Generative AI has already had a transformative impact on health and medicine, with the GenAI healthcare market projected to reach $22 billion by 2032. While there is plenty of optimism surrounding GenAI in the healthcare field, the majority of US clinicians are not optimistic about GenAI adoption in the next two-to-three years.

In a recent study by PYMNTS Intelligence, Their Generative AI Tracker study analyzed the current state and future potential of GenAI in healthcare The study showed that just 42 percent of US clinicians are optimistic about GenAI.

GenAI has the potential to improve patient care, improve diagnostic accuracy and treatment outcomes, but the openness to GenAI adoption varies between more recently developed economies—which are more open to adoption—and more established ones—which are shown in the study to be more hesitant overall. This can be attributed to newer economies having less bureaucratic and regulatory hurdles, a greater appetite for innovation and a higher risk tolerance. Established economies have far more complex regulatory frameworks and established healthcare systems that can make it challenging to integrate GenAI.

Regulatory hurdles could slow GenAI adoption in healthcare

The technological, anthropological, medical and commercial aspects of GenAI in healthcare and medicine must all be considered for regulatory frameworks.

This involves multiple stakeholders, which for the US includes the Food and Drug Administration, the Department of Health and Human Services and the Federal Trade Commission, to name a few. Each have specific federal oversight powers of AI usage in healthcare. Not to mention, state governments and global entities, like the World Health Organization, who are also stakeholders that will have a say in GenAI usage.

Currently, it’s too early to tell which entity will ultimately spell out how GenAI is regulated in health and medicine. As the landscape takes shape, healthcare providers and their IT partners will have to review their existing policies and procedures consistently to ensure they are aligned to the guidance provided by these federal, state and global entities.

GenAI not yet fully optimized for healthcare

A recent survey from Bain & Company, a management consulting firm, found that a lack of resources, expertise, data access and quality and organizational resistance are all barriers to GenAI in healthcare.

Since GenAI is a newer technology, it needs time to become fully optimized by proving its efficacy and to earn public trust. GenAI will require investors, technology, resources, expertise, LLMs trained with healthcare-specific data and robust guidelines or benchmarks to increase confidence.

In time, through multiple iterations and hitting those benchmarks, GenAI will sharpen its analysis and become a better tool. Once developers begin to fine-tune the benchmarks and criteria used in their models, they will have to align them with emerging regulatory guidelines, resulting in improved accuracy in diagnosis and recommended treatments.

HCLTech and Generative AI

HCLTech recognizes the great potential for GenAI in industries such as healthcare. The IT giant recently launched a Generative AI labs, which will support teams in building solutions and services across various roles and domains, including Systems Engineering, Process Operations and Support. These GenAI labs will drive a GenAI skills academy that provides training to people on how to best utilize the technology.

The labs are an extension of HCLTech’s Cloud Native Labs and support all ecosystems and partners with HCLTech lines of business and HCL Software to enable GenAI-based offerings. Other AI services from the Cloud Native Labs include CloudSMART GenAI Experience, GenAI Art-of-the-possible Workshop, GenAI PoCs, GenAI Academy and CloudSMART Modernization Experience.

Despite the hesitancy in adopting GenAI for healthcare stakeholders over the next few years, GenAI is going to be reshaping the technology landscape through task automation, cybersecurity enhancement and innovation stimulation. As regulatory frameworks evolve, and companies like HCLTech unlock new opportunities for the technology, GenAI’s potential to improve patient care and treatment outcomes in the healthcare field will continue to grow exponentially.