Staffing shortages, rising costs, efforts to reduce administrative burden on clinicians and other factors are leading many health care providers to generative artificial intelligence (AI) solutions.
These solutions address providers’ concerns by boosting the speed and accuracy of key workflows, improving the efficiency of high-volume tasks while reducing the workload for overburdened staff, notes a recent CB Insights report.
The health care field is responding positively to this potential. A recent Gradient Flow survey covering generative AI in health care revealed that 65% of respondents are actively considering or implementing generative AI solutions.
To identify market opportunities, CB Insights analyzed the landscape and mapped 87 health care and life sciences companies with generative AI products across 20 markets.
3 Key Insights from the Report
1 | Investors and health systems are betting on generative AI to solve costly provider workflow inefficiencies.
Clinical documentation startups secured four of health care’s five largest generative AI deals last year while simultaneously gaining significant commercial traction. For example, Abridge partnered with more than 12 health systems, including Mayo Clinic and Kaiser Permanente, while Ambience Healthcare worked with Alpine Physician Partners to reduce daily charting time by 74%, the report states.
Abridge completed the largest deal — a $150 million Series C round — and followed this with a $250 million Series D deal just last month. Abridge also established business relationships with more than a dozen health systems in 2024 alone, and it has continued to expand its network this year, working with Duke Health, UNC Health and Inova Health Systems so far.
2 | Specialized AI models, powered by advanced clinical reasoning and domain-specific knowledge, demonstrate higher accuracy in health care workflows.
Health care technology companies are taking an interest in this specialized approach to extract more accurate insights across their datasets and develop new features to help providers elevate their operational efficiency. For example, in February 2024, Veradigm announced that it would acquire health care LLM developer ScienceIO to gain intelligence from its own provider and patient data and, as a result, enhance AI features for its customers.
3 | Drug development is poised to accelerate as generative AI discovery platforms secure major deals.
Four of the top five generative AI deals in life sciences last year went to drug discovery startups, two of which are generative chemistry platforms (Terray Therapeutics and Superluminal Medicines). These platforms leverage generative AI to rapidly design new compounds and plan efficient synthetic routes, significantly speeding up the identification of viable drug candidates. This positions them as technological front-runners in the race to revolutionize drug discovery, the report notes.
