More hospitals and healthcare organizations have been incorporating artificial intelligence into their systems, and many healthcare leaders expect that to accelerate in the year ahead.
We’ve gathered projections from 26 healthcare executives and thought leaders about the use of AI in 2026. While they offer many different perspectives, some common themes emerge.
There’s a growing sense that executives will be anxious to see a return on investment in AI tools, hoping that promise translates to profits. Many expect greater expansion of AI in business and administrative functions. But some also predict more clinical adoption of AI tools, an area where some healthcare leaders remain cautious.
Also, several leaders say it’s not about simply adopting AI products, but carefully planning how those tools should be used and working intentionally across the organization to make sure they are utilized properly, effectively and safely.
Check out what these experts say they expect to see with AI in the coming year.
Aaron Patzer, CEO and co-founder of Vital
“Patients aren’t waiting for permission—they’re already running their doctor’s notes and lab results through ChatGPT. Meanwhile, hospitals are afraid to deploy AI primarily because there’s no official standard. In 2026, healthcare will be forced to catch up as a patient-facing AI standard emerges—one that finally makes AI safer than what no-clinical-context LLMs can offer today.”
Anurag Mehta, CEO and co-founder, Omega Healthcare
“In 2026, AI – from generative to agentic – will continue to evolve from being used primarily as a cost-cutting tool to increasingly becoming a strategic driver of innovation across the healthcare ecosystem. The combination of AI plus analytics will empower healthcare organizations to harness data and unlock unprecedented visibility, accelerate decision-making, and create intelligent systems that continuously learn and adopt. The future of RCM, and healthcare more broadly, belongs to those who can turn insight into foresight.”
Heather Bassett, MD, chief medical officer, Xsolis
“In 2026, AI will accelerate payer-provider collaboration — but only for organizations willing to operate from a single, objective source of truth. Technology can streamline decisions and expose clinical patterns, yet the real leap forward requires confronting long-standing misalignment directly. When both sides commit to transparent, clinically grounded data, variability drops, disputes decline, and turnaround times shrink. The message is clear: AI won’t replace expertise, but it will redefine expectations. Those who ground their decisions in shared, defensible information will move faster, perform better, and earn far greater trust across the care and payment ecosystem.”
Jason Considine, president at Experian Health
“The vision for 2026 is clear: Organizations must leverage technology to move beyond AI awareness to the seamless integration of AI in our daily workflows, ensuring that we empower staff rather than distract them with new complexities. For large-scale AI adoption, organizations must trust the technology, and we as vendors have to think critically about how to infuse it into provider workflows with transparency and without creating additional challenges. When humans and technology work together, we can simplify healthcare for all.”
Dr. Nele Jessel, chief medical officer of athenahealth
“In 2026, we’ll see the consumerization of healthcare collide with the rise of clinical AI, and patients will look for the same level of personalization and transparency they get everywhere else in their lives. From the provider perspective, clinicians value AI most where it strengthens their ability to see the full clinical picture. Our research found that 86% of respondents said they were comfortable with either fully delegating (26%) or having AI assist with (60%) identifying easy-to-miss details across patient records. These tools complement human judgment when they bring clarity to the complexity of healthcare data and care continuity. The organizations that win won’t be the ones deploying the most AI, but the ones using it to actually understand people, close gaps before they appear, and make care feel intuitive and personalized, as it should be, instead of overwhelming. Healthcare is about to hit a point where anything less will feel outdated.”
Craig Limoli, CEO of Wellsheet
“Agentic AI is making headlines everywhere. But, in 2026 we’ll move from hype to substance when AI clinical agents won’t just support clinicians, but force a reset in healthcare. AI in healthcare will reduce time spent hunting for data, actively uncover overlooked insights and suggest evidence-based treatment pathways. Clinicians will be empowered to focus on judgment and patient interaction, while AI handles the tedious and error-prone details. After a decade of digital overload, it will be up to AI to finally give clinicians their profession back.”
Ben Sharfe, EVP for AI, Altera Digital Health
“In 2026 we will see AI shift from isolated pilot programs to full enterprise-scale deployment, driven by clearer return on investment. The most visible and prominent example of this will be ambient listening, which will become more of a standard, ubiquitous tool for reducing the burden of clinical documentation. The key catalyst for this mass adoption is the move by major EHRs to build these AI capabilities as native, deeply integrated solutions. This shift from third-party bolt-on solutions to core, embedded functionality will make seamless, system-wide AI a practical reality for health systems.”
Kem Graham, VP of growth & strategy at CliniComp
“In the coming year, we are going to see executives start treating analytics and AI as operational infrastructure directly tied to margins. Health leaders who commit to connecting clinical data to financial workflows will undoubtedly reduce costs, clinician burnout, and documentation burdens. Those that embrace analytics and AI in this manner will see improvements in both quality and cost performance across the board.”
Madhu Pawar, chief product officer, Optum Insight
“The industry increasingly needs real-time interactions across fragmented point solutions and real-time AI-powered reasoning over disparate data sets to reduce administrative burden. This shift from point solutions to platform systems is positioned to drive transformative, large-scale innovation. Industry analysts estimate that fully automating and integrating administrative transactions could save the health care sector more than $20 billion annually.”
Todd Doze, CEO of Janus Health
“To survive financially, providers are recognizing that AI and automation are essential for driving efficiency and accuracy across the revenue cycle. RCM is uniquely suited for AI because it involves repeatable, pattern-based work, data-intensive analysis, and rules-driven decision-making. By pairing intelligent automation with operational insight, health systems can predict issues, optimize workflows, reduce denials, and turn traditional revenue cycle challenges into opportunities for faster, more predictable financial performance.”
Julia Strandberg, chief business leader, Connected Care at Philips
“AI has transformed diagnostics, but 2026 will mark the year healthcare leaders use it to tackle the most pressing operational challenges. With 1,000+ AI-powered tools already FDA-cleared, the discussion is shifting from AI’s potential to its measurable impact on efficiency, care coordination, and patient experience.
Today, 77% of healthcare professionals lose time due to incomplete or inaccessible data, and nurses spend 15-20 minutes every hour on administrative tasks. In 2026, AI’s greatest opportunity lies in automating time-consuming managerial work, sharing the right data at the right time, and reducing cognitive burden.
“To unlock AI’s value, health systems must adopt it more intentionally. Organizations that succeed will prioritize intuitive tools that can be seamlessly integrated into existing infrastructures and are designed around clinical workflows. By putting people and practicality first, hospitals can unlock AI’s next phase: solutions that address pain points, improve coordination, and empower clinicians to deliver better patient care.”
David Lareau, president and CEO, Medicomp Systems
“As more organizations scale large language models across enterprise systems in 2026, they must evaluate both financial and operational implications. Token-based processing of these solutions, which may appear efficient in pilots, can become cost-prohibitive at production levels. As such, healthcare executives will increasingly turn to smaller, domain-specific AI models that operate securely within their environments, enabling innovation while maintaining cost control and data protection.”
Fawad Butt, CEO and Co-founder, Penguin Ai
“CXOs are at an inflection point. Software applications are giving way to intelligent AI agents, and leaders are asking where to begin, which vendors to trust, and how to evaluate them. In 2026 and beyond, organizations will lean more heavily on AI vendors that are deep experts in healthcare and who understand their business and the complexities of the data they’re using to inform their models. CXO leaders are now realizing that technology alone will not solve their problems. It must be paired with depth of expertise to fully unlock the value of AI to yield more workflow efficiency gains and profitability.”
Frank Forte, CEO of EnableComp
“In 2026, AI – applied in the most effective ways – will finally deliver its full value when hospitals and payers partner with specialized organizations who already understand the nuances of the complex revenue cycle, payer rules, and denial patterns. Innovation will come from AI that’s trained on real-world domain expertise – not generic models – so errors are prevented, claims move smoothly, and financial performance becomes more predictable and sustainable. For C-suite leaders, the smartest strategy will be pairing with partners who have the advanced technology and proven playbooks to navigate complexity at scale.”
Chris Althoff, head of marketing at emtelligent
“Over the next 12 months, we will see a new insistence from executive teams that AI investments demonstrate both clinical and financial performance. This will shift procurement strategies toward stronger alignment with care pathways and revenue priorities. That pressure will accelerate vendor consolidation and help enforce new standards that emphasize not only clinical and operational outcomes, but broad use-case impact — reducing endless experimentation and mitigating the sea of point solutions. Healthcare organizations that find the right partners and translate this strategy into production-ready AI solutions will finally see the measurable ROI they have been promised.”
Ram Sahasranam, co-founder of Fold Health
“Healthcare has long focused on addressing worker shortages yet demand for clinicians still exceeds supply. In the coming year, more providers will turn to AI orchestration systems for support. These systems function like intelligent operating platforms that manage workflows, deliver insights, and handle complex tasks. With clear parameters and proper safeguards, care orchestration systems can serve as trusted partners, enhancing patient engagement and improving outcomes.”
Shelli Pavone, co-founder and president of Inlightened
“In 2026, more healthcare organizations will open the vest to AI in terms of transparency to bring responsible, meaningful AI solutions into the market. This will position them as thoughtful, disciplined innovators rather than simply adopters of AI trends. This can be done in a way that protects proprietary information, while still demonstrating that organizations understand both the power and risks of the technology. The organizations that can maintain this delicate balance well will position themselves as leading contenders in the AI space.”
Bob Farrell, CEO, mPulse
“In 2026, we will see large health plans shift away from “no AI” policies to embracing AI and machine learning for efficiency and navigation support as more state and federal regulations bring a sense of certainty to the industry – especially for health plans that have been under scrutiny for how and when AI is being used. I expect LLMs trained on de-identified cross-plan data to unlock better member insights, while trust in how AI is used in the process – not the technology itself – will be key to truly getting member buy-in and adoption. Ultimately, health plans who don’t embrace AI and LLMs for improving claims and prior authorization processes and unlocking deeper member insights to influence next steps – like getting a screening for a certain disease or getting a flu shot – risk being left behind.”
Malinka Walaliyadde, CEO and Co-founder, AKASA
“As I look back on 2025, what stands out is how AI now gives us much more leverage on every modality of information transfer, across text, voice, image, and video. For example, a ‘voice interface’ used to mean pressing 1 or 2. This year, we finally crossed the threshold into human-like, back-and-forth dialogue. What excites me most about 2026 is what becomes possible from AI working at full fidelity across all these modalities. In healthcare, that means AI that can fully parse a medical record and work with a clinician to ensure their documentation is complete, or review a surgical video and offer technique insights. We’ll look back and see that the last decade was about digitization; the next decade will be about true understanding.”
Dr. Nathan Goodyear, integrative medicine physician at the Williams Cancer Institute
“In 2026, I expect to see far more collaboration between small innovators and larger pharma rather than the heavy acquisition cycles of the past. As these partnerships take shape, AI and machine learning will meaningfully accelerate discovery and trial design — but only if we address the regulatory bottlenecks that slow progress. Patients are increasingly aware of how quickly science is advancing, and they expect the development and approval process to keep pace. As these pressures converge, we’re moving into a period where international cooperation, smarter trial design and technology-enabled research work together to reshape how cancer therapies progress from idea to clinical reality.”
Scott R. Schell, MD, chief medical officer, Cognizant
“Artificial intelligence has moved past the experimental phase. The coming year will test whether healthcare and life sciences can make AI trustworthy, useful, and human-centered at scale.
“A recent Forbes analysis citing Menlo Ventures reports that healthcare is adopting AI at twice the rate of the broader economy, with only about 20 percent of organizations currently using it. That acceleration affirms our previous observations: the pilot era is ending. The next measure of success is not whether AI works, but whether it can be governed, audited, and trusted to serve both patients and progress.
“In 2026, the measure of trust will be how clearly a system can explain itself.”
Dr. Salvatore Viscomi, CEO and Cofounder of Carna Health
“The future of digital health is being shaped by the integration of diagnostics and AI to develop analytics to drive earlier diagnosis, predict risk of progression and indicate timely treatment interventions. As the healthcare ecosystem becomes increasingly connected, data insights from wearable technologies, mobile health applications, remote monitoring devices and electronic health records are converging to create a more comprehensive picture of patient well-being. Within this digital framework, AI-driven models can identify subtle changes in patients and alert care teams of potential disease indicators long before symptoms appear.
“This is especially critical for conditions where symptoms don’t become apparent until later stages, such as chronic kidney disease, where early detection can mean the difference between lifestyle changes to prevent progression requiring dialysis. By harnessing predictive technologies, clinicians can access integrated insights drawn from blood and urine tests, medical history and lifestyle data – all in real time. These advanced models detect patterns that humans may miss, enabling physicians to shift from reactive treatments to proactive care.”
Nicole Rogas, president at RevSpring
“In 2026, AI will become the ultimate empathy engine across industries, not just in healthcare. As customers grow more cost-conscious and automation fatigue sets in, the organizations that succeed won’t be those that merely automate but those that sense when a person needs compassion, clarity, or human intervention. In tighter economic conditions, people scrutinize every touchpoint more sharply. The most trusted brands will use intelligent automation to preempt stress, tailor tone and timing based on behavior, and offer seamless escalation to human support when needed. In sectors pressed by budget constraints, this ‘automated empathy’ becomes a differentiator: not just a convenience, but a vital trust-builder. Successful adoption will hinge on balancing efficiency with emotional intelligence, especially in regulated, sensitive domains.”
Todd Van Meter, CEO, Accuity
“In the next year, we’ll see AI reach deeper into the remaining silos of the revenue cycle, driving more automation, fewer handoffs, and materially bending the cost curve across the entire RCM function. The challenge for health system executives will be separating genuine AI value from the excitement around innovation and marketing hype, and carefully vetting each solution against its cost, time-to-value, and true ROI. As 2026 unfolds, leaders who pair disciplined evaluation criteria with bold decision making will shape the next frontier of RCM performance.”
Daniel Vitt, CEO, Immunic Therapeutics
“After years of selectivity, stronger fundamentals, and a surge in licensing activity, I think that 2026 could mark an encouraging rebound for biotech. At the same time, AI and machine learning will accelerate discovery, optimize trial design, and enable more data-driven, efficient, and personalized development while improving success rates and streamlining insights across genomics, imaging, and real-world data. Specifically in neuroscience, latest dynamics point to meaningful breakthroughs as we’re seeing steady progress in neuroprotection and regeneration, offering optimism for how multiple sclerosis and other neurological diseases might be treated in the years ahead. Above all, patients must remain at the center of our efforts, as safer and more convenient oral therapies with emerging neuroprotective potential are poised to bring new hope for those living with these conditions.”
Clay Ritchey, CEO of Verato, the identity intelligence experts
“Next year will mark a turning point as healthcare leaders move from layering on digital tools to rebuilding the data foundations of their enterprises. Forward-thinking organizations will treat identity as a unifying control layer connecting systems of record, experience, and insight. By linking consumer, member, patient, and provider information in a single trusted view, they will enable AI and analytics to operate with confidence while supporting value-based care and reducing operational waste. This data renaissance will create a trusted, complete data environment that enables every technology to work as intended.”
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