AI in Health: What’s Happened and What’s Coming?

We believe AI will transform healthcare; the change will be gradual but profound. In the long term, it could automate not only diagnosis, but also vast swathes of administrative work. And in the end, it will fundamentally change the doctor/patient relationship.

The first of five reports on AI in healthcare, by Adam Spielman of Citi Global Insights, provides a timely sketch of the current scene, looking at what’s happening and what may lie ahead.  

Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare

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Source: Citi Global Insights

Here are some of the report’s key takeaways:

• So far AI’s impact on healthcare has been relatively modest, with some interesting developments in radiology, BioPharma, and in a handful of health-specific admin systems. These products are mostly point solutions that address the needs of the pre-existing players in their pre-existing workflows.

• In the next few years AI is likely to automate a good deal of health administration, relieving workers of mundane tasks, saving both money and time, and thereby improving clinical outcomes. This sort of AI will integrate the different parts of the system, for example the payers and providers, much more tightly.

• We also expect AI to profoundly affect the BioPharma industry. The transformer technology that can understand ordinary languages (like English), and which is driving innovations like ChatGPT, can also be used to analyze large molecules like DNA and proteins.

• In the long term, we believe AI will fundamentally change the relationship between clinicians and patients. We believe diagnoses will become increasingly automated. We expect that family doctors will become more like health coaches and hospital specialists will become more productive, attempting more personalized and ambitious interventions. We therefore think AI will trigger a significant change in the way healthcare is delivered.
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Mike Guarino is the global head of health technology at Citi’s investment bank, and he believes AI will be a central driver in the future of health. “AI is going to be a critical component of healthcare moving forward,” he says. “We believe it will accelerate trends that we have been seeing in the market, which include a focus on increased value through improved clinical outcomes and cost efficiencies, enhanced patient experience, and workflow simplification.”

This first report in the series is designed to be an overview. Subsequent reports will contain more examples of the exciting work companies are doing in this space, bringing the story of AI in healthcare to life.

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Citi Global Insights (CGI) is Citi’s premier non-independent thought leadership curation. It is not investment research; however, it may contain thematic content previously expressed in an Independent Research report. For the full CGI disclosure, click here.