Executives discuss AI reshaping the healthcare workforce, Part 1
A consensus exists among healthcare leaders: AI is far more likely to act as an intelligent assistant helping the workforce rather than displacing workers, signaling an evolution in the sector driven by efficiency rather than wholesale replacement.
Here is Part 1 of what healthcare executives told MobiHealthNews when asked which jobs in healthcare will be replaced by AI:
Daryl Tol, president of General Catalyst's HATCo
It's interesting. I want to flip that, because I think many of the professions that we're used to will still be in healthcare, but they will be working in different ways, and I actually think there will be new professions. Healthcare is a complicated production system that cares for human beings, in some of their moments of crisis.
So, the ability to do systems engineering, industrial design, product people – to create products that feel like they've been designed for humans versus products that feel like they've come out of the ether accidentally.
I think we'll see new talent established, and then that talent will pair with great technology, the technology will pair with great clinical providers, and all the jobs will change, but we hope they'll change intentionally toward a new model.
Eyal Zimlichman, founder and director of ARC and chief innovation, transformation and AI officer at Sheba Medical Center
Jobs that require repetitive tasks dependent on protocols lend themselves to allowing AI to replace humans: Roles like frontline administration, call centers and office managers are good examples of this.
In the clinical field, AI will be used for optimization of human tasks, not replacement. For example, a nurse will do only what a nurse can do, and some of her unspecialized tasks will be shifted to AI. This will promote professionals to work at the top of their license and optimize human resources.
Cherry Drulis, director of healthcare mobile B2B for Samsung Electronics
AI is likely to automate repetitive and data-intensive tasks in healthcare, such as medical imaging analysis, administrative workflows and patient data management. However, roles requiring human empathy, complex decision-making and interpersonal skills – such as doctors, nurses and therapists – are less likely to be replaced. Instead, AI will augment these roles by providing decision support and improving efficiency.
Julia Strandberg, chief business leader of connected care at Philips
AI won’t replace clinicians, but it will transform the environment and work happening around them. Healthcare workers are more essential than ever, yet more cognitively strained than ever. AI’s role is to alleviate this burden by simplifying documentation and reducing administrative clutter, so clinicians can focus their attention on where they're needed most.
What AI will replace are inefficient processes: fragmented workflows, redundant data entries and non-actionable administrative tasks. Today, clinicians often manually piece together information from disconnected systems, creating delays and frustration. AI bridges these gaps by synthesizing data and enabling faster clinical decision-making.
That shift allows clinicians to spend time on things only humans can do – demonstrating clinical judgment, forming patient connections and practicing empathy. By deploying AI to work where it has the greatest impact, we can help health systems manage today's challenges while keeping the patient at the center of care.
Roland Rott, president and CEO of imaging at GE HealthCare
At GE HealthCare, we have always – and firmly – believed that AI will not replace human jobs in healthcare but rather enhance them. It will reshape the work by allowing clinicians to focus on complex decision-making and patient care instead of repetitive administrative tasks. AI excels at automating repetitive, high-volume and bureaucratic tasks, such as flagging potentially serious cases for prioritization or reconstructing images to correct for motion, thereby freeing clinicians to focus on complex decision-making and patient care.
In radiology, for example, AI can pre-screen studies and prioritize urgent cases. This frees up highly skilled clinicians – radiologists, technologists and other medical professionals – to focus on complex diagnostic challenges, interpret nuanced findings, engage in empathetic patient care and leverage their years of experience and intuition.
AI acts as an intelligent "assistant" that supports human decision-making with the goal of improving efficiency, accuracy and job satisfaction. It can also optimize scheduling and resource allocation, improve productivity with the goal of helping reduce burnout by offloading monotonous tasks and providing powerful decision support, empowering healthcare professionals to operate at the peak of their capabilities, and ultimately, elevate the quality and personalization of patient care.
Dr. Ricky Bloomfield, chief medical officer at Oura
AI is most likely to replace repetitive, data-heavy and administrative tasks rather than entire jobs, especially in healthcare and consumer wellness. Analyzing continuous health data, sending routine reminders and generating basic reports can be automated, freeing humans to focus on interpretation, personalization and decision-making.
Roles that rely on clinical judgment, empathy and trust from doctors, nurses and health coaches remain essential.
At the same time, there’s growing evidence that AI tools can sometimes express more empathy than busy or burned-out clinicians. The point isn’t that AI should replace human care, but that it can help close gaps, reduce burden and support more meaningful human connection. In short, AI strengthens the people doing the work rather than replacing them.
Shai Policker, cofounder and managing partner at Edge Medical Ventures
Some jobs will be replaced, no doubt. But for the most part, AI will expand the capacity of the healthcare system without requiring personnel growth at the same rate as before. This can help contain costs. AI will also help maintain quality as certain services experience increasing demand.
Matt Cybulsky, managing director of healthcare at Catalant
AI is aggressively pressuring non-clinical roles in healthcare due to its ability to automate workflows in administrative tasks, including revenue cycle. A structural shift is occurring, but we are far away from elimination of administrative needs handled by humans. The same is true for clinical roles.
Clinical roles are undergoing some augmentation with AI, as robotic-assisted systems enhance procedures without replacing human judgment. Nonetheless, the risk of a human poverty of clinical judgment and the erosion of contextual expertise is real, but how this will occur and its true risk remains opaque.
It's fun and terrorizing to fantasize about AI's impact on healthcare, but the suggestion that AI can replicate specific procedures and tasks in healthcare and replace human advocacy and nuanced decision making is just not realistic. Patient welfare dictates the healthcare workforce of 2026 define itself with the chosen application AI tools available. As such, the market will speak as the workforce navigates a new future with tools augmenting their abilities.
Skynet has yet to arrive, and 2026 will be no different.
Orr Inbar, CEO and cofounder of QuantHealth
Medical stenographers and scribes are the clearest examples of roles that will likely be automated. Beyond that, most healthcare and life sciences professionals will likely become more efficient in their jobs as they become more proficient with AI, ultimately leading to better-quality care and the development of better treatments.
Edmund Jackson, cofounder and CEO of UnityAI
AI isn't going to wipe out healthcare jobs, but rather reshape what those roles look like. The industry is already facing a serious and growing labor shortage, so the repetitive, manual parts of administrative work are naturally the first to be done by AI. That doesn't mean those people go away; it means they can be redeployed into higher-value work that requires judgment, coordination and human connection.
Shlomi Madar, CEO of SpotitEarly
Total replacement is likely to take longer in healthcare than in other fields, largely because of the high level of trust and human judgment required in clinical settings. AI-assisted care is already expanding, but rather than replacing clinicians outright, it’s creating new needs for experts who can oversee algorithms, audit for bias and translate AI outputs into safe, actionable clinical decisions.
Mudit Garg, CEO and founder of Qventus
There's a tremendous amount of work that highly skilled people in healthcare do today that doesn't require their expertise: administrative tasks that keep them from higher-value work.
At the same time, there are critical things those same people could be doing for patients that never get done because they're buried in paperwork. The opportunity isn't a replacement. When you free capable staff from faxing, calling and manual coordination, they can focus on the clinical work that actually improves outcomes but goes undone today because there simply isn't time.
Julius Bruch, CEO of Isaac Health
We deeply believe that the core roles in care delivery – physicians, care navigators, support staff – should remain human-driven. This field depends heavily on empathy, judgment and human touch.
That being said, AI will certainly accelerate certain administrative tasks, such as chart summarization, data gathering and other repetitive steps, which frees staff to focus on patient communication and follow-up.
All in all, we believe that AI should extend clinical teams rather than replace them. Any efficiency it creates should be reinvested into more touchpoints and faster access for patients and caregivers.
Inbar Blum, director of planning and development in the growth division of the Israel Innovation Authority
Across healthcare, AI is eliminating tasks, not entire professions. Roles that require empathy, complex reasoning and accountability as doctors, nurses, psychologists, social workers and clinical investigators will not disappear. Instead, AI is reshaping their work by handling routine elements of diagnosis, monitoring and data processing.
In radiology, for example, AI will manage first-read triage, pattern detection and workflow sorting, while specialists focus on complex cases and decision-making. In mental health, AI supports assessments and case management, but human clinicians remain central to therapy and care.
As I see it, AI is restructuring the workforce, not replacing humans, by shifting humans toward high-judgment, high-empathy work while machines absorb routine tasks.
