Baidu Launches Melody, AI-Powered Conversational Bot for Doctors and Patients

Baidu, Inc. BIDU today launched Melody, an AI-powered conversational bot that helps doctors gather information and respond to patients about their medical conditions.

Baidu's Melody is designed to save time in online discussions between doctors and patients, and provide relevant, contextual information to doctors to assist with recommendations and treatment options.

Melody incorporates advanced deep learning and natural language processing (NLP) technologies developed by Baidu. It integrates with Baidu Doctor, an app that Baidu launched in China in 2015. The Baidu Doctor app allows patients to ask doctors direct questions, book appointments online and search for healthcare-related information.

When a patient opens the Baidu Doctor app to pose a question, Melody asks the patient additional context-relevant questions to clarify information such as the duration, severity and frequency of symptoms. It can also ask about additional symptoms possibly related to the condition but not initially mentioned by the patient. This provides the doctor with a more complete picture with which to make an informed decision (such as whether to recommend an immediate appointment). Melody can suggest possible treatment options directly to the doctor, who can choose to communicate those options to the patient or develop his or her own recommendations.