Healthcare AI Trends for 2025: What to Expect
Artificial intelligence continues to be a top trend across various industries, including healthcare. Looking ahead to 2025, experts predict further integration of AI to improve operational efficiency, data management, and security in healthcare settings.
Kimberly Powell, vice president of healthcare at NVIDIA, anticipates the steady growth of digital health agents powered by AI. These agents are designed to alleviate administrative burdens and create more personalized patient experiences. Microsoft and Philips share these expectations for AI’s impact on healthcare. But what does this look like in practice? This article provides a clear-eyed view for healthcare organizations looking to refine their AI strategies.
1. Channeling AI Advancements for Operational Efficiency
The healthcare industry has sometimes been hesitant to embrace AI, especially generative AI. This caution stems from the potential impact on patient and clinician lives if the technology isn’t used correctly. However, healthcare organizations are learning that to attract and retain talent, they must offer tools and processes that enhance workflows and ease administrative burdens.
Clinical burnout is a significant challenge, and AI-powered solutions can play a crucial role in addressing it. For example, clinicians can use smart assistants to quickly retrieve important documentation, access past notes, or find reliable answers to questions, thereby supporting care planning. Ambient listening technologies are expected to become more widespread for clinical documentation. As more hospitals pilot virtual nursing programs, computer vision solutions, such as Artisight, will also see increased adoption. An outcomes-based approach will be critical when considering AI adoption. Predictive analytics has been used in healthcare for years, and the applications of these solutions will continue to expand.
AI is poised to impact not only clinical areas but also overall operations, such as the contact center. When patients first interact with an organization, a digital care navigator might guide them, directing them to the right department and scheduling follow-up appointments.
2. Maturing Data Management
Before healthcare organizations can implement AI solutions like chatbots, they must ensure that the underlying data is well-managed and properly governed. Healthcare leaders must prioritize understanding data governance best practices before adopting new technologies that rely on their organization’s data. A widely accepted definition of data governance within the industry is a program of decision rights and accountabilities that treats data as a strategic asset effectively managing, leveraging, and protecting it accordingly. Within data governance, areas that are key areas for the use of AI use cases are data stewardship/ownership, metadata management, and data quality.
Metadata provides data about the data, which is essential for transparency requirements related to AI solutions. Knowing what data the model was trained on and having clear definitions are foundational for understanding and measuring potential bias, which must be addressed. Alongside data governance, health systems must improve their ability to organize and integrate data, using modern data platforms and processes to support better data integration both within and outside their environment.
3. Transforming the Physical Care Space
The increased implementation of AI will bring new technologies directly into the patient room. To ensure seamless integration, organizations need to consider change from a smart hospital approach. Paired ambient listening and visualization solutions will become more routine. Newly built patient rooms are expected to be multipurpose, adaptable to health system needs based on patient flow. Hospitals are keen to improve the patient experience to provide excellent care and also to become the patient’s care provider of choice.
4. Evolving Security Priorities
Security events dominated headlines in 2024, leading to greater interest in third-party risk management. As healthcare organizations continue to form strategic partnerships that involve sharing environments, they will need to enhance their security strategies. It’s not enough to assume that a partner will handle all security concerns. Healthcare organizations need increased oversight and will need to scrutinize their partner’s security further. They might need to conduct audits, reconfigure contracts, and apply more oversight. External data release processes will also require more scrutiny.
Organizations will need to strengthen their backup strategies and business continuity plans. Should another major IT outage occur, for example, how would an organization ensure that its operations are not significantly impacted? Creating isolated recovery environments will continue to be important, so organizations are not just isolating their data but also have isolated infrastructure. This will help organizations recover quickly and resume caring for patients.
This article is part of HealthTech’s MonITor blog series.
