60% of Healthcare Firms Turn to AI Chatbots Before Further Automation

Healthcare’s first big use of enterprise artificial intelligence is not a moonshot. It is a pressure valve.

PYMNTS Intelligence’s The Enterprise AI Benchmark Report from May showed that healthcare companies are putting AI to work first in places where staff strain, patient demand and operational complexity collide. The report, based on a March survey of 60 senior technology executives at enterprises in the United States with at least $1 billion in annual revenue, examined AI use across 75 tasks in financial services and insurance, healthcare and medical, and media and advertising. The broad finding was that every sector is moving toward AI, but healthcare’s path is distinct. It is less about sweeping automation and more about targeted relief.

That discovery may be among the most useful ways to read the data. Healthcare trails financial services in the number of tasks that have reached high adoption, with 10 healthcare tasks crossing that mark compared with 27 in financial services and insurance. Yet healthcare’s narrower deployment also suggests discipline. The sector is concentrating AI in areas where it can reduce friction now, then build toward broader transformation once data and system integration improve.

Three findings showed where healthcare AI is gaining practical ground:

The share of healthcare and medical firms that use AI for customer service chatbots and virtual agents is 60%. That makes it the sector’s most adopted AI task. In practice, this points to organizations using AI to absorb routine interactions, route requests and reduce pressure on human support teams.

For workforce planning and skills gap analysis, 55% of healthcare firms use AI. Healthcare’s labor challenge is not only about staffing levels. It is also about matching the right people to the right work. AI can help organizations spot gaps, plan coverage and understand where training is needed.

The share of healthcare firms that use AI for logistics routing and delivery optimization is 53%. That is a practical use case in a sector where supplies, medications, samples and equipment often need to move across complex networks with little room for delay.

Read the report: Financial Services Pulls Ahead in the Enterprise AI Race

The positive signal is that healthcare AI is already tied to real operating needs. The caution is that its next stage will require stronger foundations. Customer journey orchestration sits at just 5% adoption, showing that many organizations have not yet connected AI across the full patient experience. Regulatory compliance monitoring is at 30%, even though compliance is central to healthcare operations. Data labeling and feature engineering are at 25%, which suggests that many firms still need to improve the inputs that make AI more reliable.

The budget picture also points to momentum. Over the next 12 months, 60% of healthcare firms expect to increase AI spending. Another 60% cite pilot funding with no formal ROI requirement as a reason for investment, while half cite productivity and efficiency gains. That mix says healthcare leaders are still learning where AI pays off, but they are not standing still.

Healthcare does not need AI to replace judgment. It needs AI to help staff work faster, see patterns earlier and make complex systems easier to manage. The firms that connect their data, modernize their workflows and scale from narrow use cases to coordinated operations could turn today’s pressure valve into tomorrow’s operating model.

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