VANCOUVER, BC, Feb. 19, 2026 /CNW/ - The adoption of artificial intelligence (AI) in health care could provide enormous productivity gains, but only if health care systems are redesigned with AI at their core, finds a new study published today by the Fraser Institute, an independent, non-partisan Canadian public policy think-tank.

"Artificial intelligence has the potential to radically transform—and improve—virtually every facet of health care, from discovery, diagnosis and treatment, to administration and research," said Avi Goldfarb, the Rotman Chair in Artificial Intelligence and Healthcare at the Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto, and author of How Implementing System-Wide Solutions Can Amplify the Impact of Artificial Intelligence on Health Care.

The study documents how AI is already being used effectively in many health care processes, but the current so-called point solutions, where AI is incorporated into specific and established applications, offer only marginal improvements.

Crucially, the study argues that substantial productivity gains in health care from AI adoption will happen only when the entire health care value chain—and not just specific individual activities—is redesigned with AI at its core.

For example, AI "scribe" is a tool already in use to automatically generate clinical notes from physician–patient conversations. While this saves physicians time that would otherwise be spent typing information into electronic health records, a system-wide solution might, for example, see AI unobtrusively record conversations in the exam room, structure the clinical notes, update the medical records, arrange follow-up appointments, coordinate with the pharmacy, and flag relevant test results.

Similarly, in medical research and discovery, machine learning tools are already used to search prior literature, perform statistical analysis, and sift through molecular databases. An example of a system-wide solution could be a "self-driving lab" where AI actively designs, runs, and adapts entire experiments in real time without human intervention, accelerating the search for new drugs and optimizing treatment protocols.  

"Artificial intelligence—and in particular system solutions with AI at their core—holds great promise for health care," Goldfarb said.

"Whether the health-care system can realize this potential will depend on whether health care leaders are willing to embrace system-level redesign, while keeping patient health as their core mission."

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The Fraser Institute is an independent Canadian public policy research and educational organization with offices in Vancouver, Calgary, Toronto, Halifax and Montreal and ties to a global network of think-tanks in 87 countries. Its mission is to improve the quality of life for Canadians, their families and future generations by studying, measuring and broadly communicating the effects of government policies, entrepreneurship and choice on their well-being. To protect the Institute's independence, it does not accept grants from governments or contracts for research. Visit www.fraserinstitute.org

SOURCE The Fraser Institute