How Is AI Used in Healthcare?

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Read time 6 minutes

Courtney Johnson

Published on Aug 7, 2025

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) to enhance the practice and delivery of healthcare is becoming increasingly widespread. No matter where you go, you’ll likely either hear about it, witness its use or even use it yourself. With this new technology comes the excitement of its potential and limitless ideas of how it can positively affect various industries, notably the healthcare industry. This powerful branch of computer science has the potential to transform the practice and delivery of medicine, more so than it already has.¹

To understand the use and effects of AI in the healthcare industry, such as the role of artificial intelligence in the nursing industry, we spoke with Yenny Haim, MSN-RN and NCLEX success manager for GCU. “Advocating for safe artificial intelligence and its integration in nursing education is one of my passions,” she explains. To better answer How is AI used in healthcare? we can look at its various applications, benefits, challenges and what the future may hold as we develop and progress this modern tool.

"The integration of artificial intelligence in healthcare is rapidly enhancing both provider efficiency and patient care outcomes."

— Yenny Haim, MSN-RN, NCLEX Success Manager

Applications of AI in Healthcare

AI is transforming nearly every corner of the healthcare system, offering tools that enhance accuracy, accessibility, speed and efficiency.¹ From personalized treatment plans to streamlined workflows, AI applications are reshaping how care is delivered and experienced by both patients and providers.

Diagnostic

Diagnostic AI tools bring about new possibilities for practitioners in the early detection and treatment of various conditions. Haim further discusses how she believes AI-powered tools can offer predictive analytics, which can help enable early identification of health risks and the detection of disease. This, in turn, can help support clinicians in making timely and accurate diagnoses. She also explains how data from electronic health records helps create accurate patient profiles that can improve the accuracy of diagnoses and promote effective treatment plans.

The simplicity and accessibility of AI tools for patients can also promote proactive healthcare interventions. These may include interactions with virtual assistants, video appointments, AI chatbots, medication and check-up reminders and general health information.

Drug Discovery and Treatment

When discussing the role of artificial intelligence in progressing drug discovery and treatment options, Haim states how she believes AI “is driving significant advancements in medical research and drug discovery, with its potential expected to grow substantially over the coming decade.”² AI, with its capability to provide efficient and accurate information, may be key to accelerating drug development.² A key component of this is the ability of AI to predict the efficacy of different drug compounds, a process that is typically time-consuming and requires many man-hours. AI’s ability to identify patterns and trends enables researchers to establish a faster process of identifying ideal compounds, leading to the quicker development of necessary medications.²

Administration

Aside from medical diagnosis and treatment processes, AI can be a useful tool in streamlining the administrative work that is critical to establishing an efficient and organized healthcare system. One of the most notable benefits is the ability to automate processes that are typically time-consuming and tedious. AI can also help lessen clinician burnout by automating administrative and repetitive tasks such as scheduling and documentation. Voice-enabled features and smart documentation tools streamline clinical workflows, allowing nurses and other healthcare professionals to dedicate more time to direct patient care.³

AI in Healthcare: Limitations and Challenges

With an industry such as healthcare, which utilizes massive amounts of data and sensitive patient information, there are bound to be concerns and challenges with how AI may be affecting this important sector of society. Haim expands on this, stating how she believes that managing significant amounts of sensitive data warrants rigorous due diligence to ensure that any AI technologies protect patient confidentiality. Ensuring the safe use of AI is critical to earning trust and support from all parties involved, as well as forwarding its development.

Another factor to consider is the financial implications and time needed to properly establish AI tools. It may take significant time and money to adapt, train, implement and test these technologies so that they can be properly used at their most effective capacity. This also involves staff who are trained and knowledgeable about its capabilities and are willing to adapt them as needed. With this, it’s important to note that there may be hesitation or resistance to using this new technology, as staff may have predisposed ideas and opinions about AI and its implications in the healthcare industry.

Practical Examples of AI Use in Healthcare

While we can recognize that AI is all around us, we may not realize how deeply integrated it is in various processes in healthcare research, development, treatment and administration. Haim discusses some examples of AI use in several of these sectors.

Haim shares with us an example of how she sees AI use in supporting drug development — the collaboration between NVIDIA and Microsoft. Microsoft Discovery is a platform designed to support scientific research and industrial innovation and can play a key role in streamlining and expanding the discovery process.⁴ “The platform will integrate NVIDIA’s ALCHEMI NIM microservice, enhancing AI inference for chemical simulations and enabling more accurate scientific predictions and recommendations,” Haim explains. In addition, NVIDIA’s BioNeMo NIM microservices will be incorporated to leverage pre-trained AI models that accelerate drug discovery workflows. She emphasizes how this collaboration “is an exciting breakthrough, equipping researchers with advanced tools to improve performance, expedite scientific discoveries and ultimately drive better healthcare outcomes.”

Diagnostically, AI has been used to successfully diagnose challenging diseases. A series of studies concerning diagnosing breast cancer demonstrated its ability to lower inaccuracies and increase the effectiveness of results. One study in the United Kingdom significantly reduced false positives and false negatives by 5.7% and 9.4%.⁴ Meanwhile, a South Korean study found that AI was 17% more effective at detecting early breast cancer than radiologists.⁴

AI Use for Nursing Educators

As an NCLEX-RN success coach, Haim incorporates evidence-based tools and strategies for NCLEX preparation and personalized coaching recommendations to enhance student achievement. She explains: “ChatGPT is my go-to resource for study plan ideas, content writing inspiration and project development. I use ChatGPT to create personalized study plans for students who need additional support with the Client Needs content categories assessed on the HESI Exit and NCLEX-RN exams.” Haim also discusses how she integrates institution-specific resources available to students at GCU into her plans, including references to Saunders, LaCharity and the HESI Prep Suite.

AI offers various platforms that can help healthcare educators, such as Haim, create effective instructional plans and provide practical resources. She discusses: “In my coaching sessions, I incorporate Sherpath AI as an instructional support tool.” The Sherpath AI chatbot has a wide range of relevant resources and evidence-based nursing content. “I guide students with prompt strategies to access targeted information, including practice quizzes on specific nursing subjects and video case studies.”

"We are witnessing the early stages of AI’s transformative impact on healthcare. I am confident that the continued development of safe and advanced AI technologies will play a pivotal role in global disease prevention and control and accelerate scientific research. These innovations have the potential to significantly enhance patient health and quality of life worldwide."

— Yenny Haim, MSN-RN, NCLEX Success Manager

Contribute to the Future of AI at GCU

If you’re passionate about exploring the future of AI in healthcare, consider enrolling in our Bachelor of Science in Health Information Management program. For healthcare professionals looking to expand their knowledge of technology use in healthcare, our Master of Science in Health Informatics program will teach you best practices and ethical, forward-thinking IT initiatives in the healthcare system. Fill out the form on this page to get started today.

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Approved and verified accurate by the Associate Dean of the College of Nursing and Health Care Professions on July 28, 2025.

The views and opinions expressed in this article are those of the author’s and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Grand Canyon University. Any sources cited were accurate as of the publish date.