Healthcare Agentic AI Adoption Remains Early Despite Strong Strategic Interest

Research published in the January 2026 issue of the New England Journal of Medicine reveals that healthcare's adoption of agentic AI remains in early stages despite growing strategic interest. While 43% of respondents report piloting or testing agentic AI, only 3% have deployed agents in live workflows.

The research, based on surveys and in-depth interviews with senior healthcare executives across provider organizations in the United States, offers a view of how health systems are progressing along the agentic AI maturity curve. One-third of respondents indicate no plans to explore agentic AI within the next one to two years, highlighting the gap between experimentation and operational readiness.

Despite limited deployment today, confidence in agentic AI's long-term impact is strong. 60% of respondents agree or strongly agree that agentic AI will meaningfully improve or disrupt the provider-patient experience, with similar optimism around productivity gains at 57%. Nearly half anticipate deeper human-AI collaboration within the next three to five years, reinforcing the view that agents will augment, not replace, clinical and operational roles.

More than three quarters (77%) expect AI agents to improve backend productivity, while 60% believe they will fundamentally reshape the patient-provider experience. Yet this transformation will require change: 60% cite reskilling and upskilling as a top challenge as ecosystems of AI models and agents expand.

Qualitative interviews reveal that leaders increasingly view agentic AI as a strategic end state—one that depends heavily on progress in workforce readiness, governance, and data infrastructure. Moving from promise to sustained value will require deliberate, coordinated investment across all three.

The healthcare AI market is already estimated at $40 billion today and projected to grow up to $500 billion by 2032, with hundreds of millions of operational AI agents. The technology is being leveraged in areas like diagnostics, patient monitoring, drug discovery, personalized medicine, and administrative automation.

Unlike earlier forms of automation, agentic AI goes beyond task assistance. Intelligent AI agents can plan, reason, and act autonomously collaborating alongside clinicians, care teams, researchers, developers, and all workers from the back office to the front lines.

Building strong governance frameworks, establishing a trusted data foundation, and developing an AI ready workforce are prerequisites for leadership in the organizations on the frontier of the next era of transformation. The rapid proliferation of AI raises concerns around protecting patients' privacy and sensitive health data.