Wolters Kluwer’s Future Ready Healthcare survey: Rapid AI adoption in healthcare highlights worries, opportunities, for both patients and clinicians

What are 2026’s top worries for patients and clinicians surveyed about clinical AI?

• Your diagnosis, sponsored by today’s advertiser

  Nearly three out of four clinicians (72%) and three out of five (61%) patients are concerned that AI-generated information sponsored by ads could introduce bias into healthcare decision-making. While many GenAI apps are ad-free, some consumer apps and professional health AI apps feature advertising. Both patient and clinician respondents are concerned that biases from advertisers such as pharmaceutical and medical device companies may influence the answers provided about care decisions.

• Health AI governance can’t keep up

  Despite the lightspeed adoption of AI in healthcare, awareness levels of physicians and nurses about formal AI governance policies in their healthcare organizations increased at a snail’s pace year over year, from 21% in 2025 to a still modest 27% in 2026. Healthcare organizations may be lagging behind in implementing effective governance programs to ensure the right AI tools are being used, with the right guardrails. Another awareness-related issue is tied to how well governance policies are being communicated, a hallmark of a successful program.

• Preventing a medical AI deskilling epidemic

  Significantly, 74% of clinicians are concerned about “deskilling,” or an increasing overreliance on AI tools that reduce clinicians’ skills and ability to independently identify inaccuracies or poor recommendations. For example, how transparently apps convey the clinical reasoning steps behind their answers may impact the level of clinicians’ engagement with and understanding of the answers they receive. In fact, about half of clinicians (53%) say they want AI to be required to show the detailed reasoning behind its responses. On a positive note, 77% of clinicians reported that they double-check AI answers with original sources or trusted databases like PubMed or UpToDate. And four out of five patients now expect it: 78% want clinicians to verify AI answers.

• AI hallucination worries: Spot the fake medical study

  Compounding deskilling anxieties, three-quarters of clinicians (74%) cited hallucinations, when AI invents incorrect or fabricated information like fake medical studies, as a major concern now affecting their ability to practice appropriately. Still, 73% said they are somewhat or very confident in being able to spot whether an answer is clinically valid without consulting an outside source. That leaves a quarter of U.S. clinicians who are simply not sure if they can identify incorrect medical information without cross-checking sources.

• Who’s to blame when patients are harmed?

  A full 75% of patients are concerned about accountability if AI contributes to harm during the care process. Many questions remain unanswered regarding patient harm, professional ethics, and exposure risk when a clinician follows the guidance of a clinical AI app and causes harm to the patient. Even with ironclad terms and conditions about apps’ limited role in decision making, are clinicians and their healthcare organizations fully grappling with how AI apps can affect care?

• A clear health AI mandate: Keep humans in the loop

  With worries mounting about unchecked tech entering the point of care, more than 90% of clinicians and 89% of patients indicated they believe human experts should be validating the sources behind AI-generated healthcare content used for patient care. The message from respondents is clear: healthcare decisions, from treating mundane and familiar winter bugs to complex life-and-death choices, stand wholly apart from domains that are fully automated with AI. Patients and clinicians are united in demanding experts with real-world experience play a part in testing and confirming what goes into AI systems, versus unvetted approaches.

How are patients using health AI apps beyond the hospital walls?

The survey also found that AI-generated information is becoming a routine part of patients’ overall experience of receiving care. Notably, it’s changing how patients seek information about medical issues: nearly one in three patients (28%) said AI explains medical information more clearly than traditional health websites. And nearly 1 out of 5 (19%) found that AI provides answers to questions about their health faster than waiting for a clinician’s response.

During medical appointments, nearly 60% of patients said their clinicians openly engage with AI-generated information. Similarly, more than half (56%) of clinicians said they review AI information provided by patients, working to explain how that content aligns, or in some cases, does not align, with evidence-based clinical resources.