Clinic AI in Shanghai, what private clinics and health systems should know in 2026

The private care market in Shanghai

The Shanghai Municipal Statistics Bureau counted 6,566 health institutions and 282,100 health technicians at the end of 2025, and 288 million patient visits during the year.¹ The same bulletin recorded 9.36 million inbound visitors, 7.23 million of them foreign nationals, with international tourism income of 14.8 billion US dollars.¹

Foreign investment in hospitals is opening. Xinhua reported in November 2024 that Shanghai is one of nine places where wholly foreign-owned hospitals may be set up.⁶ Shanghai's own plan, issued by the Shanghai Municipal Health Commission and three other departments in December 2024, allows in principle up to two such hospitals in each special function zone or area where foreign residents cluster.⁷

The rules a clinic in Shanghai works under

The Shanghai Municipal Health Commission supervises medical institutions in the city.⁷ Its plan for foreign-owned hospitals requires their information systems to connect to the city and district supervision platforms, and the servers that store electronic medical records and device data to be located in China.⁷

Health data counts as sensitive personal information under PIPL and needs the patient's separate consent, so the consent to record a consultation for an AI note belongs in the record.³ Any transfer out of China runs through a PIPL route, and the CAC adds a security assessment once sensitive data of 10,000 or more people a year is involved.³⁴

People's Daily reported that on 17 May 2024 the Lingang New Area published the first general data lists for cross-border scenarios, covering connected vehicles, public funds and biomedicine, with scenarios such as clinical trials and drug research across 64 data categories and more than 600 fields.⁵ The lists serve research and industry, and a clinic's patient records stay under the national rules.

wai hosts each clinic's records in its own country, under that country's rules. We set this up with your clinic. wai is compliant with these rules and built for clinics in Shanghai. The doctor signs every note before anything clinical leaves the clinic.

The languages Shanghai patients write in

Most patients write in Chinese. The 2020 census counted 163,954 Shanghai residents from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan or with foreign nationality, behind only Guangdong and Yunnan, and foreign visits grew 45.3% in 2025.²¹

wai works in any language.⁸ Bring last week's enquiries from overseas patients, in the languages they arrived in, and judge each draft yourself.

What a demo shows in Shanghai

An email sent at midnight by a visiting executive asking for a check-up this week shows the open times, a slot held and a reply waiting for the coordinator to approve at 8:30. A call missed during clinic becomes a drafted text, and email, web and phone history sit in one thread per patient.

In the consultation room, the note is drafted while the doctor talks, after the patient has agreed, and the referral letter is ready to sign before the next patient. Every draft and signature is logged and exportable.

For hospital groups and insurers in Shanghai

Groups planning a foreign-owned hospital or an international clinic network can have wai built around one pathway, with data rights and exit terms agreed in the contract and records kept in China. The organisations page has the details.

Where to start

First, add a separate consent line for recording and AI drafting to intake.³ Second, get in writing where records are stored and processed and whether any personal information leaves China, using the questions in the data residency guide.⁴

Third, if the clinic runs research in the free trade zone or Lingang, check with counsel whether any research data falls under the zone's lists.⁵ Fourth, bring a week of international and local enquiries to a fifteen-minute demo, then pilot with one doctor and the patient coordinator for a month.

Frequently asked questions