AI Meets Newborns: The Next Decade of China's Maternal and Infant Industry

China's maternal and infant industry is undergoing a structural reshaping driven by policy guidance, AI and data, and standardized services, aiming to build a warm and technology - enabled maternal and infant ecosystem.

Author | Gu Zuoyou

1. From "Fertility-Friendly" to "Industry Restructuring": The Policy Window Has Opened

"Low fertility rate is not an isolated social problem, but an all-chain industrial transformation challenge." At the Second Boao Global Maternal and Infant Brand Expo, Xu Congjian, a member of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference and the former dean of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Hospital of Fudan University in Shanghai, started his speech like this.

He pointed out that behind the declining fertility rate are the systematic problems of whether young people "dare to have children" and "can afford to raise them". The focus of policies is shifting from encouraging childbearing to building a fertility-friendly society - a comprehensive system involving medical care, insurance, housing, education, and even data governance. "From the National Health Commission to the National Development and Reform Commission, policies are reconstructing the standard boundaries of the maternal and infant health and care system," Xu Congjian said. "The maternal and infant industry is no longer a loose service industry, but is becoming a 'policy-driven new industry'."

In his view, this is a signal of a new industrial cycle. The government is shifting from "laissez-faire market" to "guiding standards", and industry innovators need to find their positions in the new order - "How to make families feel secure, make services more professional, and make health data more reliable will become the core proposition in the next decade."

2. From Hospitals to Maternity Centers: The Breakthrough and Establishment of the Industry Reality

"Having a baby used to be a family matter, but now it has become a systematic project." Duan Tao, the director of the Obstetrics and Gynecology Department of Shanghai East Hospital and a leading figure in Shanghai's medical field, summed up the industry reality in one sentence.

He observed that the maternal and infant industry is facing a "double break": one is the information break between doctors and service institutions - data cannot be connected, and risk responsibilities are blurred; the other is the break in consumer trust - there are many brands but chaotic standards, and the word-of-mouth system has failed. "Good service alone is not enough," Duan Tao said bluntly. "The industry must shift from experience-driven to standard-driven, and from human governance to digital governance."

He proposed that "the era of single products is over", and the core competitiveness of maternal and infant services will come from the "double helix of experience and standards": only by modularizing and digitizing maternal and infant care, health management, postpartum rehabilitation, etc., can scale replication and financial expansion be achieved. In a closed-door exchange, he discussed the implementation of AI in medical applications with AI entrepreneurs and data governance experts, from robotic arm-assisted ultrasound imaging to AI recognition of standard sections and automatic report generation. "AI is becoming the doctor's'second assistant', not a replacement."

He emphasized that "the real challenge is not technology, but how to standardize data so that AI has something to learn." Duan Tao's judgment is realistic and calm: the innovation in the maternal and infant industry is entering the deep water area. Medical intelligence, service platformization, and brand digitization - these are three parallel but complementary routes.

3. AI and Data Elements: The "New Foundation" of the Industry is Taking Shape

"AI is not just cold computing power, but productive force with a human touch." Huangfu Bingjing, the executive member of the Data and Governance Special Committee of the China Electronic Information Industry Federation and the director of the Future Creative Laboratory, defined the role of artificial intelligence at the Boao Forum. He understood the digitalization of the maternal and infant industry from a more macro strategic perspective.

"The Fourth Plenary Session of the 20th Central Committee of the Communist Party of China proposed to 'fully implement the AI + action', which means that AI has transformed from a tool to the foundation of the industry." As of 2025, China's AI patent applications accounted for nearly 40% of the global total, forming a complete industrial chain from frameworks, models to applications. And data has been established as the sixth major production factor after labor, capital, land, knowledge, and technology.

Huangfu Bingjing believes that the maternal and infant industry is an ideal scenario for the marketization of data elements: if the experiences of doctors, nurses, early childhood educators, and maternity nurses cannot be standardized and labeled, they cannot be learned by AI; once they are structured, they can become "circulable knowledge assets". The "Maternal and Infant Data Asset Alliance" project he is promoting is centered around this concept.

The first phase of the project is implemented in Changzhou, aiming to form a data rights confirmation, valuation, and circulation system for the service data, rehabilitation records, customer feedback, and AI analysis results of maternal and infant institutions - "to turn maternal and infant services from experience into assets and from individual cases into a system." He described it as a "social-level AI scenario innovation": "The maternal and infant industry is an industry rich in emotions and trust. AI must learn to understand the 'human touch' and be responsible here."

4. The Convergence of Ideas: The "Chinese-Style Intelligent Practice" in the Maternal and Infant Industry

At the closed-door roundtable at the Boao Forum, three experts from different fields had a rare convergence of ideas: Xu Congjian, representing the forefront of policies, pointed out the local logic of "from encouraging childbearing to supporting childbearing"; Duan Tao, from the perspective of a medical practitioner, revealed the real contradictions in the industry transformation; Huangfu Bingjing, starting from the underlying logic of AI and data elements, provided the possibility of a "new foundation" for the industry.

This cross - border dialogue shows that the future of the maternal and infant industry will not only be service upgrading, but a structural restructuring: policies provide directions, the industry provides scenarios, and technology provides the foundation. When these three factors resonate, a Chinese-style "AI + industry" model will emerge.

5. Conclusion: When Data Understands the Human Touch

In the last dialogue of the conference, Huangfu Bingjing said: "In the AI era, the maternal and infant industry not only needs the human touch, but also computing power; data will become the bridge connecting technology and love." This sentence may summarize the spiritual core of the entire conference - when AI and data become the new infrastructure of the maternal and infant industry, it not only reconstructs the business model, but also reshapes the way of trust between people.

From policy designers to doctors, from entrepreneurs to AI engineers, they are all answering the same question: how to make technology understand life and the human touch. And this is the most memorable moment left by the Boao conference for the local maternal and infant industry.