Soon after Chinese health officials informed the World Health Organization in January 2020 that 41 people in Wuhan had fallen ill with a mysterious pneumonia, China’s A.I. companies started designing or refining their systems and algorithms to fight what would become a global pandemic. In addition to speeding up the deployment of artificial intelligence–based “doctor” chatbots that connect China’s rural communities with health care professionals and machine learning algorithms for pharmaceutical research, the A.I. firms quickly opened four fronts in the then-nascent war on COVID-19—in public health monitoring, medical imaging, robotics, and human-computer interaction.

Several state-owned and private sector A.I. firms in China—such as 4 Paradigm, Potevio, Airdoc, and Beijing SEEMMO Technology—created A.I.-based surveillance systems to remotely monitor patients, according to a brief published recently by the Center for Security and Emerging Technology at Georgetown University’s Walsh School of Foreign Service. Others—such as Beijing Infervision, Beijing Kunlun Medical, Keya Imaging, United Imaging, and Yitu Technology—incorporated A.I. into medical imaging technology to detect COVID-19 cases faster.

A third set of firms—including Wuzhu Technology, TMiRob, AUBO Robotics, Keenon Robotics, and Shanghai Mumu Robot—helped minimize exposure to the virus by developing robots that could provide disinfection services, temperature screenings, and contactless meal deliveries in hospitals and medical facilities. And a fourth group—Beijing Unisound, iFlytek, Futong Dongfang, and Yunji Technology, among them—reduced the risk of public transmission by developing voice-based A.I. systems to ensure less contact with surfaces and humans.

What stands out isn’t how China is using A.I. to tackle the pandemic, but how deep and specialized its health care data, algorithms, and A.I. research are becoming in the process. Industry-specific vertical innovation is critical for sustained success with A.I., and China’s ability to kick-start that cycle in several industries may enable it to take over the leadership of the global A.I. industry in the not-too-distant future.