The Future of Health: How AI and Innovation are Driving Operational and Patient Outcomes
In a dynamic panel discussion at Avasant’s Empowering Beyond conference titled The Future of Health: How AI and Innovation are Driving Operational and Patient Outcomes, a diverse group of healthcare leaders gathered to explore how emerging technologies are transforming the healthcare landscape in recent times. Amongst this esteemed panel were Robert Druessi, Chief Technology Officer at Adventist Health, Luchela Rastelli, GE Healthcare’s Global Chief Information Officer for Integrated Supply Chain and Global Services, and Russ Scoville, Head of Enterprise Data and Strategy at CareSource. Together, they shared insights on the transformative impact of AI and innovation on both operational efficiency and patient care.
Foundational Change in Provider Organizations
Druessi laid the groundwork by outlining his organization’s strategic approach to healthcare technology. Adventist Health, a non-profit health system serving predominantly in California, Portland, and Hawaii, has been focusing on creating the infrastructure necessary to support future innovation. This includes investments in a next-generation electronic health record (EHR) system enhanced with AI capabilities, alongside efforts to ensure data security, data literacy, and responsible use of large language models. Druessi emphasized that for healthcare providers patient safety, clinical outcomes, and staff satisfaction should be prioritised.
The integration of AI in healthcare must be assessed thoroughly before implementation due to high stakes involved. The misuse of AI could cause patient harm, breach privacy, and propagate human biases to worsen inequality[1]. Despite this, the applications of AI are already prominent in areas like imaging and diagnostics. Adventist Health, for example, is employing AI-powered agents in care coordination and administrative processes like claims management. Although these developments are still evolving, they hold tremendous promise for streamlining operations and enhancing care delivery.
Fig 1.1 – Image representative of AI relevance across applications[2]
Innovation on the Front Lines: MedTech in Action
Rastelli offered a powerful Medtech perspective, highlighting a vivid, and very possible, scenario: imagine a loved one needing trauma care, with two emergency rooms nearby – one much closer than the other. If the closer facility’s CT scanner is down, it ceases to be a viable trauma center. This is where predictive technologies like GE’s OnWatch and Tube Watch fit in; as monitoring devices that can prevent failures before they occur, they have the power to reduce stress in life-threatening situations and optimize emergency medical processes.
AI-driven monitoring tools have led to a 35% increase in machine uptime, directly improving patient care by ensuring that life-saving equipment remains operational consistently. Additionally, predictive analytics allow field engineers to be equipped with the exact parts they need when servicing medical technologies, allowing them to fix issues on the first visit. All in all, Rastelli unveiled the reality of the integration of AI – it is not futuristic – it is already happening. However, while rapid innovation in medical technology is transforming frontline, it is important to recognise the changes powerfully redefining the patient experience from the payer’s perspective.
Reimagining the Patient Experience in Payer Systems
Russ Scoville, a not-for-profit healthcare payer, highlighted how payers are digitizing the patient journey. Drawing a comparison to banking and retail industries, he highlighted how healthcare lags behind in offering digital access and proactive care. According to the Healthcare Asia Magazine, the healthcare payer sector could benefit from mass reductions in administrative costs (by an estimated $150m – $300m) and medical costs, along with steep increases in revenue[3].
He emphasized that patients today should not have to wait in long lines or manually input redundant information. Instead, AI tools can help shift administrative burdens away from patients and providers by summarizing medical records and enabling conversational data capture. This transformation is vital to moving from reactive to proactive care.
Patient trust is non-negotiable in the ongoing AI revolution. While patients may not want their entire care journey managed by AI alone, they are overwhelmingly supportive of physicians using AI-powered tools to inform better decisions. Bridging the gap in trust between technology and clinicians is the next critical step.
The Assimilation of AI
Overall, the future of healthcare relies on trust and cultural adoption. Leadership is the cornerstone of adoption, and technologists and executives must model comfort with using AI and ensure their teams are educated enough to eliminate fear.
The fast-paced evolution of AI naturally brings anxiety—feelings of irrelevance or fear of replacement. Combating that requires strong education frameworks and risk-mitigated deployments, especially in regulated industries like healthcare.
This sentiment was echoed within a simple yet powerful interactive moment. When the audience was asked if they would want their care managed entirely by AI, no hands went up. But when asked whether they’d want their physician to have access to the best AI tools available, nearly every hand rose. This trust in human oversight—combined with technological support—is the ideal model for the future.
Looking Ahead: Visions for 2028 and Beyond
As the panel looked toward 2028, the discussion turned aspirational. Rastelli shared a deeply personal and futuristic example generated with the help of AI itself—embedding nano-AI in the brain to assist patients with cognitive and executive function impairments such as dementia and Alzheimer’s. Currently, AI has been harnessed to predict and diagnose Alzheimer’s disease, such as through the use of an unsupervised ML model, the Conditional Restricted Boltzmann Machine[4], and its scope of application in neurocognitive fields is virtually unlimited.
A healthcare system where every healthcare professional is supported by a “digital twin” or AI sidekick would enhance productivity without necessarily eliminating jobs. The focus should be on empowering individuals to expand their capabilities and improve outcomes.
The future of wearable technology is also notable. Devices like smartwatches already offer features like ECGs, but the next generation could include home-based AI systems capable of proactive blood testing, medication monitoring, and early diagnostics. These tools would create an integrated, preventative care ecosystem with the goal of long-term health maintenance.
Fig 1.2 – Annual private investment in artificial intelligence: Medical and healthcare[5]
[1] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10186390/
[2] https://www.ama-assn.org/system/files/physician-ai-sentiment-report.pdf
[3] https://healthcareasiamagazine.com/healthcare/news/healthcare-payers-lag-in-digital-maturity-report
[4] https://pmc.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/articles/PMC10680162/
[5] Data Page: Annual private investment in artificial intelligence, by focus area”, part of the following publication: Charlie Giattino, Edouard Mathieu, Veronika Samborska, and Max Roser (2023) – “Artificial Intelligence”. Data adapted from Quid via AI Index Report, U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics. Retrieved from https://archive.ourworldindata.org/20250624-125417/grapher/private-investment-in-artificial-intelligence-by-focus-area.html [online resource] (archived on June 24, 2025).
By Shreya Mehta, Intern