AI is expected to improve both efficiency and quality. Changes are reflected above all in health technology devices and applications, which suggests that the sector will experience massive upheavals over the next decade. AI applications today extend from diagnostics to health data analysis, administrative tasks, and device testing. It can automate routine tasks, improving access to care by offering more personalised and affordable services whilst speeding up information flow within healthcare (Oikarinen 2023).

The biggest questions regarding new technologies relate to ethics and accuracy. However, studies suggest that AI can be even more empathetic than human doctors in individual tasks. In a cross-disciplinary study conducted in the United States in 2023, an AI chatbot was found to produce higher-quality and more empathetic responses to patients’ questions. In researchers’ evaluations, 45% of AI responses were rated as empathetic, whilst for remote doctors the figure was 4.6%. AI responses were also rated as medically superior (Ayers et al. 2023).

One of AI’s most promising application areas is medical imaging. CT and MRI scans can produce hundreds of images, and in some cases key details may be difficult to spot in greyscale images. AI-based systems can support specialists by extensively analysing image material and identifying potential findings. This can increase accuracy and speed up work. (Ge et al. 2022)

AI applications have also been found to identify abnormalities in stroke patients’ brain scans up to twice as accurately as professionals in the field. An application developed by Imperial College London and the University of Edinburgh was trained on imaging data from 800 stroke patients and tested on 2,000 patient cases with excellent results (Marcus et al. 2024). Particularly significant for AI is its ability to determine the timing of a stroke, which is crucial for treatment, as for example in treating strokes caused by blood clots, the first 4.5 hours are critical because both medical and surgical treatment remain possible (Rey 2024).

Additionally, AI has demonstrated its usefulness in identifying bone fractures. According to British statistics, A&E doctors miss up to 3-10% of fractures, and there is a severe shortage of radiographers (Roxby 2024). According to the National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE), the solution is to harness AI to work alongside specialists. According to NICE, the technology is safe and reliable, and can speed up diagnosis whilst significantly reducing the need for follow-up visits, thereby lightening the burden on clinicians drowning in pressure (Roxby 2024; North 2025).