As we wrap up another year and get ready for 2026 to begin, it is once again time for everyone’s favorite annual tradition of Health IT Predictions! We reached out to our incredible Healthcare IT Today Community to get their insights on what will happen in the coming year, and boy, did they deliver. We, in fact, got so many responses to our prompt this year that we have had to narrow them down to just the best and most interesting. Check out the community’s predictions down below and be sure to follow along as we share more 2026 Health IT Predictions!
Check out our community’s Healthcare AI and Patients predictions:
Girish Navani, Co-Founder and CEO at eClinicalWorks
Protected time, not packed schedules, is the real promise of AI for clinicians. AI-driven documentation assistants are already saving 1-4 hours per day, and for the first time, practices have real flexibility in how to use that gift. Some will increase patient access and revenue by adding visits, meeting critical community needs. Others will protect portions of reclaimed time for what often gets squeezed out: thoroughly working through complex cases, returning patient calls, and even taking actual breaks to prevent burnout.
Forward-thinking organizations will realize that true efficiency is about restoring the human side of care and having choices to flex in new areas for their patients. Protecting clinicians’ time rather than packing schedules is how practices can harness AI to improve both provider well-being and patient outcomes.
Dr. Paige Kilian, SVP, Chief Medical Officer at Inovalon
In 2026, agentic AI will advance efforts to tackle healthcare’s most stubborn administrative burdens, such as prior authorization, a clinician-draining process that too often delays patient care. Ideally, agentic AI will help to expedite approvals in areas like identifying ‘gold-card’ physicians whose documentation consistently aligns with health plan standards and fast-tracking those cases, while routing complex or ambiguous documentation for human review.
It will require a real culture shift to accept that AI will make some decisions without human intervention, so it’s crucial for experts to be involved in curating these algorithms to set the rules these agents follow and regularly audit their application. AI won’t make every decision, and it shouldn’t, but it will intelligently handle much of the regulatory complexity that overwhelms clinicians today so they can focus on patient care rather than manage a deluge of regulatory obligations.
The real value of agentic AI is its ability to surface where human input is absolutely necessary and allow clinicians to focus their time on decisions that genuinely require their expertise.
Max Cohen, Co-Founder and CEO at Sprinter Health
I’m expecting some of the dust to settle in terms of what is AI market speak vs. AI value creation in healthcare. It can truly be transformative in some situations, but it’s also massively oversold in others. I think by the end of 2026, the areas where AI can impact not just efficiency but also create new pathways for care delivery and patient experience will begin to emerge, and the AI-ification of Everything will start to fade as people realize the value just isn’t there for many of these ideas.
Kevin Deutsch, General Manager & Senior Vice President, Health Plan Cloud at Softheon
By 2026, consumers won’t care whether a health plan is using AI; they just want a smooth experience. Renewals that used to take days will happen in minutes. Enrollment data that once sat in silos will move freely between payers, providers, and state systems. That’s how AI will truly impact consumers, not when it’s visible, but when it removes friction.
Dean Erhardt, CEO at D2 Solutions
With patent cliffs, tightening margins, tightened payer reimbursement, and workforce shortages, the healthcare industry is in the age of volatility. Where nothing will remain the same and change will continue to accelerate. Change will, of course, be driven by AI, where AI can be used to map access barriers as well as to automate many repetitive tasks.
In an industry facing an almost catastrophic workforce shortage, the urgency to reduce administrative burden, giving clinicians and support teams more time for patient-facing work is not just positive but rather a critical step in providing quality healthcare services for an ever-aging population. The result, if implemented effectively, will reveal itself in shorter time-to-therapy, clearer visibility across the access journey, and a more affordable, less fragile drug delivery ecosystem.
David Karandish, CEO at Capacity
Healthcare providers have been playing defense for too long, stuck in a cycle of reacting instead of preventing. When a patient gets a text reminder and still doesn’t show, all staff can do is call to reschedule and hope they show next time. But in 2026, agentic AI will flip the script on this broken system.
Predictive algorithms can help identify which patients are most likely to miss their appointments and build outreach plans before problems surface. Once identified, virtual agents can launch tailored interventions, sending reminders through the patient’s preferred channel, proposing telehealth alternatives, or coordinating transportation assistance. This shift will slash missed appointments while freeing staff to handle the complex cases that actually need human judgment.
Elad Lachmanovich, Chief Technology and Product Officer at TytoCare
AI entered the game, but 2026 is the year it earns its place on the care team. We’re moving beyond passive algorithms and pilots into a new era of AI clinical companions that can listen, interpret, and guide with clinical precision. These companions combine multi-modal health data like sound, image, and context with advanced diagnostic intelligence to provide real-time insights, triage support, and next-step recommendations.
They’ll help patients understand what’s happening in their bodies, assist clinicians by surfacing relevant insights instantly, and keep a continuous, always-on pulse on their health. The result will be care that’s proactive instead of reactive, intelligent instead of administrative, and human-centered at every step.
Jahangir Mohammed, CEO at Twin Health
In 2026, employers, health plans, and hospital systems will increasingly favor personalized, AI-driven solutions that demonstrate real, measurable improvements in health outcomes. They will want interventions that meet people where they are, adapt to their unique biology, and consistently deliver better health at lower costs. Hyper-personalized platforms, powered by daily, AI-driven guidance, will become the new standard of care. Leading organizations will incorporate AI digital twin technology into their health benefits to reduce the burden of metabolic disease.
For decades, businesses have searched for solutions that make their people healthier while also reducing the soaring cost of chronic disease. AI digital twins deliver both. For the first time, we can deeply understand each individual’s unique biology and behavior at scale, and give them simple, daily guidance that works for their specific metabolism. When people follow that guidance, their health improves, and they can get off high-cost medications and rely less on medical services.
In 2026, we will accelerate this shift by making AI digital twins widely available through employers, health plans, and primary care, so millions more people can experience better health and greater energy at a lower cost.
Steve Mok, PharmD, MBA, BCPS, BCIDP, Manager of Pharmacy Services and Fellowship Director for Clinical Surveillance and Compliance at Wolters Kluwer Health
Pop culture examples like The Pitt and Nurse Jackie portray a glimpse of the world of drug diversion, but in reality, diversion impacts thousands of healthcare workers — and the even larger number of patients they serve. More troubling, a recent survey showed as many as 2/3 of healthcare leaders lack confidence in their diversion prevention programs.
With thousands of record reviews required to deduce suspicious patterns, AI-backed solutions quickly become a necessity for organizations looking to take a proactive and holistic approach to patient and staff safety. As hospitals look to ramp up their AI investments in 2026, drug diversion is a low-hanging fruit where timely, automated deduction and pattern recognition can quickly enable teams to reduce harm to patients and staff.
Campbell Rogers, M.D., F.A.C.C., Chief Medical Officer at Heartflow
In 2026, artificial intelligence is set to play an even greater role in transforming healthcare. Through advanced imaging and data, AI is giving clinicians deeper, more personalized insights into patient health, catching life-threatening diseases early so they can be treated and monitored. As AI becomes fully integrated into clinical workflows, it will accelerate diagnostics, improve outcomes, and change the way we manage disease.
Chris Voigt, Executive Vice President and Chief Technology Officer at Privia Health
As competition intensifies, leading healthcare organizations will double down on AI across all business areas, particularly driving risk stratification, care management, and data analytics. Technologies will go beyond streamlining processes and providing operational efficiency to further enhance decision-making, providing real-time and precise insights to level up the delivery of care.
We’re experiencing a technological revolution that will redefine healthcare delivery, empowering providers to offer more personalized, effective, and efficient care to their patients. AI is no longer a novel afterthought; it’s a fundamental resource in our workflows. Those who aren’t using AI are going to be left behind.
Thank you so much to everyone who took the time out of their day to submit a prediction to us, and thank you to all of you for taking the time to read this article! We could not do this without all of your support. What do you think will happen for Healthcare AI and Patients in 2026? Let us know on social media. We’d love to hear from all of you!
Be sure to check out all of Healthcare IT Today’s Healthcare AI and Patients content and our other 2026 Health IT Predictions.
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