Hospital introduces facial recognition for bill pay

Forty-one self-service terminals with Alipay’s face recognition technology were put into use on Thursday at the Jiangxi Provincial People’s Hospital, China’s first hospital to offer facial recognition services to patients for medical bill payment, according to Alipay.

First-time users must enter their ID number to create a profile, which will be kept on file on the terminals, said Sun Guofeng, director of Alipay’s medical business. After the profile is created, the machine will be able to recognise users.

Once users choose to apply for registration or pay bills, the face recognition process starts. After the user is recognised, phone numbers bound with Alipay are needed to complete the process.

“The whole process takes no longer than 10 seconds,” Mr Sun said. “There is no need to pull out cards or phones since you can complete payment on the machines with one hand.”

New technology is making it more convenient for people to see a doctor, said Huo Yanan, vice president of Jiangxi Provincial People’s Hospital, adding that Alipay’s face recognition service will further facilitate payment for patients.

The number of registered volunteers for organ donation in China had neared 615,000, with 19,380 successful donation surgeries resulting in 54,956 organs transplanted as of September 9 this year, according to the Third China International Organ Donation Conference that opened in Xi’an on Friday. “China’s organ transplantation technique and safety control have improved markedly. We are willing to share our experience and wisdom in this field with other countries,” Huang said.

China will strengthen the development of its organ transplantation work within the legal and ethical framework, and build an even more fair and efficient system.