Five trends expected to have an impact on healthcare over the next three years:

1. Gaps between adoption and readiness will widen as AI starts to scale.

While 90% of clinicians expect AI to significantly impact their organization over the next 3 years, preparedness to make it happen remains uneven. Only 65% of clinicians believe their organizations are prepared to develop skills that ensure their staff is capable of leveraging the technology, signaling a growing disconnect between vision and execution.

2. The benefits of AI may show up unevenly across the workforce.

AI is being deployed to relieve burdens on clinicians, but expectations around the results differ by role. While 84% of clinical respondents identify workflow optimization as a top priority, and 79% cite reducing burnout as an important goal, doctors are more likely to believe AI can reduce burnout (74%), compared to nurses (64%). This reflects differences in how AI is being applied and experienced across clinical workflows.

3. Patient-directed care navigation will reshape access and expectations.

Patients are increasingly using AI to answer questions and prepare for visits before entering the clinical setting, creating a parallel layer of care navigation. Nearly one in three patients (28%) say AI explains medical information more clearly than traditional websites, and 19% say it’s faster than waiting for a clinician response as the primary benefits of using AI for healthcare. Patients also report acting on AI-generated information - either seeking care sooner (26%), delaying or avoiding care (10%), or bringing it into clinical encounters (34%) - indicating a shift in how decisions are initiated and informed.

4. ROI for high-impact use cases may take longer to manifest.

Preparedness for AI is strongest in operational areas, with just under two-thirds of clinicians saying their organizations are ready to use AI to improve administrative productivity. Confidence drops for more patient-facing applications, with 64% of nurses and 56% of doctors reporting preparedness to improve patient experience, and remains lowest for clinical decision support, where 60% of nurses and 56% of doctors say their organizations are prepared to use AI to support diagnosis or treatment. The pattern suggests that readiness remains concentrated in lower-risk, operational use cases, potentially slowing the adoption of the most transformative applications of AI in care delivery.

5. Governance will continue to struggle to keep pace with real-world use.

Governance frameworks are still lagging behind the realities of daily use, which will only become more problematic as consumer-focused AI tools meld with enterprise systems. Awareness of formal AI policies remains limited among clinicians, rising only modestly from 21% in 2025 to 27% in 2026. Both doctors and nurses report ongoing uncertainty around how AI should be used in practice, while patients continue to call for clearer accountability and transparency.

AI trends in healthcare and the path to better, coordinated care 

AI is now firmly embedded into the care experience, but its role is being actively shaped, not passively adopted, by clinicians and patients who are drawing clear boundaries around trust, autonomy, and the preservation of human expertise.

Patients and clinicians are using similar tools to pursue the same goals, but often through different pathways and with different expectations for how AI should function and where its influence should lie.

Health systems that succeed in this next phase will be those that establish clear boundaries, align workflows across patient and clinical contexts, and create environments where AI supports, not complicates, the mutual goal of better, more coordinated care.

Methodology

The 2026 Future Ready Healthcare Survey Report is based on a nationally representative survey conducted by Ipsos (an independent market research firm) from March 11-14, 2026. A total of 355 healthcare professionals (203 doctors; 152 nurses) and 254 patients throughout the US were recruited using online B2B and consumer panels.

Two healthcare workers reviewing information on a tablet while standing in a bright clinical office.

What's impacting your organization over the next three years?

Bar chart showing percentage of clinicians, doctors, and nurses reporting key factors impacting organizations, with technology implementation and training among the highest-ranked influences.Bar chart showing percentage of clinicians, doctors, and nurses reporting key factors impacting organizations, with technology implementation and training among the highest-ranked influences.

Percent Significant/Some Impact

  • Graphic description

    This horizontal bar chart illustrates the percentage of total clinicians, doctors, and nurses who report various factors as having a significant or some impact on their organizations over the next three years. “Implementation of technology to enhance efficiency” ranks highest, reported by 90% of clinicians, 92% of doctors, and 87% of nurses. “Use of technology in professional development and clinical training” follows closely at 88% for both clinicians and doctors, and 84% for nurses. “Usage of generative AI by nursing and medical staff” is cited by 84% of clinicians, 87% of doctors, and 80% of nurses. Other notable factors include regulatory changes (83% clinicians, 84% doctors, 81% nurses), meeting changing patient expectations (82%, 83%, 81%), and administrative pressures (81%, 87%, 72%). Lower-ranked but still significant factors include burnout and well-being (80%, 83%, 76%), cost containment pressures (79%, 81%, 77%), and cybersecurity preparedness (78% across all groups). Overall, the chart shows consistently high concern across all groups, with doctors generally reporting slightly higher impact levels than nurses across most categories.

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