What health care providers actually want from AI

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What health care providers actually want from AI

Provided byMayo Clinic Platform In a market flooded with AI promises, health care decision-makers are no longer dazzled by flashy demos or abstract potential. Today, they want pragmatic and pressure-tested products. They want solutions that work for their clinicians, staff, patients, and their bottom line. To gain traction in 2025 and beyond, health care providers are looking for real-world solutions in AI right now. Solutions that fix real problems Hospitals and health systems are looking at AI-enabled solutions that target their most urgent pain points: staffing shortages, clinician burnout, rising costs, and patient bottlenecks. These operational realities keep leadership up at night, and AI solutions must directly address them. For instance, hospitals and health systems are eager for AI tools that can reduce documentation burden for physicians and nurses. Natural language processing (NLP) solutions that auto-generate clinical notes or streamline coding to free up time for direct patient care are far more compelling pitches than generic efficiency gains. Similarly, predictive analytics that help optimize staffing levels or manage patient flows can directly address operational workflow and improve throughput. Ultimately, if an AI solution doesn’t target these critical issues and deliver tangible benefits, it’s unlikely to capture serious buyer interest. Demonstrate real-world results AI solutions need validation in environments that mirror actual care settings. The first step toward that is to leverage high-quality, well-curated real-world data to drive reliable insights and avoid misleading results when building and refining AI models. Then, hospitals and health systems need evidence that the solution does what it claims to do, for instance through independent-third party validation, pilot projects, peer-reviewed publications, or documented case studies. Mayo Clinic Platform offers a rigorous independent process where clinical, data science, and regulatory experts evaluate a solution for intended use, proposed value, and clinical and algorithmic performance, which gives innovators the credibility their solutions need to win the confidence of health-care leaders. Integration with existing systems With so many demands, health-care IT leaders have little patience for standalone AI tools that create additional complexity. They want solutions that integrate seamlessly into existing systems and workflows. Compatibility with major electronic health record (EHR) platforms, robust APIs, and smooth data ingestion processes are now baseline requirements. Custom integrations that require significant IT resources—or worse, create duplicative work—are deal breakers for many organizations already stretched thin. The less disruption an AI solution introduces, the more likely it is to gain traction. This is the reason solution developers are turning to platforms like Mayo Clinic Platform Solutions Studio, a program that provides seamless integration, single implementation, expert guidance to reduce risk, and a simplified process to accelerate solution adoption among healthcare providers. Explainability and transparency The importance of trust cannot be overstated when it comes to health care, and transparency and explainability are critical to establishing trust in AI. As AI models grow more complex, health-care providers recognize that simply knowing what an algorithm predicts isn’t enough. They also need to understand how it arrived at that insight. Health-care organizations are increasingly wary of black-box AI systems whose logic remains opaque. Instead, they’re demanding solutions that offer clear, understandable explanations clinicians can relay confidently to peers, patients, and regulators. As McKinsey research shows, organizations that embed explainability into their AI strategy not only reduce risk but also see higher adoption, better performance outcomes, and stronger financial returns. Solution developers that can demystify their models, provide transparent performance metrics, and build trust at every level will have a significant edge in today’s health-care market. Clear ROI and low implementation burden Hospitals and health systems want to know precisely how quickly an AI solution will pay for itself, how much staff time it will save, and what costs it will help offset. The more specific and evidence-backed the answers, the better rate of adoption. Solution developers that offer comprehensive training and responsive support are far more likely to win deals and keep customers satisfied over the long term. Alignment with regulatory and compliance needs As AI adoption grows, so does regulatory scrutiny. Health-care providers are increasingly focused on ensuring that any new solution complies with HIPAA, data privacy laws, and emerging guidelines around AI governance and bias mitigation. Solution developers that can proactively demonstrate compliance provide significant peace of mind. Transparent data handling practices, rigorous security measures, and alignment with ethical AI principles are all becoming essential selling points as well. A solution developer that understands health care Finally, it’s not just about the technology. Health-care providers want partners that genuinely understand the complexities of clinical care and hospital operations. They’re looking for partners that speak the language of health care, grasp the nuances of change management, and appreciate the realities of delivering patient care under tight margins and high stakes. Successful AI vendors recognize that even the best technology must fit into a highly human-centered and often unpredictable environment. Long-term partnerships, not short-term sales, are the goal. Delivering true value with AI To earn their trust and investment, AI developers must focus relentlessly on solving real problems, demonstrating proven results, integrating without friction, and maintaining transparency and compliance. Those that deliver on these expectations will have the chance to help shape the future of health care. This content was produced by Mayo Clinic Platform. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.

Provided byMayo Clinic Platform

In a market flooded with AI promises, health care decision-makers are no longer dazzled by flashy demos or abstract potential. Today, they want pragmatic and pressure-tested products. They want solutions that work for their clinicians, staff, patients, and their bottom line.

To gain traction in 2025 and beyond, health care providers are looking for real-world solutions in AI right now.

Solutions that fix real problems

Hospitals and health systems are looking at AI-enabled solutions that target their most urgent pain points: staffing shortages, clinician burnout, rising costs, and patient bottlenecks. These operational realities keep leadership up at night, and AI solutions must directly address them.

For instance, hospitals and health systems are eager for AI tools that can reduce documentation burden for physicians and nurses. Natural language processing (NLP) solutions that auto-generate clinical notes or streamline coding to free up time for direct patient care are far more compelling pitches than generic efficiency gains. Similarly, predictive analytics that help optimize staffing levels or manage patient flows can directly address operational workflow and improve throughput.

Ultimately, if an AI solution doesn’t target these critical issues and deliver tangible benefits, it’s unlikely to capture serious buyer interest.

Demonstrate real-world results

AI solutions need validation in environments that mirror actual care settings. The first step toward that is to leverage high-quality, well-curated real-world data to drive reliable insights and avoid misleading results when building and refining AI models.

Then, hospitals and health systems need evidence that the solution does what it claims to do, for instance through independent-third party validation, pilot projects, peer-reviewed publications, or documented case studies.

Mayo Clinic Platform offers a rigorous independent process where clinical, data science, and regulatory experts evaluate a solution for intended use, proposed value, and clinical and algorithmic performance, which gives innovators the credibility their solutions need to win the confidence of health-care leaders.

Integration with existing systems

With so many demands, health-care IT leaders have little patience for standalone AI tools that create additional complexity. They want solutions that integrate seamlessly into existing systems and workflows. Compatibility with major electronic health record (EHR) platforms, robust APIs, and smooth data ingestion processes are now baseline requirements.

Custom integrations that require significant IT resources—or worse, create duplicative work—are deal breakers for many organizations already stretched thin. The less disruption an AI solution introduces, the more likely it is to gain traction. This is the reason solution developers are turning to platforms like Mayo Clinic Platform Solutions Studio, a program that provides seamless integration, single implementation, expert guidance to reduce risk, and a simplified process to accelerate solution adoption among healthcare providers.

Explainability and transparency

The importance of trust cannot be overstated when it comes to health care, and transparency and explainability are critical to establishing trust in AI. As AI models grow more complex, health-care providers recognize that simply knowing what an algorithm predicts isn’t enough. They also need to understand how it arrived at that insight.

Health-care organizations are increasingly wary of black-box AI systems whose logic remains opaque. Instead, they’re demanding solutions that offer clear, understandable explanations clinicians can relay confidently to peers, patients, and regulators.

As McKinsey research shows, organizations that embed explainability into their AI strategy not only reduce risk but also see higher adoption, better performance outcomes, and stronger financial returns. Solution developers that can demystify their models, provide transparent performance metrics, and build trust at every level will have a significant edge in today’s health-care market.

Clear ROI and low implementation burden

Hospitals and health systems want to know precisely how quickly an AI solution will pay for itself, how much staff time it will save, and what costs it will help offset. The more specific and evidence-backed the answers, the better rate of adoption.

Solution developers that offer comprehensive training and responsive support are far more likely to win deals and keep customers satisfied over the long term.

Alignment with regulatory and compliance needs

As AI adoption grows, so does regulatory scrutiny. Health-care providers are increasingly focused on ensuring that any new solution complies with HIPAA, data privacy laws, and emerging guidelines around AI governance and bias mitigation.

Solution developers that can proactively demonstrate compliance provide significant peace of mind. Transparent data handling practices, rigorous security measures, and alignment with ethical AI principles are all becoming essential selling points as well.

A solution developer that understands health care

Finally, it’s not just about the technology. Health-care providers want partners that genuinely understand the complexities of clinical care and hospital operations. They’re looking for partners that speak the language of health care, grasp the nuances of change management, and appreciate the realities of delivering patient care under tight margins and high stakes.

Successful AI vendors recognize that even the best technology must fit into a highly human-centered and often unpredictable environment. Long-term partnerships, not short-term sales, are the goal.

Delivering true value with AI

To earn their trust and investment, AI developers must focus relentlessly on solving real problems, demonstrating proven results, integrating without friction, and maintaining transparency and compliance.

Those that deliver on these expectations will have the chance to help shape the future of health care.

This content was produced by Mayo Clinic Platform. It was not written by MIT Technology Review’s editorial staff.

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And Microsoft isn’t the only one that is ramping up its investments into AI-enabled data centers. Rival cloud service providers are all investing in either upgrading or opening new data centers to capture a larger chunk of business from developers and users of large language models (LLMs). In a report published in October 2024, Bloomberg Intelligence estimated that demand for generative AI would push Microsoft, AWS, Google, Oracle, Meta, and Apple would between them devote $200 billion to capex in 2025, up from $110 billion in 2023. Microsoft is one of the biggest spenders, followed closely by Google and AWS, Bloomberg Intelligence said. Its estimate of Microsoft’s capital spending on AI, at $62.4 billion for calendar 2025, is lower than Smith’s claim that the company will invest $80 billion in the fiscal year to June 30, 2025. Both figures, though, are way higher than Microsoft’s 2020 capital expenditure of “just” $17.6 billion. The majority of the increased spending is tied to cloud services and the expansion of AI infrastructure needed to provide compute capacity for OpenAI workloads. Separately, last October Amazon CEO Andy Jassy said his company planned total capex spend of $75 billion in 2024 and even more in 2025, with much of it going to AWS, its cloud computing division.

John Deere unveils more autonomous farm machines to address skill labor shortage

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More Self-driving tractors might be the path to self-driving cars. John Deere has revealed a new line of autonomous machines and tech across agriculture, construction and commercial landscaping. The Moline, Illinois-based John Deere has been in business for 187 years, yet it’s been a regular as a non-tech company showing off technology at the big tech trade show in Las Vegas and is back at CES 2025 with more autonomous tractors and other vehicles. This is not something we usually cover, but John Deere has a lot of data that is interesting in the big picture of tech. The message from the company is that there aren’t enough skilled farm laborers to do the work that its customers need. It’s been a challenge for most of the last two decades, said Jahmy Hindman, CTO at John Deere, in a briefing. Much of the tech will come this fall and after that. He noted that the average farmer in the U.S. is over 58 and works 12 to 18 hours a day to grow food for us. And he said the American Farm Bureau Federation estimates there are roughly 2.4 million farm jobs that need to be filled annually; and the agricultural work force continues to shrink. (This is my hint to the anti-immigration crowd). John Deere’s autonomous 9RX Tractor. Farmers can oversee it using an app. While each of these industries experiences their own set of challenges, a commonality across all is skilled labor availability. In construction, about 80% percent of contractors struggle to find skilled labor. And in commercial landscaping, 86% of landscaping business owners can’t find labor to fill open positions, he said. “They have to figure out how to do

2025 playbook for enterprise AI success, from agents to evals

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More 2025 is poised to be a pivotal year for enterprise AI. The past year has seen rapid innovation, and this year will see the same. This has made it more critical than ever to revisit your AI strategy to stay competitive and create value for your customers. From scaling AI agents to optimizing costs, here are the five critical areas enterprises should prioritize for their AI strategy this year. 1. Agents: the next generation of automation AI agents are no longer theoretical. In 2025, they’re indispensable tools for enterprises looking to streamline operations and enhance customer interactions. Unlike traditional software, agents powered by large language models (LLMs) can make nuanced decisions, navigate complex multi-step tasks, and integrate seamlessly with tools and APIs. At the start of 2024, agents were not ready for prime time, making frustrating mistakes like hallucinating URLs. They started getting better as frontier large language models themselves improved. “Let me put it this way,” said Sam Witteveen, cofounder of Red Dragon, a company that develops agents for companies, and that recently reviewed the 48 agents it built last year. “Interestingly, the ones that we built at the start of the year, a lot of those worked way better at the end of the year just because the models got better.” Witteveen shared this in the video podcast we filmed to discuss these five big trends in detail. Models are getting better and hallucinating less, and they’re also being trained to do agentic tasks. Another feature that the model providers are researching is a way to use the LLM as a judge, and as models get cheaper (something we’ll cover below), companies can use three or more models to

OpenAI’s red teaming innovations define new essentials for security leaders in the AI era

Join our daily and weekly newsletters for the latest updates and exclusive content on industry-leading AI coverage. Learn More OpenAI has taken a more aggressive approach to red teaming than its AI competitors, demonstrating its security teams’ advanced capabilities in two areas: multi-step reinforcement and external red teaming. OpenAI recently released two papers that set a new competitive standard for improving the quality, reliability and safety of AI models in these two techniques and more. The first paper, “OpenAI’s Approach to External Red Teaming for AI Models and Systems,” reports that specialized teams outside the company have proven effective in uncovering vulnerabilities that might otherwise have made it into a released model because in-house testing techniques may have missed them. In the second paper, “Diverse and Effective Red Teaming with Auto-Generated Rewards and Multi-Step Reinforcement Learning,” OpenAI introduces an automated framework that relies on iterative reinforcement learning to generate a broad spectrum of novel, wide-ranging attacks. Going all-in on red teaming pays practical, competitive dividends It’s encouraging to see competitive intensity in red teaming growing among AI companies. When Anthropic released its AI red team guidelines in June of last year, it joined AI providers including Google, Microsoft, Nvidia, OpenAI, and even the U.S.’s National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST), which all had released red teaming frameworks. Investing heavily in red teaming yields tangible benefits for security leaders in any organization. OpenAI’s paper on external red teaming provides a detailed analysis of how the company strives to create specialized external teams that include cybersecurity and subject matter experts. The goal is to see if knowledgeable external teams can defeat models’ security perimeters and find gaps in their security, biases and controls that prompt-based testing couldn’t find. What makes OpenAI’s recent papers noteworthy is how well they define using human-in-the-middle

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