Healthcare AI adoption outpaces infrastructure readiness

Nutanix has published healthcare survey findings showing AI adoption is outpacing infrastructure readiness, with widespread use of unsanctioned AI tools across healthcare organisations.

In the healthcare edition of its Enterprise Cloud Index survey, 79% of healthcare organisations said they had encountered AI applications or agents introduced by staff outside IT oversight. Another 83% said AI tools and agents operating beyond official controls create business risk, while the same share said silos between business units and IT make technology initiatives harder to execute.

The figures point to a sector trying to expand its use of AI while struggling to keep governance, infrastructure and data controls in step. Healthcare providers face particular pressure because clinical and administrative systems handle sensitive patient information and often require low-latency access to data.

One of the clearest gaps concerns on-premises systems. According to Nutanix, 88% of healthcare IT leaders do not see their current infrastructure as fully ready to support AI workloads on site, even as local processing becomes more important in clinical settings where delays can affect care.

The report argues that AI is moving closer to where care is delivered rather than remaining confined to centralised systems or remote cloud environments. As a result, infrastructure constraints are becoming more visible as hospitals and clinics need to run applications close to devices, records systems and staff workflows.

Point-of-care pressure

Single patient rooms can generate up to 7TB of data annually, while intensive care beds may involve 15 to 20 connected devices, Nutanix found. These conditions increase the need for systems that can process data locally and consistently, especially where interruptions or latency could disrupt clinical operations.

The survey also found that AI is influencing application design. Some 86% of healthcare organisations said AI is meaningfully accelerating their adoption of containers, 81% expect application containerisation to increase, and 80% are already building new applications in containers.

This matters because containers are increasingly used to package and run software across a mix of environments, including on-premises infrastructure and private clouds. For healthcare organisations, that approach can help keep data inside local environments while supporting software deployment across dispersed clinical settings.

Governance concerns

Data sovereignty remains a central issue. The survey found that 72% of healthcare organisations regard it as a high priority or a required factor in infrastructure decisions. Meanwhile, 54% run containerised applications on-premises or in private clouds, and the same proportion said they need to keep infrastructure within a single country because of stakeholder expectations.

These responses reflect the constraints healthcare organisations face when deciding where patient information can be stored and processed. They also suggest that cloud adoption in the sector is being shaped not just by cost or flexibility, but by regulation, internal policy and public trust.

The report also points to rising interest in AI agents. Nutanix found that 58% of healthcare IT leaders expect AI agents to improve productivity and efficiency, 57% believe they will transform business processes and operations, and 55% think they could lead to new products, services or revenue streams.

Looking ahead, 57% of organisations said they expect to be using agentic AI or autonomous agents within three years. The same outlook showed 62% expecting to use generative AI and 55% anticipating predictive analytics or machine learning models.

Scale of adoption

The survey suggests deployment is already broad and may expand quickly. More than half of healthcare organisations, 55%, said they expect to have more than five AI-enabled applications within three years, including 12% that expect to run more than 10.

Managed service providers also play a large role in current deployments. Nutanix found that 63% of respondents currently run AI applications on managed service providers, indicating that hybrid operating models are likely to remain common as healthcare groups balance central systems with local requirements.

The research was conducted by Wakefield Research among 1,600 cloud, IT and engineering executives at organisations with 500 or more employees across multiple countries. The healthcare findings are drawn from respondents in that wider global sample.

Commenting on the results, Daryush Ashjari, Chief Technology Officer and VP of Solution Engineering, APJ, Nutanix, said: "Healthcare organisations across APJ are under growing pressure to adopt AI, but clinician demand is colliding with the readiness of the infrastructure underneath it. The impact extends beyond IT; it can affect the availability of critical systems, access to data and, ultimately, the continuity of patient care. For healthcare leaders, the priority is to shift from reactive management and build a unified, hybrid approach that bridges the gap between data sovereignty compliance and the real-time, low-latency insights required at the patient's bedside."