China has inaugurated its first artificial intelligence (AI) hospital town, where patients receive treatment from AI-generated doctors within a virtual environment, as reported by state media on Wednesday. The AI hospital town represents a significant advancement for both the medical field and the general public by training doctor agents in a simulated environment, enabling them to autonomously evolve and enhance their disease treatment capabilities, according to the Beijing-based Global Times, which cited recent interviews with Chinese researchers.

Researchers from Tsinghua University have developed the “Agent Hospital” within this virtual world, where all doctors, nurses, and patients are managed by intelligent agents powered by large language models (LLMs) capable of autonomous interaction. This innovative approach allows AI doctors to treat as many as 10,000 patients in a few days—a workload that would take human doctors at least two years to manage.

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Liu Yang, the research team leader of the Agent Hospital, highlighted the benefits of this method for real doctors and medical students alike. This virtual setup allows medical professionals to practice on AI patients, providing a risk-free environment for proposing and testing treatment plans, thereby offering enhanced training for medical students.

The AI hospital town can also simulate and predict various medical scenarios, such as the spread, development, and control of infectious diseases within a region, as explained by Liu. After six months of development, the AI hospital town is approaching practical readiness, with plans to become operational by the second half of 2024.