Agentic AI is quickly becoming the next target for healthcare leaders as they integrate current technologies successfully and look for even better outcomes. Many academic health systems are beginning AI agent pilots and seeing early returns.
“The emerging technology that we would like to thoroughly evaluate and invest in this year is agentic automation–AI drive, autonomous systems that work alongside healthcare teams with humans in the loop to enhance patient care, streamline workflows, eliminate friction and improve decision-making,” said Anjali Bhagra, MD, medical director for automation at Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn. “Reasoning agents deployed with a human-centered approach have the exponential potential to reduce administrative burden by intelligently adapting to real-time data, allowing clinicians to focus on high-value patient interactions.”
Agentic AI is versatile and can transform healthcare across many fronts, including call centers, business offices and virtual scribes. It could also be a boon for cybersecurity, Lisa Stump, chief digital information officer and dean of information technology at Mount Sinai Health System in New York City, told Becker’s.
“We are thinking about our investments not just in terms of implementation, but also in the assessment, adoption and ongoing monitoring to ensure the safety, efficiency and accuracy of these tools,” she said. “By investing in agentic AI, we are not only addressing current challenges but also paving the way for future innovations with the aim of improving healthcare delivery and patient outcomes.”
Autonomous AI agents leverage advances in machine learning and natural language processing to perform complex, independent tasks. Other industries are already effectively using them, and healthcare could certainly benefit.
“[The AI agent’s] ability to learn, adapt and collaborate with humans makes them ideal for streamlining operations and innovating new business solutions,” said Girish Nadkarni, MD, chair for the Windreich Department of Artificial Intelligence and Human Health, and Director for the Hasso Plattner Institute for Digital Health at Icahn School of Medicine. “With growing integration into areas such as customer support, data analysis and operational management, autonomous AI agents are set to deliver significant, long-term value.”
Roberta Schwartz, PhD, executive vice president and chief innovation officer at Houston Methodist, is also focused on agentic AI this year as a quickly emerging technology to support workforce expansion.
“We are involved in a few agentic AI programs and look forward to further expanding,” she said. “We also are thrilled to see the maturation of voice-over-text as a means for gathering health provider documentation. Providing options to free our providers from the keyboard is incredible, and we look forward to seeing this expand beyond physicians to larger sections of the workforce in 2025 and beyond.”
There are clear benefits to agentic AI for clinician workflows, and it can also boost the patient experience. At Rush University System of Health in Chicago, leaders are focused on building a more personalized and easy-to-use digital patient experience.
“As part of this commitment, I believe emerging tools like agentic AI will play an important role in giving patients a convenient place to go to ask questions, get answers and get connected to the right person to solve their particular problem quickly and with less guesswork,” said Ben Wolfe, director for digital transformation at Rush.
