AI-Powered Virtual Doctor Assistant 'Recognize Doctor' Secures Series A Strategic Investment from Sogou, Files for IPO

Recently, “Renshi Doctor,” headquartered at the China AI Town in Hangzhou, Zhejiang Province, announced that it had secured tens of millions of RMB in Series A funding from Sogou, China’s second-largest search engine.

Hangzhou Jiyi Information Technology Co., Ltd.’s “Recognize Doctor” platform was initially established in February 2014. After four years of exploration and development, its business focus has shifted to providing virtual doctor services for the healthcare industry through the application of virtual human technology. To date, it has developed multiple series of data products, knowledge base products, AI products, and distributed learning products.

Renshi Doctor is dedicated to deepening its expertise in the “AI + Healthcare” sector. By collaborating closely with leading clinical medical institutions in China, the global NICE medical knowledge base, and AI scientists from around the world, the company has engaged in long-term research and development of clinical medical products across multiple disease areas, achieving leading results. The company’s team members come from BAT (Baidu, Alibaba, and Tencent) as well as healthcare informatics companies.

Today, in the medical field, companies have partnered with Clarity Limited, a global top-tier medical information company, and Zhejiang Provincial People's Hospital to jointly develop an industry-leading AI virtual doctor by leveraging medical big data, artificial intelligence technology, and clinical medicine.

After four years of exploration and development, Renshi Doctor has focused its business direction on providing “virtual doctor” application solutions for the healthcare industry through the application of virtual human technology. Currently, this solution is already in operation at several Grade A tertiary hospitals across China.

According to Wan Ma, CEO of Renshi Yisheng (Doctor Connect), the company’s “Virtual Doctor” assistant now supports follow-up visits in multiple languages. Hospitals can localize training for minor dialects based on regional needs, thereby enhancing the accuracy of speech recognition and semantic understanding, and ultimately improving the patient experience. Furthermore, Renshi Yisheng can deliver AI-powered physician voice services via telephone by leveraging hardware solutions, enabling tag-based classification management and autonomous learning as required.

Wanma revealed that, through breakthroughs in big data modeling and core algorithms, AI assists physicians in tracking subtle differences across tens of thousands of indicator features, thereby overcoming temporal and spatial barriers to enable long-term patient follow-up. This significantly reduces labor costs and improves the efficiency of hospital-based patient follow-up. It is reported that medical institutions in the United Kingdom have expressed strong interest in “virtual doctor” assistants.

Like attracts like. Ren Shi Yi Sheng’s outstanding performance in the AI-powered virtual medical assistant industry also attracted the attention of Sogou. In October 2018, Sogou made a strategic investment in Ren Shi Yi Sheng.

As China’s leading input method software and second-largest search engine, Sogou launched “Sogou Mingyi,” a vertical search platform for medical information, in May 2016 at the proposal of its CEO, Wang Xiaochuan. It appears that Sogou’s vision for healthcare extends beyond merely providing information.

Wanma stated that Sogou’s strategic investment in “Know Your Doctor” will not only provide financial and technical support to its virtual doctor assistant, further enhancing the product’s interactive experience in medical applications, but also represents an extension of Sogou’s service chain, leveraging its own large user base and AI technological advantages. This investment by Sogou will enable the “Know Your Doctor” virtual doctor assistant to gain strong competitiveness in the market, bringing about a sweeping transformation in the field of medical AI.

Currently, the Chinese government is increasing its policy support and financial investment in public health coverage. With China’s economic growth in recent years, the public has placed greater emphasis on personal health, leading to rising expectations for medical care standards. The virtual physician assistant product, “Know Your Doctor,” will help strengthen the primary healthcare system and benefit the general public. Furthermore, it will better serve national strategic initiatives such as “Healthy China” and the “Family Doctor” program, offering more comprehensive solutions to address structural challenges in the current healthcare reform—namely, the relative scarcity of high-quality medical resources and insufficient service capacity at the primary care level. This will enable medical institutions at all levels across China to fully leverage the technological advantages of artificial intelligence, improve patient experience, and help hospitals truly achieve integrated, continuous, full-process, and full-cycle medical services.