2026 Future of Health Report

Healthcare was built for a world that no longer exists. The rise of generative AI has created a new healthcare consumer—one that is better informed, more empowered and more confident in advocating for the options they want to pursue. And this consumer isn’t waiting for healthcare to catch up to them.

The ZS Impact Institute surveyed nearly 10,000 healthcare consumers and providers across the U.S., Germany and China. The findings highlight a single, core truth: AI has radically and permanently shifted how patients interact with healthcare. For healthcare leaders who cling to today’s outdated model, patients will walk away in favor of others—both incumbents and newcomers—who harness AI to offer a better, more seamless care experience.

With AI, the first opinion may no longer come from a doctor

Healthcare has long been organized around the premise that doctors serve as the primary source of information, trust and clinical direction. As AI has moved mainstream, that model is being disrupted as the consumerization of healthcare becomes an immediate and unavoidable reality. AI and AI-powered search are now an increasingly important patient source of health information, orientation and early decision support. In our survey, healthcare consumers across the U.S., Germany and China rated the helpfulness of AI-generated health information nearly on par with that of their doctors.

People are directing their own care—including treatment decisions

Healthcare providers (HCPs) remain the most trusted source for healthcare information, but consumers are increasingly using LLMs and AI-powered search to develop opinions, interpret information and guide health decisions—tasks that, until recently, have depended heavily on clinicians. With more than half of consumers using online tools for health information in both the U.S. and China, today’s “first opinion” is just as likely to come from an LLM as an HCP.

This narrowing of healthcare’s traditional information asymmetry is already reshaping the clinical encounter, especially in the U.S., where 68% of PCPs surveyed say they’ve seen an increase in patients requesting specific treatments by name.

Healthcare industry trends 2026: A view of today’s broken patient journey

Even as healthcare consumers take a more active role in directing their health, their agency has limits. While anyone can order tests and initiate requests for diagnostic workups, ordinary people can’t bill insurance, professionally interpret results or prescribe treatment. Patients still need the healthcare system to help propel them forward. Instead, patients are left to navigate an increasingly complex web of providers, payers and other stakeholders—often unsuccessfully.

See the key moments when the system fails to support patients from one step to the next.

ZS’s vision for the future of health: Zero distance to the patient

For years, everyone with a stake in healthcare has been asking for more engaged and empowered patients. AI has delivered that faster than anyone expected, but empowerment without support isn’t progress. It’s an invitation to leave. If healthcare leaders don’t use AI and technology to rearchitect care around today’s engaged and empowered healthcare consumer, then patients will stop showing up—managing their health through AI, virtual workarounds and a growing ecosystem of alternatives, returning to the formal system only when they’re too sick to avoid it.

When patients craft their own paths through care, they aren’t rejecting healthcare. They’re responding rationally to a healthcare system that makes it feel easier to go it alone than to participate. By meeting patients where they are—always on, always accessible, at the level patients need—AI has collapsed the gap between patients and knowledge. But the healthcare system struggles to close the remaining distance between that knowledge and care.

A new organizing principle to shift healthcare’s focus to the patient

This is the gap that matters now, and closing it requires a new organizing principle for healthcare. We call it zero distance to the patient: A model that shifts healthcare’s central focus to the patient and collapses the distance between what a person needs for their health and how they get there. Building for zero distance means every healthcare stakeholder—from health plans and HCP to biopharma and medtech—must take responsibility not only for their traditional role but also for how patients move forward across the journey.

Because patients don’t experience individual touch points; they experience the distance between them. AI will remake healthcare for the better. The question is: Who will step forward and take this on?

Download the 2026 Future of Health Report to see how patients have changed, where healthcare falls short and what to do about it before the gap becomes permanent.

About the ZS Impact Institute

The ZS Impact Institute helps executives in healthcare and beyond understand where the future is headed—and what bold moves to make now. Our flagship studies go beyond the theoretical to inspire leaders to turn ideas into impact that improves life and how we live it.

The authors would like to thank the following people for their invaluable contributions to this report: Tanya Shepley, Karthik Sourirajan, Bhargav Mantha, Sri Palanisamy and Kelly Tsaur.