AI Adoption in Healthcare 2026: Benchmark of 1,603 Professionals

We asked 1,603 people who work in healthcare how they use AI at work. They answered The AI Report’s Where You Stand benchmark between July 20, 2026 and November 2, 2026. Here is how far along they are, what holds them back, what they want from AI next and which tools the most advanced teams use, compared with all 14,452 people in the benchmark.

Key findings

• People in healthcare are close to the benchmark average. 13% are leaders, against 14% of all respondents, and 63% are still early.
• The biggest blocker is picking the right tools (31%), almost tied with the skills gap (31%).
• Their top goal is to save time (45%).
• ChatGPT is the most used AI tool (80% of those who named a tool), then Claude (61%) and Gemini (40%). Tableau stands out: 4% use it, against 2% of all respondents.
• Leaders lean on Claude. 74% of leaders use it, against 54% of those still early.

How far along people in healthcare are with AI

The largest share of people in healthcare say they are “just exploring” (37%). 7% say AI is used across their company and 5% are rolling it out to their team.

What holds people in healthcare back

We asked for the single biggest blocker. Picking the right tools leads at 31%. If that is you too: shortlist tools by the job you need done.

What they want from AI in the next 90 days

45% want to save time, 30% want to build their AI skills and 11% want to grow revenue.

The AI tools people in healthcare use

People named 3.0 AI tools each on average. These are the 12 most used, as a share of the 1,469 people here who named at least one. Compare any of them in our AI tool database.

What the leaders use differently

Leaders are the 203 people in healthcare whose AI is rolled out to their team or used across their company. They named 3.6 tools each, against 2.7 for the 1,003 who are still early. These are the clearest differences.

Where they use AI at work

Writing comes first (69%), then personal productivity (59%) and research (48%). People could pick several areas.

Budget for a first AI project

46% are not sure yet. The most common amount named is under $500 (32%).

Who answered

45% decide, recommend or have a say in what their company buys.

Company size

Role

Say in what their company buys

What leaders told The AI Report podcast

“Most average business users don't understand what they've just allowed there, which is suddenly that thing can access all of that data.”

Cillian Kieran, CEO and Founder at Ethyca. Think before you click accept on an AI connector. Linking an assistant to your CRM, Stripe, QuickBooks or Shopify can quietly give it access to everything in those systems. Cillian describes how, over ten or twelve weeks of casual questions, a small store owner could move sensitive purchase and card data across boundaries it shouldn't cross without realizing it. Understand exactly what you are permitting before you connect a system, and limit access to what the task actually needs. Watch or read the episode.

Dan Klein, CTO and Co-founder (also Professor of Computer Science, UC Berkeley) at Scaled Cognition. Language models are built to produce what sounds plausible, not what is true, and their wrong answers sound exactly as fluent and confident as their right ones. Don't judge an answer by how convincing it sounds. For anything that matters, such as account balances, policies or prescriptions, make sure the information comes from an approved source like your own system of record rather than being generated, and when a tool cites sources, click through, because Dan says the answer often isn't there or is different. Watch or read the episode.

Next steps

• Shortlist tools by the job you need done. The AI Report tool database compares 5,500+ AI tools by use case and price.
• Join the free live Claude session. Every Tuesday at 2pm ET, free for every reader.
• Get a plan built for you. The AI Report Pro turns your benchmark answers into a 90-day AI plan, step by step.

Compare with other groups

The full benchmark: AI at Work Benchmark 2026, with every industry, role and company size side by side.

By industry: Professional services, Software and tech, Education, Marketing and media, Manufacturing, Nonprofits and government, Financial services, Retail and e-commerce, Real estate, Legal.

By role: Executives and founders, Directors, Managers and team leads, Individual contributors, Consultants and advisors, Students and career switchers.

By company size: Solo professionals, Small businesses (2 to 50), Mid-size companies (51 to 1,000), Large enterprises (1,001+).

About this data

These numbers come from The AI Report’s Where You Stand benchmark. Between July 20, 2026 and November 2, 2026, 14,452 people completed it. This page covers the 1,603 who said they work in healthcare.

• Answers are self-reported. People chose their own industry, role, company size and stage.
• “Early” means just exploring or testing a few tools. “Leaders” means AI is rolled out to their team or used across their company.
• People could pick more than one tool, so tool shares add up to more than 100%. Tool shares are out of the 1,469 people here who named at least one tool.
• Where people use AI was asked from July 20 to August 31, 2026 (865 answers here).
• Budget was asked from September 1, 2026 (741 answers here).
• Percentages are rounded to whole numbers.
• We never publish individual answers. A group only gets a page with 100 or more people, and we only compare groups of 30 or more.
• People who take an AI newsletter's quiz are more interested in AI than the average worker, so read these numbers as a benchmark of people actively working on AI, not a national average.

Last updated November 2, 2026. To cite this page: The AI Report, AI at Work Benchmark 2026, theaireport.ai/tools/benchmark.