00:00Right, let's talk about Jackma's, Jackma-backed Ant Group.
00:05Okay, we've got to get the semantics accurate here.
00:07Well, the company's betting on healthcare, powered by AI, to fuel its next phase of growth.
00:12And it's after the company had to rein in its ambitions following its derailed IPO a few years back.
00:17Our Asia Finance and Wealth Managing editor, Lulu Chen, is here with us on set
00:21to talk us through a little bit more on this new endeavor
00:24and why Ant is expanding specifically in healthcare AI.
00:28So people might find it quite surprising because when we think about Ant, it's a fintech company.
00:33They specialize in lending and also selling asset management products underpinned by Alipay.
00:41But because of the regulatory changes in the past few years, that growth has been capped.
00:47And when you think about for a company like Ant, there aren't that many sectors
00:50that they can really, really sink their teeth into and have a story to tell.
00:54So what they're hoping for is that Ant, by investing in AI health,
01:01this is a sector that they can find growth to propel the company for the next 10 years.
01:07And the policies are there.
01:09The environment, think about China's population,
01:13one-third would hit more than 60 years old within 10 years.
01:17And then also right now there are policies that allow Chinese consumers to buy prescription drugs online.
01:25So there are many things going for the company, especially with the advent of AI.
01:29Many technology aspirations that companies had in the past, they can achieve now.
01:35So Ant definitely has an advantage going into the sector.
01:40Okay, I was about to ask you that because you alluded to the fact that it's originally not from this
01:44part of the neighborhood.
01:45If you could elaborate more on the advantages that the company brings here to this space.
01:48Absolutely.
01:49So Ant, underpinned by Alipay, which it already has 800 million people using Alipay,
01:56connecting their medical insurance information to the payment app,
02:00and they can automatically reimburse their medical hospital bills.
02:05And that creates synergy with the AI app, which they just rolled out, called AQ.
02:11So AQ has 30 million users every month.
02:15And that is the app where they're hoping to use AI,
02:18where they can help people not only at the very basic level,
02:22think of it as your personal trainer who's asking you, are you eating the right foods?
02:26Is your blood pressure at the right levels?
02:29And it goes a step further if you have questions about your prescription,
02:33about side effects for drugs that you ordered.
02:35It can also answer those questions.
02:38What's more experimental right now is that they are creating these AI avatars with doctors.
02:44So they've worked with 1,000 doctors in China where they create their AI avatars online.
02:50And doctors who used to be only to see 20 patients can all of a sudden see millions of people.
02:54And so people are interacting with that.
02:57You might be curious about how do they train them with the data.
03:02Yeah, that's speaking my curiosity.
03:03But yes, go ahead.
03:04So the data, quite selective.
03:06It doesn't come from online and just scrape any data.
03:10It's medical records and also medical research papers.
03:15Proprietary data that the doctors have,
03:17decades of records of their own written notes with patients,
03:21audio recordings, and even video consultations with the patients,
03:25but their identities strip.
03:27So that's what they think will help them get an edge into the sector.
03:31And with the avatars, what they can do is they do the basic work and filter all the cases that
03:36are not relevant.
03:37If it's really urgent, they refer you to the doctor themselves,
03:40and then they can do follow-up consultations as well.
03:43Okay, so that's where the person comes in.
03:45What risks are there?
03:47Well, the biggest risk would be for any player in this sector,
03:51including the batch that started 10 years ago,
03:54finding the right business model.
03:56Most companies have failed to find the right business model in online health care besides selling drugs.
04:04And Ant is also up against other AI companies as well,
04:08like DeepSeq and Tencent,
04:10which are also trying to expand their expertise in the field.
04:13So it's not just incumbent players, but also the AI giants in the sector as well.
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