Ethical, data compliance issues come to fore as AI transforms

While AI in China’s healthcare industry is progressing towards providing reliable solutions, it is still not clear whether it can make a major change in the future of medicine, because this will depend on how stakeholders balance opportunity against risk, according to a media report

In December 2025, China’s National Healthcare Security Administration issued guidance formally classifying "AI-assisted diagnosis" as an extended item within pathological diagnosis and incorporating it into the pricing framework for pathological diagnostic services, the report in the Greek City Times said.

It highlights that behind this wave of innovation, legal and ethical questions around data compliance, algorithmic governance, and the boundaries of medical practice remain unanswered. How does AI in healthcare bridge the gap between the laboratory and the clinic? And how do companies unlock their technological potential within a compliance framework?

Alan Zhou, head of the life sciences and healthcare practice at Global Law Office, believes that healthcare is one of the first verticals where AI has achieved real-world deployment and is growing.

Based on industry observation, Zhou identifies four primary areas where domestic AI healthcare companies are currently focusing their products and services: Clinical decision support, medical imaging, health management and patient-facing services, and drug discovery. These directions respond to practical demands for improved diagnostic efficiency and optimised health management, while avoiding some of the higher-risk segments of medical practice — offering a relatively prudent path to deployment, the report states.

The sensitivity of medical data makes compliance a baseline requirement for survival in the AI healthcare sector.

Zhou identifies data sourcing and its legality as a core difficulty. "The development and deployment of AI technology requires the use of vast quantities of data for training, and data in the medical and pharmaceutical fields frequently involves the sensitive personal information of patients and clinical trial participants," he notes. “As data usage demands grow rapidly alongside technological advancement, regulatory enforcement centred on informed consent under the Personal Information Protection Law is simultaneously intensifying.”