Oracle sent its stock soaring 36%, according to Reuters, adding about $234 billion to its market value last week after unveiling its quarterly financial report and announcing a new AI cloud strategy.
Wall Street is betting big on Oracle’s ability to build the cloud infrastructure necessary to support AI’s continued evolution, and a few of the top-regarded healthcare executives echoed that optimism on the ground at Oracle Health and Life Sciences Summit in Orlando.
During a panel at the event, speakers described how AI investments are already transforming patient care, clinical trials and operations.
AI enables scalable, high-quality care
Cleveland Clinic is using AI to rethink and scale primary care delivery. At the summit, Tomislav Mihaljevic, MD, president and CEO of Cleveland Clinic described the traditional primary care model as “the most woeful aspect of healthcare delivery,” emphasizing its fragmentation and inefficiency.
He stressed that future models of primary care must break from outdated frameworks and leverage new technologies.
“We do not believe that the delivery of primary care will be able to scale if we just keep on trying to ignore and do more of what we already do,” Dr. Mihaljevic said. “We need to reenvision the ecosystem of primary healthcare delivery with the new AI tools.”
Stephanie Conners, RN, president and CEO, at Clearwater Fla.-based BayCare Health System, shared how the health system is implementing a people-first AI strategy to support its team of more than 32,000 workers. She highlighted a nurse voice technology pilot with Oracle, which automatically transcribes vital signs and alerts clinicians to signs of sepsis.
“What this enables us to do is develop this nurse voice in a way that is most effective for the nurse in delivering care,” Ms. Conners said. “It’s going to be a remarkable tool that helps the nurse critically think, deliver extraordinary care and save lives.”
Driving efficiency and discovery
Paul Burton, MD, PhD, chief medical officer at Amgen, described how the biotech firm is aggressively integrating AI across the drug development pipeline, from discovery through regulatory submission.
He noted that while it can take 7 to 10 years to bring a drug to market, with regulatory submissions alone requiring 24 to 26 weeks, AI has the potential to significantly accelerate this timeline.
Amgen recently used AI to produce a clinical study report in 72 minutes, a process that typically takes weeks. Dr. Burton said such tools could enhance speed, efficiency and patient access to life-saving therapies.
“I think it’s going to substantially shrink down that whole continuum and make the patient journey to a clinical trial quicker with better clinical outcomes,” Dr. Burton said.
Reimagining medical education and workforce training
Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic is leveraging AI not only to enhance clinical care, but also to transform how healthcare professionals are trained.
The organization has launched an endowed fund to support enterprisewide AI education and is exploring ways to tailor medical training using AI-based tutoring. Rick Gray, MD, CEO of Mayo Clinic in Arizona, emphasized the importance of AI as an educational partner.
“We have to educate all of our workforce,” Dr. Gray said. “If we put these tools into their hands and help them to understand how it can be used as a thought partner and an expert, it’s like having one-on-one tutoring that can accelerate education.”
Policy, trust and the future of AI in healthcare
While panelists were optimistic about AI’s potential, they acknowledged ongoing concerns around regulation, ethics and trust.
Ms. Conners underscored the need to maintain a human-centered approach, keeping clinicians in the loop as technology is deployed. Dr. Mihaljevic noted that early patient feedback suggested AI chatbots were sometimes perceived as more compassionate than human responders, an unexpected outcome.
From digital wins to administrative automation, leaders agreed that AI has moved beyond experimentation and warrants significant investments and strategic prioritization in both the short- and long-term.
“There are still too many mistakes made in healthcare,” Dr. Gray said. “There are still too many judgment calls that are based on a limited sphere of experience and bringing AI alongside will make those better. It won’t be perfect but it makes it better and that’s the key factor we have to keep in mind.”
