Healthcare organizations report a shift from experimentation to execution as AI adoption climbs, according to NVIDIA's second annual "State of AI in Healthcare and Life Sciences" survey.
The survey reports 70% of respondents said their organizations are actively using AI, up from 63% in 2024, and 69% said they use generative AI and large language models, up from 54%.
Across the healthcare industry, 82% of respondents said open source software and models are moderately to extremely important to their AI strategy, and 47% said they are using or assessing agentic AI.
The survey found clinical decision support, medical imaging and workflow optimization among the top use cases, with 61% of medical technology respondents citing medical imaging and 57% of pharmaceutical and biotechnology respondents citing drug discovery.
Respondents reported measurable returns, with 85% saying AI is helping increase revenue and 80% saying it is reducing costs, and the survey noted 85% expect AI budgets to increase this year while 12% expect budgets to stay the same.
The report highlighted spending plans, saying 46% of respondents will raise AI spending significantly by more than 10% this year, and it noted workload priorities such as data analytics and predictive analytics behind generative AI.
John Nosta, president of NostaLab, told the report that over the next 12-18 months the most visible impact of AI will come from logistical and administrative streamlining, including scheduling, documentation and care coordination.
Dr. Annabelle Painter, clinical AI strategy lead at Visiba U.K., said the organizations seeing impact are those that embed AI into existing workflows rather than layering it on top as a separate tool.
New Fellowship Aims To Train Leaders Who Redesign Systems
Kellogg authors Craig Garthwaite and Paul Campbell described a new Healthcare Ecosystem Leaders Fellowship that will equip 20 students to redesign incentives and organizations across the healthcare value chain.
The fellowship combines structured mentoring, alumni engagement, targeted coursework and guest lecturers to form a capstone that emphasizes system level thinking and scaling innovation.
Two required courses are part of the program. Value Creation and Capture in an Evolving Healthcare Services Market is taught by Andrew Hayek and examines payment models such as fee for service, capitation and hybrids and the roles of culture, talent, technology and AI.
Scaling Innovation in Healthcare is taught by Mike Pykosz and focuses on identifying opportunities, designing scalable models, and leveraging partnerships with particular attention to AI.
Fellows will engage with practitioners and Kellogg alumni including Parth Mehrotra, CEO of Privia Health, Martha Wofford, president and CEO of Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Rhode Island, and Don Calcagno, former chief population health officer of Advocate Health.
The authors said funding for the program will come from several streams, including a gift from Parth Mehrotra, and they closed with a Rüdiger Dornbusch observation that reforms often take longer than expected then accelerate unexpectedly.
