Photo: AFP

China's information tech-giants have been providing various free services to help the world in fighting against the COVID-19 pandemic with their self-developed advanced technologies.

JD Health, an online medical consultation platform affiliated with JD.com, one of China's leading e-commerce giants, announced the launch of a free English-language online medical consultation platform to help people around the world to fight against COVID-19 on March 24.

The platform summoned some 20 doctors to provide consultations in English, some 30 traditional Chinese medicine experts and 38 medical experts who had fight in the frontline against the COVID-19 in Hubei Province to share their experience with people around the world, according to the document JD Health sent to the Global Times.

Searching for "coronavirus" or "find a doctor" in the app of JD, people can get access to professional medical experts in various departments, basic knowledge on COVID-19, tips to prevent the disease, and free psychological consultation.

As of April 27, the platform had received a total of 180,000 consultations from more than 7 million people.

The online medical consultation platform launched by JD Health to help people around the world to fight against COVID-19 Photo: Courtesy of JD Health

Huawei Cloud also announced the launch of a global action plan to help customers around the world to fight COVID-19, in which, the cloud service provider under the Chinese tech giant Huawei Technologies provides free AI and cloud services and will be recruiting partners around the world to help fight this pandemic together.

Deng Tao, president of Huawei Cloud Global Market, said that "Huawei Cloud has been working with partners in China to use innovative technologies such as cloud and AI to fight the pandemic, and has accumulated practical experiences with AI-assisted CT scan analysis, drug discovery, online education and telecommuting technologies," according to the website of the company.

As early as March 17, the Health Ministry of Ecuador announced to use the AI-assisted CT scan analysis system to help the country screen COVID-19 cases.

On the morning of March 18, the service was launched in Ecuador and diagnosed five suspected cases, and the result shows that the AI-assisted CT scan analysis system can accurately locate the infected area.

On March 22, Vice President of Ecuador Otto Sonnenholzner thanked Huawei Cloud on his twitter account for helping the Ecuador to fight against the COVID-19 with its AI-assisted scan analysis system, which made Ecuador the first Latin American country to boast the system.

On April 13, Tencent Cloud launched an international anti-COVID-19 service package to help support the global fight against the pandemic, according to Tencent, another Chinese top technology company.

Products launched in the first phase can be used in a wide range of scenarios including enabling remote collaboration, facilitating online medical consultation and helping governments promote access to reliable information. Tencent Cloud will also provide free credits for some cloud service purchases to help companies and organizations in need. 

Previously, Tencent launched a global platform for healthcare information amid the epidemic. This service has also been launched in English, including a section for "COVID-19 Epidemic Info", AI-powered COVID-19 self-screening tools, We Doctor and Dingxiangyuan, which gives users worldwide access to epidemic updates, medical knowledge, self-diagnosis tips, online voluntary clinics and more, according to Tencent.