Is AI a Threat or an Opportunity for Healthcare?

Artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to transform how care is delivered. Not only can it support improvements in care outcomes, patient experience and access to healthcare services, it can also increase productivity and care efficiency, all while allowing healthcare systems to provide more and better care to more people. Thus, AI can help improve the experience of healthcare practitioners, enabling them to spend more time in direct patient care and reducing burnout. Finally, it can support the faster delivery of care, mainly by accelerating diagnosis time, and help healthcare systems manage population health more proactively, allocating resources to where they can have the largest impact.

The Impact on the Workforce and Organizations

The implications of introducing and scaling AI in healthcare have been much debated in recent years. While the full potential of AI is still being discussed, questions have been raised about its potential impact on practitioners and on certain healthcare specialties.  Issues around ethics, the use of personal data and AI-related risks, moreover, are also becoming a hot topic of conversation. At the same time, healthcare investments in AI are increasing apace. This is creating or accentuating disparities in the adoption of innovation in healthcare, and raising questions around the role that health systems, public and private players and individual healthcare practitioners can, or should, play in ensuring that citizens fully reap the benefits of AI.

This week, EIT Health and McKinsey & Company published their joint report, “Transforming healthcare with AI: The impact on the healthcare workforce and organizations,” which is publicly available for download via the EIT Health website. Through 62 interviews and an in-depth survey of 175 people, it offers a unique view into the perspectives of various public and private sector decision-makers, thought leaders, healthcare professionals, health investors, AI start-up founders and other executives.