AI Watch Report on AI Uptake in Health and Healthcare

This week, AI Watch released a report on the uptake of AI in health. The report shows how the interest for AI in the health sector is growing rapidly both in research and in the industrial sector : the proxies of AI in health activities, such as patents and VC investments, increased by as much as fivefold and scientific publications are also on the rise, in part as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. 

The report also outlines the opportunities, along with the challenges, stemming from the introduction of AI in the healthcare sector, both from a technical standpoint and from a social and ethical perspective. 

The report concludes that AI technology in the health sector is mature enough to be adopted widely to streamline operational processes, but that to have a real take-off there is need for a much greater availability and interoperability of health data as well as a significant upskilling of the healthcare workforce to become active users of AI technologies.

This work will act as a benchmark for future editions in order to assess the changes in uptake and impact of AI in health care over time, in line with the mission of AI Watch.