China's NDRC pushes LLMs and embodied AI into elderly care

On November 10, 2026, the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC) held a press conference kicking off its 'Striving for the 15th Five-Year Plan' series, outlining measures to improve public well-being. According to a report IT Home cited from Jiemian that day, Zhang Luqin, deputy director of the NDRC's Pricing Department, said the agency would keep expanding the supply of quality products and services to better meet the diverse consumption needs of older adults.

The work falls into three areas. First, broaden age-friendly consumption scenarios by pushing ahead with the expansion and upgrade of the '15-minute convenient living circle' initiative, scaling up community- and home-based services such as meal assistance, bathing support and housekeeping, guiding supermarkets to set up dedicated experience zones for products for the elderly, and encouraging e-commerce platforms to open silver-hair consumption sections. Second, enrich silver-hair offerings by supporting cultural performances and arts activities for older adults, increasing the supply of rail journeys and cruises tailored to seniors, building high-end travel-based retirement destinations, expanding senior education resources, and folding the use of new technologies into senior education programmes so that elderly people can cross the 'digital divide'. Third, speed up the R&D and application of age-friendly technology, focusing on innovation for food, rehabilitation care and safety-risk monitoring suited to older adults, and actively developing products and services such as brain-computer interfaces, assistive devices and intelligent robots.

The report summary also notes that measures previously issued by six departments, including the Ministry of Civil Affairs, call for accelerating the application of cutting-edge technologies in elderly care, including embodied intelligence, large language models, brain-computer interfaces and exoskeletons. The material does not give a timeline for implementation, so the initiative currently remains at the policy and direction-setting stage.