Guangdong Province, an economic powerhouse in south China, launched a provincewide project to provide AI-assisted medical service to 2,277 impoverished villages, the provincial health commission said.

Doctors in these villages will receive intelligent health check kits through the project and gain access to better medical resources through telemedicine technology, said Duan Yufei, chief of the provincial health commission.

The project will help improve the medical expertise of village-level doctors and better serve the needs of the rural population, said Duan.

So far, all of the village doctors have received training on how to use the health check kits and a "Village Doctor Workstation" app, which has a special section for "AI doctor's assistant."

The section incorporates close to 100 million medical records and prescriptions and can recommend prescriptions for about 300 common diseases, the commission said.

Users of the app receive suggestions on prescriptions in traditional Chinese medicine, which is favored by the people in Guangdong.

The health check kit has eight types of monitoring instruments, including a blood pressure meter, blood routine tester, infrared thermometer, fetal heart monitor, holter monitor and routine urine tester.

The program is one of 10 practices to solve livelihood issues in Guangdong Province this year. More than 20,000 patients have benefited from the project.