It’s not just you – the pace of change is accelerating

For decades, we’ve heard that change is coming in healthcare. But after so many warnings that didn’t lead to the forecasted seismic shifts, it’s easy to get used to the notion that change in the industry will remain slow and incremental. This assumption is reinforced by a natural cognitive reflex: our brains are wired to expect the future to resemble the past. (see previous Wise Thought post about normalcy bias). The internal bias that keeps us geared toward what we know and understand helps us to cope with uncertainty—but in an era of technological acceleration, it can blind us to the implications of huge leaps unfolding in real-time around us.

But the unexpected inputs and urgent events, whether living through a natural disaster, a cyber security breach, a major competitive shift, or technology that changes the very definition of our work, all keep coming. In my own observation, healthcare executives have never seemed more busy or overwhelmed. If you’re feeling like this, it’s not just you -- these are signs that we are living in a VUCA world.

What is VUCA?

Originally coined by the military to describe modern combat environments, VUCA describes the conditions of an extremely unstable environment:

Volatility – The speed and magnitude of change are unprecedented in human history. Major breakthroughs, like generative AI, emerge and scale faster than ever before, rapidly shifting market dynamics and consumer expectations. What seems stable one day can become obsolete the next.
Uncertainty – The future is increasingly hard to predict. Historical experience and patterns no longer provide reliable guidance, and long-standing assumptions are rapidly shifting. Leaders must make decisions to navigate unknown and changing futures.
Complexity – The problems we face are interconnected and multi-layered, often involving numerous stakeholders, frameworks, and variables. A change in one area can trigger cascading effects that are difficult to anticipate.
Ambiguity – Situations and data can have multiple interpretations, making it difficult to discern the correct path. We often don’t know why something is happening—or what the long-term implications will be—until much later.

In this VUCA world, leaders across all industries must navigate shifting landscapes without the comfort of predictability or control. Nowhere is this more true than in healthcare.

Healthcare in a VUCA World

Healthcare is an especially complex industry, which has given it some protection from change. Because emerging technology, especially applications of AI, is introducing new ways to manage complexity, it represents a major breakthrough in driving potential change. As Dr. Robby Pearl, former CEO of The Permanente Medical Group, highlighted in his 1/9/25 LinkedIn post: Clinical practice changes slowly but over the course of five years, generative AI will have doubled in power every year, becoming 32 times more advanced. This is so seismic it could completely replace many clinical work flows.

To understand the scope of this transformation, here are four key areas where AI could revolutionize healthcare at a faster place than most strategic plans are planning for:

1. Clinical Decision-Making and Diagnostics1 2 3

AI is not only revolutionizing the interpretation of medical images—from X-rays and MRIs to CT scans—with accuracy comparable to human experts but is also transforming how imaging is conducted, accessed, and delivered. By enabling the use of lower-cost, portable imaging devices and enhancing the capabilities of existing equipment, AI is driving innovations that reduce costs and expand access to diagnostics, particularly in resource-limited settings. It has the potential to decentralize imaging from traditional hospitals to primary care clinics, mobile units, and even patients' homes. AI is also able to help accelerate workflows to improve turnaround times and promote new ways to obtain images that require minimal training or infrastructure.

These emerging capabilities could democratize advanced diagnostics, redefine how disease is detected and treated, and significantly alter the economic and technological landscape of healthcare delivery, all with lower costs.

2. Documentation and Administration

The administrative complexity in healthcare across clinical, operational, and financial domains remains a critical bottleneck. Consider that doctors spend an average of 15.5 hours per week on documentation and other non-clinical tasks. 4 This inefficiency not only diverts focus from patient care but also exacerbates burnout and drives up operational costs across the healthcare system. AI is poised to fundamentally reshape this landscape. Advanced documentation tools now go beyond simply automating note-taking, offering real-time transcription, context-aware summarization, and integration with EHRs to reduce manual data entry and coding errors.

On the payer side, AI is transforming claims management, streamlining preauthorization processes, identifying fraud, optimizing payment workflows, and ensuring regulatory compliance with unparalleled speed and accuracy. These advancements could dismantle silos between providers and payers, reduce backlogs, and improve transparency in healthcare transactions. AI’s ability to harmonize data across fragmented systems could redefine how time and resources are allocated. This would relieve providers and enable payers to shift their focus from managing claims to driving more value in other ways, such as with values-based incentives. By reducing redundant processes and administrative friction, over time, AI could transform the entire healthcare value chain, not just changing workflows but reimagining how healthcare operates at its administrative core.

While some healthcare organizations are piloting AI in localized, contained settings, others are focused on the transformation I described above. These two models will be competing with each other throughout the next decade.

3. Drug Discovery and Personalized Treatment 5 6

AI-driven drug discovery is not just a breakthrough for pharmaceutical development—it signifies a paradigm shift with significant implications for healthcare as a whole. By considerably reducing the time and cost required to develop new treatments, AI has the potential to make advanced therapies more accessible, bridging gaps in care for underserved populations and addressing global health disparities. Its ability to uncover treatments for rare diseases and confront previously intractable conditions can transform our understanding of disease management, paving the way for entirely new therapeutic options approaches.

AI-driven advancements in personalized medicine promise to revolutionize healthcare by creating treatments tailored to individual genetic profiles. This shift will transform the standard of care and replace the one-size-fits-all approach with a model that is precise, predictive, and proactive.This level of innovation could redefine how healthcare systems allocate resources, prioritize preventative care, and respond to emerging public health crises.

4. Virtual Health Assistants and Patient Engagement

AI-powered virtual health assistants are engaging patients throughout their daily lives, providing support for health-related questions, chronic disease management, health goals, and preventative care. These tools offer real-time guidance, help patients make informed decisions, and track health risks over time. By creating continuous, personalized connections, they have the potential to redefine the relationship between patients and caregivers—shifting from episodic, appointment-based interactions to ongoing, proactive support that empowers patients to take a more active role in their health.

This model, even in a simple form, represents an almost complete reimagination of the definition of what healthcare is, who delivers it, and how it is financed.

What Can We Do?

Emphasizing the degree of change in a VUCA world isn’t intended to cause more overwhelm or concern. This period reflects the biggest opportunity of our careers (in history!?) to reimagine the healthcare system as it always should have been and ensure that our own organization’s mission is expressed in the healthcare environment of the future. We won’t get there, though, if we are waiting until our ducks are in a row to get started.

Here are some ideas:

1. Respect the risk, but imagine the potential.
We need to acknowledge the risks posed by AI without becoming paralyzed by them. AI’s rapid evolution brings ethical, regulatory, and privacy challenges, but it also creates powerful new opportunities. Limitations in expertise and resources can be overcome through new and unexpected partnerships, revenue models, and strategic niches. Remember, most of us find it hard to imagine what has not yet occurred. If we can use structured visioning and scenario planning to overcome this bias, it can create a strategic advantage

2. Create space for strategic reflection and action.
The instinct to keep moving to address the immediate challenges before us during times of upheaval is strong, but if we don’t take a step back to reflect, we risk missing the risks and opportunities surrounding us. For years, we have lamented the slow pace of change in healthcare. Now that the potential is before us, we have an unprecedented opportunity to reimagine healthcare for the better, infused with fundamental principles of consumer centricity, quality, equity, and caring. This will require safeguarding time and resources to make this happen.

3. Believe that hard things are possible.
Change is hard. Uncertainty is hard. Overwhelm is hard. But these truths can’t divert our attention—they’re invitations to change the dynamic. Our healthcare system is fixable, and we can do good no matter what the environment is before us.

We live in a time that demands both boldness and thoughtfulness. We can acknowledge risks while envisioning possibilities at the same time. We can accomplish great things.

With you in goodness,