Building trust in healthcare AI: five key insights from the 2025 Future Health Index
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- Dec 1, 2025
- 3 minute read
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Shez Partovi, MD
AI is already helping healthcare providers tackle their most pressing challenges, but its full potential remains untapped. The key to wider adoption? Trust. The 2025 Future Health Index – the largest global survey of its kind – asked patients and healthcare professionals how they view the potential of AI and how comfortable they are with its use. Here’s what we found – and why we believe trust and innovation must go hand in hand to unlock AI’s promise in healthcare.
Automating administrative tasks. Expanding care capacity. Reducing patient waiting times. According to our 2025 Future Health Index survey, these are among the top benefits healthcare professionals see in using AI in their departments. And they couldn’t be timelier. The need to transform healthcare has never been more urgent, with staff shortages, rising costs, and systemic inefficiencies straining healthcare systems around the globe.
Yet as AI’s role in society rapidly expands, so does public skepticism. Despite its benefits, people’s trust in AI is declining, with growing concerns over its safety, reliability and potential unintended consequences. Nowhere are these concerns more critical than in healthcare, where people’s health and well-being are at stake.
Our survey confirms this trust gap: while 79% of healthcare professionals are optimistic that AI could improve patient outcomes, only 59% of patients share that optimism. Most patients welcome the use of AI for administrative tasks such as making appointments or checking in. But as its use moves into clinical areas – and the stakes rise – their comfort drops. More than half (52%) worry about losing the human touch in their care. Healthcare professionals, too, express concerns – particularly around data bias and liability risks.
In a sector built on human connection, trust in AI must be earned at every step. The question is: how? Our survey findings offer five important clues for building trust in healthcare AI.
1. Patients are open to AI – if it improves and humanizes care
To understand what would foster patients’ trust in healthcare AI, we asked them directly. Their response was clear: they want AI to work safely and effectively, supporting better health outcomes and reducing errors.
Patients are also more open to AI when it frees up doctors for personal interactions, easing their fears of a less human healthcare experience as technology becomes more prevalent. Used correctly, AI has the potential to make healthcare more personal, not less – and that’s exactly what patients are asking for.
2. As patient awareness of AI grows, so does their demand for reassurance
Unsurprisingly, patients in our survey who feel more knowledgeable about AI tend to be more comfortable with its use. However, these patients also seek stronger assurances – whether it’s about understanding how AI is used or about the safety of their data.
Knowledgeable patients may be more aware of AI’s potential benefits, resulting in higher comfor levels, but they’re also more conscious of its risks and limitations, leading to a stronger demand for transparency and control.
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