The record starts in June 2017. Accenture analyzed ten AI applications it judged most promising for healthcare and concluded they could produce annual savings of $150 billion by 2026, according to ICT&health’s account of the findings. The year it named is now here, and the market behind those projections has kept growing on paper.
Where the savings were meant to come from
Accenture scored each application on its impact, how likely it was to be adopted and what it was worth to the health economy. Three led the list. Robot-assisted surgery was put at $40 billion, virtual nursing assistants at $20 billion, and administrative workflow help at $18 billion. The consultancy told health organizations to concentrate on four areas to capture the gains: workforce, institutional readiness, care reach and security.
The same report leaned on earlier research by Frost & Sullivan, which expected the AI health market to reach $6.6 billion by 2021, growing 40 percent a year, and to expand more than tenfold over five years.
What the market forecasts say
A later estimate sits far above that. In July 2022, Precedence Research put worldwide AI use in healthcare at US$ 11.06 billion in 2021 and projected US$ 15.1 billion in 2022. Its forecast for 2030 is US$ 187.95 billion, growing at 37% a year between 2022 and 2030, as Bio-IT World reported.
The firm gives several reasons. Patient admissions are climbing as chronic disease spreads and populations age. Governments want to cut costs and speed up care. Digital health records are mandatory in countries including the US, Australia and the UK, and those records help clinicians catch disease early. The pandemic also deepened the sector’s reliance on virtual technologies. Among the key market players it lists are Intel, Microsoft, IBM, Nvidia, Google, Siemens Healthineers and Philips.
Note the source of each number. The $150 billion figure is a consultancy’s estimate of potential savings, not a measured result, and the market-size series comes from a research firm’s model. Neither document shows what hospitals actually saved in 2026.
Sources
- Accenture: AI will lead to $150 billion in annual savings by 2026 – ICT&health
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) in Healthcare Market Size US$ 187.95 Bn by 2030 – Bio-IT World (Precedence Research analysis)
- Bio-IT World (Precedence Research) market players
