Inflect Capital: 25 Healthcare Predictions for 2025

As we step into 2025, the healthcare industry stands at the cusp of transformative change. From groundbreaking advancements in AI to personalized medicine to new models of care delivery, the pace of innovation and innovation adoption continue to rise.

At Inflect Capital, we’re continuously exploring emerging trends and breakthroughs that will shape the future of healthcare. In this article, we bring together 25 Predictions for 2025*, shaped by insights from our extensive network of clinicians, health system leaders, and technologists at the forefront of care delivery and innovation.

From AI’s growing pains in healthcare, to renewed focus on behavioral health parity, to increasing the need for upskilling/reskilling healthcare workers, these predictions capture the dynamic shifts coming to reshape the industry. We’re excited to share them with you and hope they spark conversations and ideas for what’s possible in the years to come!

*The views expressed are solely their own and do not represent the opinions or positions of their employer

AI Empowers Providers to Worker Smarter, not Harder

1. “2025 is likely to bring growing momentum to empower healthcare to ‘work smarter, not harder’. Through intelligent documentation for nurses, enhanced access to services for patients, and through growing adoption of digital assistants as the natural evolution our digital front-door strategy, we look forward to the change that 2025 will bring!”
Mark D. Townsend, MD, MHCM — Chief Clinical Digital Ventures Officer, Accrete Health Partners / Bon Secours Mercy Health

2. “Jobs are changing, and upskilling and reskilling will be the main topic for next year, even within healthcare. Automation and AI tools will be core to what our workforce uses. We don’t need to develop people for prompt engineering, but we need people who can work alongside AI.”
Amith Nair — Chief Information Officer, Vituity

3. “The earliest tangible ROI from generative AI at scale will come from using generative AI to make complicated interfaces much simpler — i.e., leverage AI to enable anyone to use a complicated IV infusion pump, insulin monitor, CT scanner, or MRI machine. This will quickly democratize many healthcare technologies that currently are limited to those with specialized training in how to use the device.”
Josh Tamayo-Sarver, MD, PhD — Vice President of Innovation, Vituity

AI Increases Provider Productivity and Ease Burnout

4. “In 2025, we will see widespread adoption of machine learning and AI that will enhance healthcare worker productivity while also providing data driven guidance for preventative care. This will help address some of the downstream pressures in the current healthcare system by improving efficiency and also reducing the burden of chronic diseases.
Arbi Ohanian, MD — Neurology Vice President, Vituity

5. “Bottoms-up user adoption of LLM tools by providers starting with scribing/documentation and clinical decision-making will reach >50% of academic and community hospital centers in 2025.”
Sherman Leung, MD — Resident Physician, Stanford Health Care

6. “Ambient listening adoption will grow exponentially across our industry driven by demand for higher provider and clinician efficiency, affordable pricing, and better patient experience.”
Chero Goswami — Chief Information & Digital Officer, University of Wisconsin Health System

7. “AI and other technologies will begin to significantly reduce the administrative burden that has gradually accumulated on the backs of our providers, allowing providers to enjoy delivering care to their patients.”
Walter Peters, MD — Chief Medical Officer, Baylor Scott & White Health

Healthcare AI Grapples with Growing Pains

8. “AI in healthcare will remain the hot topic, but the challenges of realizing its promised value will become increasingly evident. As the initial excitement fades, issues such as difficulty integrating AI into existing workflows, cumbersome implementation processes, low user adoption, and underwhelming performance will come to the forefront. These struggles will pave the way for a new generation of transformational AI solutions.”
Rick Newell, MD, MPH — Chief Transformation Officer, Vituity

9. “I predict a consolidation of vendors offering clinical summary generative AI space, coupled with a clearer distillation of the physician workflow value proposition. Sadly, I also foresee the first few medical malpractice cases associated hallucinations in the documentation, inadvertently missed by the reviewing clinician.”
Arun Mathews — Regional Chief Medical Officer, MultiCare

10. “Medical LLMs will be undifferentiated as foundational models stall out of novel clinical training data — except for models and applications augmented by real world data.”
Steve Pham, MD — Clinical Assistant Professor, UCSF Department of Emergency Medicine

Consumer Experience Moves to the Forefront

11. “Convenience. Healthcare used to be about loyalty to a health system or a primary care provider. Now it’s about easy and convenient access to care meaning same-day access, telehealth, little to no wait times and cost-efficiency.”
Veronique Au, MD — National Director of Outpatient Medicine Health Systems, Vituity

12. “There will be a proliferation of Medicare Advantage and despite all of the wringing of hands we’ve seen in the past 24 months, this year we will see an accelerated enrollment.”
Tim Groover, MD, MBA — SVP/System Chief Medical Officer, Baptist Health

13. “The move toward data interoperability and secure platforms by health systems is reshaping care delivery and bringing care closer to home. This shift prioritizes consumer-centric solutions, offering more convenient and personalized care while reducing reliance on hospitals and long-term care facilities. The result will be a resurgence of post-acute care services, seamlessly integrated into healthcare networks.”
Jeff Ford — Principal of Healthcare Strategy, Deloitte

Point Solutions Consolidate and Platforms Win

14. 2025 will transform EHRs into tools that support providers instead of creating more work. I am bullish on market leaders like Epic solidifying their dominance in the market as they work on agentic orchestration that streamlines data processing for providers and cuts down on wasted time, endless clicking, and back-and-forth. It’s all about making things easier and focusing on what really matters — saving time to prioritize patient care.”
Ed Cho, MD — National Director of Outpatient Medicine, Vituity

15. “We will see the advancement of ‘platform’ (vs. point solutions). There will be a correction and movement towards AI 2.0 solutions, honing focus on innovations that drive ‘hard’ ROI.”
Brad Bennett — AVP Venture Partnerships and Innovation, Endeavor Health

Behavioral Health Outcomes Make Strides

16. “My prediction is that in 2025 the US Health and Human Services will finally enact full enforcement, with strong penalties for failure to comply, of Parity laws matching reimbursement and coverage for care of serious mental illnesses with that of physical illnesses.”
Scott Zeller, MD — Psychiatry Vice President, Vituity

17. “In 2025, overdose deaths in the U.S. will continue to decline, driven by cracking down on global criminal networks, seizing fentanyl at our borders, and expanding access to life-saving naloxone and evidence-based treatment and recovery services. Sustained progress, though, requires reducing stigma around substance use disorders, more investment in prevention, and tackling root causes like financial stress.”*
Michael K. Hole, MD, MBA — Senior Advisor for Rural America to the White House

18.“Life expectancy for Americans might improve or at least stop declining in 2025. With the worst of the COVID pandemic behind us, blunting of the obesity epidemic thanks to GLP-1 inhibitors, and a decline in opioid-related deaths, there are a lot of reasons to be hopeful that the American “healthspan” will increase next year.”
Gregg Miller, MD — Chief Medical Officer, Vituity

Healthcare Continues to be Mired in Uncertainty

19. “In 2025, we can expect a landscape marked by uncertainty, innovation, and consolidation. The new administration is likely to introduce untraditional approaches to care, injecting a degree of unpredictability into the ecosystem. Concurrently, advancements in AI will continue to streamline workflows and enhance clinical decision-making. Additionally, I anticipate an uptick in mergers and acquisitions, as achieving economies of scale becomes increasingly vital for improving healthcare delivery.”
Sally Ann Frank — Worldwide Lead of Health & Life Sciences, Microsoft for Startups

20. “One prediction that needs consideration is the amount of agility healthcare will require this year and its impact on IT systems. There are a lot of unknowns such as, reimbursement rates, inflation and supply chain impact, consumer expectations etc. that will adjust strategic plans rapidly.”
Jeri Koester, MBA — Chief Information and Digital Officer at Marshfield Clinic Health System

Data Quality, Data Security, and Privacy at the Forefront

21. “The biggest issue we have in this realm is around quality of data. Bad data in equals bad data out. This affects both hospital ratings and CMS reimbursement. We need to be able to acquire the data in real time and provide feedback to the providers for correction of documentation to improve quality metrics.”
Vinit Madhvani, MD — Medical Director at El Camino Health, Mountain View

22. “The next big thing in 2025 will be a deliberate pause by healthcare organizations to deepen their understanding of AI. After experimenting with GenAI in 2024, leaders will demand explainable AI systems with clear accountability and robust documentation — outlining purpose, performance, and limitations. This shift will foster trust and ensure AI is implemented responsibly, safeguarding patient care, providers, and organizations alike.”
Shaun Garcia — Chief Quality, Data, & Analytics Officer, Brevard Health Alliance

Cost Containment and Value Creation Continue to be a Focus

23. “Major changes are unlikely, and organizations deploying artificial intelligence will continue to create more jobs than they remove as the US consumer demands choice and access without true regard for or understanding of quality, prevention, or concern for public health. US healthcare spending as a percentage of GDP will continue to increase as will regulatory efforts that attempt to limit unconstrained consumption.”
Herbert Harman, MD — Psychiatry Associate Vice President, Vituity

24. “2025 will experience a rise in capitated and bundled payment models as a cost-containment effort. These models, which require improved care coordination and technologically-supported efficiencies, will operationalize quickly, though not as fast as consumers demand. This will generate a lesser-but-growing expansion of consumer-driven models. The rate of consumer adoption will correlate to the rate of employer-sponsored plans.”
Cat Sartin — Vice President of Outpatient Services, Vituity

25. “Companies tackling language barriers between patients and healthcare providers are poised to lead the health equity movement in 2025. At my clinic, we are piloting a tool for real-time documentation of patient interviews in Spanish, while similar tools for translating discharge instructions into multiple languages are being evaluated elsewhere. Despite implementation challenges, adopting AI-driven solutions in this historically neglected area will establish overcoming language gaps as a cornerstone of health equity.”
David Velasquez, MD, MBA — Internal Medicine Physician, Brigham and Women’s Hospital