Artificial Intelligence in Healthcare Companies
We analyzed the enterprise AI use cases of 9 healthcare companies to understand trends, impact, and insights.
Healthcare companies' adoption of AI
Overview
UnitedHealth Group has rapidly expanded its AI adoption since 2022, growing from initial implementations like the AVA chatbot program to reportedly over 1000 AI applications in production by mid-2025, covering claims processing, clinical data summarization, and member engagement tools.
McKesson has progressively integrated AI technologies since 2019, leveraging cloud platforms like Google Cloud and Microsoft Azure to enhance healthcare data management and predictive analytics, particularly in oncology and supply chain operations.
Since 2019, Cigna has progressively integrated AI technologies across healthcare and insurance operations, initially focusing on chronic disease treatment gaps and patient adherence, advancing to large-scale AI-powered customer service and digital tools rollout by 2025.
Cardinal Health has progressively embraced AI technologies from 2019 through 2026, launching AI-powered platforms like Navista, integrating machine learning for patient care optimization and supply chain efficiency, and recently expanding ecommerce capabilities leveraging AI to boost efficiency and revenue.
Elevance Health has progressively expanded its AI initiatives from Q2 2023 through Q1 2026, focusing on enhancing diagnostics, operational efficiency, personalized consumer experiences, and workforce AI fluency. Key leadership such as David Sims and Ratnakar Lavu have publicly championed the integration of AI technology.
HCA Healthcare has progressively expanded its adoption of AI technologies since Q3 2023, with significant pilots and rollouts involving generative AI to improve clinical documentation, nurse handoffs, and patient safety across its nearly 200 hospitals and 2000 care points.
Johnson & Johnson has progressively integrated AI across its MedTech and pharma segments from 2024 to 2025, focusing on surgical automation with NVIDIA, drug discovery partnerships like Quantum Pharma, and supply chain optimizations, yielding significant financial and operational impact.
Merck has progressively integrated generative AI and machine learning into its drug discovery and development processes since late 2023, with expanded partnerships (e.g., Vector Institute, Variational AI) and strategic collaborations (e.g., Boston Consulting Group, McKinsey).
Pfizer has progressively integrated AI technologies across drug discovery, clinical trials, manufacturing, marketing, and customer engagement from 2016 through early 2026, demonstrating increasing adoption and strategic scaling of AI-driven capabilities.
44 Use Cases in Healthcare
| Company | Use Case |
|---|---|
| UnitedHealth | Patient Engagement UnitedHealth employs conversational AI chatbots and AI-enhanced human agents to collect patient data, answer queries, and provide personalized support, improving the member experience by making healthcare navigation simpler and more efficient. generative |
| Merck & Co. | Precision Medicine Merck collaborates with Mayo Clinic to integrate clinical data and AI-driven analytics that enable precision medicine approaches, improving early drug development decisions and personalized therapies. traditional |
| McKesson | Administrative Automation McKesson deploys AI to reduce administrative task burdens in healthcare, streamlining workflows so providers can focus more on patient care and clinical outcomes. traditional |
| Cardinal Health | Ecommerce Optimization AI technologies are leveraged to enhance Cardinal Health’s ecommerce platform efficiency, contributing to revenue growth and improved customer engagement. traditional |
| Pfizer | Generative Biology Pfizer invests in startups like Earendil focusing on generative biology using machine learning to instantly generate biologic medicine candidates, accelerating biologics design and innovation. generative |
| HCA Healthcare | Early Detection HCA physicians are incorporating AI to improve early detection of conditions such as cerebral aneurysms using clinical imaging and data analytics, aiming to enhance diagnosis accuracy and treatment timeliness. traditional |
| Pfizer | Procurement Automation Pfizer pilots AI agent-based systems in procurement to autonomously perform checks and optimizations with human-in-the-loop oversight, enhancing process efficiency and cost savings. agentic |
| Pfizer | Clinical Trial Efficiency AI is deployed to optimize clinical trial patient recruitment, data oversight, feasibility, and cost efficiency, enabling faster and more precise trials with reduced failure rates through predictive modeling and adaptive algorithms. traditional |
| Johnson & Johnson | Remote Monitoring Johnson & Johnson employs AI in remote patient monitoring to continuously track health parameters, enabling improved management of chronic conditions and optimized clinical trial outcomes. traditional |
| Elevance Health | Behavioral Health Support Following a partnership with OpenAI, Elevance is expanding AI-driven behavioral health offerings, leveraging generative AI capabilities to improve patient support and health outcomes in mental health services. generative |