With at least 71 percent of U.S. hospitals integrating predictive AI into their electronic health records, the debate over whether AI belongs in health care is becoming outdated. Now, health system leaders tell Newsweek that AI is here to stay. But they're still figuring out how to make longstanding workflows, processes and job descriptions jibe with the new tech.
AI in all forms—agentic, generative, predictive—still requires human oversight and sign-off in a high-stakes industry like health care. How does the "human in the loop" keep pace when AI is changing not only the tools they use but the work they're expected to do? Say an algorithm can identify that a patient is becoming septic before the signs are obvious.
Someone still needs to decide what to do with that warning. Or say AI can help a primary care doctor manage conditions that once required a specialist. The technology may increase capacity, but it cannot create a nephrologist where there isn't one.
Those questions will be part of the conversation at Newsweek and Investment Reports' AI Health Summit on September 23 in New York City, where hospital executives and health tech leaders will discuss AI deployment in clinical decision-making, research, distributed care, governance and cybersecurity. In briefing calls ahead of the Summit, speakers repeatedly returned to the fact that AI can change what is possible without automatically changing how work gets done. Health care leaders are now responsible for creating an ecosystem where AI can deliver on its promises, and it's not a simple task.
A 2026 survey from the Scottsdale Institute and Deloitte Center for Health Solutions found a substantial gap between health systems' enthusiasm for transformation and their ability to make it operational. Every surveyed health system said care-delivery transformation was either a top enterprise priority (63 percent) or very important (37 percent), but organizations scored themselves just 2.7 out of five on their ability to turn transformation efforts into scaled, AI-enabled operations. Deloitte specifically describes sustained operational change as remaining “difficult—and slow.” Tampa General Hospital offers one example of how that work is taking shape.
There, AI has not replaced the people responsible for patient care. Instead, leaders have focused on changing how clinicians use the information it provides. John Couris, president and CEO of Tampa General, told Newsweek that his organization has taken what he calls a “very practical approach” to AI and predictive analytics.
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