WHO, ITU and WIPO Hold AI for Health Global Initiative 2026 Annual Meeting in Hangzhou as Xunfei Healthcare Joins Governance Talks

The meeting was organized by the National Health Development Research Center under the National Health Commission, the China Academy of Information and Communications Technology and the Chinese Health Economics Association. Opening remarks were given by Martin Taylor, WHO Representative in China; Seizo Onoe, Director of the ITU Telecommunication Standardization Bureau; Edward Kwakwa, WIPO Assistant Director General; Yao Jia, Deputy Director General of the Science and Technology Department of the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology; and Fang Jianguo, Director of the Zhejiang Provincial Health Commission. Zhuang Ning, Director of the Planning Department of the National Health Commission, and Alain Labrique, Director of the WHO Department of Data, Digital Health, Analytics and Artificial Intelligence, delivered keynote reports.

The AI for Health Global Initiative was launched in 2023 to bring together three UN specialized agencies with complementary expertise to promote, advance and implement artificial intelligence applications in health. The previous two annual meetings were held overseas, and this year's meeting was the first to take place in China, which the report described as recognition of China's medical AI industry practices and a sign of China's growing participation and voice in global medical AI governance. Participants agreed that AI-enabled health should be oriented toward improving global health goals, while governance and regulation, intellectual property protection and technical standards systems should be improved and cross-border and cross-institutional cooperation deepened.

As a domestic medical AI innovator, Xunfei Healthcare took part in building the global medical AI governance system. At the forum on building an integrated medical service system with AI, led by the National Health Development Research Center, Liu Yang, vice president of Xunfei Healthcare, delivered a keynote speech titled AI Empowering PHC: From Medical Large Models to Real-World Applications, sharing the company's experience in primary health care. Liu said that as the contractor for the National AI Industry Mid-Test Base in the primary health service direction, Xunfei Healthcare follows policy requirements and uses the Spark Medical Large Model as its technical foundation to build a digital and intelligent primary health care service system covering pre-diagnosis, diagnosis and post-diagnosis. The work focuses on improving the pre-diagnosis service experience, strengthening diagnostic capacity during consultations, enhancing post-diagnosis health management and empowering institutional operations. Through integrated health management centers, intelligent general practice rooms and digital family doctors, supported by an integrated primary-level intelligent information platform, the company seeks to deepen the integration of AI with primary health care and help address insufficient primary diagnostic capacity, low service efficiency and poor patient experience. The goal is to create an AI diagnosis and treatment assistant for every doctor and an AI health assistant for every person, injecting digital momentum into high-quality development of primary health care.

Xunfei Healthcare's domestic digital health practices have received international recognition. At the 78th World Health Assembly in 2025, during a China side event on digital intelligence empowering primary health care for universal health coverage, the Smart Doctor Assistant appeared on the international stage as an outstanding practice case and was featured on the National Health Commission's English website. At the 79th World Health Assembly in 2026, an AI resident health portrait system based on mature implementation experience in Shanghai's Jing'an district and other places appeared again at a thematic side event. The two results have become demonstration samples of China's primary health care development for global export. At the innovation exhibition area of this year's meeting, the Smart Doctor Assistant again drew health administrative departments and international experts from multiple countries for exchanges and recognition through real-world case demonstrations and application results.

During the meeting, He Zhiyang, dean of the Xunfei Healthcare Research Institute, was invited to attend the forum on medical AI benchmark evaluation and talent governance and joined a roundtable discussion on Global Collaboration on Medical AI Benchmark Evaluation: Standards, Technology and Industrial Implementation. He said that as medical AI moves toward large-scale application, a unified benchmark evaluation system based on multi-party consensus is needed. This is a core foundation for solving real clinical problems, safeguarding the bottom line of medical safety and guiding the orderly development of the industry. Xunfei Healthcare has long participated in promoting domestic and international medical AI standards development, covering comprehensive evaluation systems for medical large model capabilities, doctor diagnosis and treatment assistants and personal health assistants, and has accumulated practical experience in validating the safety and effectiveness of medical AI applications.

As an important exchange platform for global medical AI governance and industry practice, the annual meeting provides an international dialogue channel for Chinese medical AI companies. Xunfei Healthcare used the meeting to share its primary health care digitalization results and take part in discussions on global medical AI rules coordination, showing the practical responsibility of a Chinese technology company in participating in global health governance and promoting inclusive sharing of digital health outcomes. In the future, Xunfei Healthcare said it will continue to follow a globalization approach: on one hand, it will deepen work in real domestic medical and health scenarios, improve technical capabilities and accumulate more replicable digital health practices; on the other hand, it will integrate into the global health industry ecosystem, continue to participate in international rules and standards development and work with global partners to promote safe and orderly development of medical AI and contribute Chinese strength to sustainable global health development.