobstructed Service Flow
Online and offline services in an AI hospital are more than simple information exchange; they form an interdependent and co-evolving organic ecosystem. Online services grow continuously relying on clinical data and professional expertise accumulated offline, while offline services are optimized through the data continuity and extensive reach of online platforms.
For patients, the most intuitive experience is that a complete unified health record is accessible across different hospitals, mobile platforms and community health service stations, with consistent and coherent services available everywhere. Examination results are mutually recognized in real time, and diagnosis and treatment information is automatically synchronized. Patients no longer need to carry piles of paper reports between medical institutions or repeat their medical history at every new hospital visit. This integration extends beyond individual hospitals to multi-level regional medical institutions and community health networks, eliminating information barriers and delivering seamless integrated service experiences for patients transferring across medical facilities.
5. Proactive Care: From Seeking Medical Help After Illness to System-initiated Health Protection
Traditional healthcare starts with patients taking the initiative to seek treatment when feeling unwell. AI hospitals fundamentally reverse this logic. Supported by smart wearable devices and home health terminals, the system enables round-the-clock health monitoring, capturing abnormal health signals even before symptoms appear, providing early warning and intervention to contain potential health risks at an early stage.
The Consensus summarizes the service goal with Four Alls:
All-time: 24/7 uninterrupted health protection with instant response to sudden discomfort at any hour;
All-region: Services unrestricted by geographical boundaries, making professional health care accessible both in urban and rural areas;
All-dimensional: Covering physical, psychological and social health needs, focusing on patients as complete individuals rather than merely treating diseases;
Whole-process: Running through the full life cycle of prevention, screening, diagnosis and treatment, rehabilitation and health promotion, forming an uninterrupted health protection chain.
As a result, AI hospitals achieve a fundamental shift in service focus — evolving from disease-centered treatment to health-centered management.
