Public hospitals hope that artificial intelligence will help them identify and treat high risk patients at an earlier stage.

The Hospital Authority's head of information technology and health informatics, Dr Cheung Ngai-tseung, said the authority was looking to incorporate AI into the existing clinical management system, which contains more than 10 million patients' records, to create automated tools to tailor individual treatments.

Hospital services have been digitalised, including having paperless patient records that allow for real-time information updates on the authority's HA Go app, which enhances patients' self-care abilities.

AI could be used to remind patients of specific prescriptions and laboratory results in the form of a blue elf on the screen.

Dr Cheung spoke about future plans to further develop the system.

"So the general capabilities as described is perhaps things like, more use of AI, more use of personalisation, more communication techniques, that sort of thing. Plus specific targeted interventions that will be maybe disease-specific or specific workflows that exist in today's hospitals," he said.

Dr Cheung added that more work was needed on specific cases and they were working on a fifth generation of the system.