Baidu, which is often referred to as “Google of China,” wants a piece of the digital health market just like its American counterpart. The most widely used search engine in China is already working on a Google Glass-like device, and now — thanks to the Recode report — we get to learn about their other effort to improve access to health-based information among the Chinese.

“Our long term goal is to build a medical robot,” said Wei Fan, a researcher for Baidu in Sunnyvale, Calif.To that end, Baidu is working on a voice-enabled app that allows users to speak their symptoms and get a likely diagnosis. For instance, achy joints, red eyes and a cough will return an immediate diagnostic suggestion of flu (75% odds). Along with the result, users will also get links to a nearby medical specialist.

“From a patient’s point of view, you’d rather have something like natural language – something you can talk to, [so] you can describe multiple symptoms at the same time,” said Wei Fan, a researcher for Baidu in Sunnyvale, Calif. “Our long term goal is to build a medical robot.”

Wei’s project, called AskADoctor in English, is one of the earliest to emerge from Baidu’s deep learning division since it hired Andrew Ng, a renowned data scientist and former Googler. The initiative is also a sign of broader industry trend of tech firms storming into medical sciences. Take a look at what Google, Apple, IBM and Microsoft are doing to see where this goes. And because of its unique position as China’s leading search engine, Baidu has an unfair advantage to easily reach hundreds millions of users.

AskADoctor can assess 520 different diseases, which represent upwards of 90 percent of the most common medical problems nationwide.At the moment, AskADoctor can assess 520 different diseases, which represent upwards of 90 percent of the most common medical problems nationwide. A desktop version is now available, and Baidu plans to release the mobile app in the near future. Going forward, the plan is to link the product with medical records in China to get an even better image of one’s health.

In the meantime, the [Chinese] company keeps investing in artificial intelligence technology. Ng noted that Baidu has 16 graphics processing units training speech models, which is more than he had at Google.

“I’m pretty confident we’re building supercomputers that let us scale with these deep learning algorithms bigger, faster than anyone else,” he said.