How Bessemer sees 2026 being a breakthrough year for healthcare AI
The world of healthcare artificial intelligence is likely to experience another year of rapid transformation in 2026, characterized by rapid experimentation and adoption, according to a report released this week by Bessemer Venture Partners.
“This is one of the most exciting times in our industry since the 2000s. There's a renewed interest and excitement about the role technology can play in healthcare. Previously, our capabilities in technology were very limited, so we needed to use people – which made a lot of these models difficult to scale. My hope is that in 2026, we can really start to see the impact of technology on better patient engagement and visibility,” Sofia Guerra, a partner at Bessemer, said in an interview Thursday.
Here are four of the boldest predictions from the venture capital firm's report.
Payers will use artificial intelligence to catch up
Providers’ rapid adoption of AI may prompt payers to accelerate their use of administrative AI tools.
Guerra noted that to date, most successful healthcare AI companies have focused on providers, particularly on administrative levels such as revenue cycle and payments.
She said providers are more willing to test and adopt these technologies, while payers face headwinds such as escalating compliance requirements and are only now beginning to reconsider partnerships with startups rather than building solutions entirely in-house.
Guerra believes that 2026 could be a turning point in how payers deploy AI tools and interact with AI startups.
Clinical AI adoption will grow
Bessemer's report predicts an increase in clinical AI applications, primarily for classification and assessment, involving human clinicians. The company also believes CMS will launch new initiatives to establish billing codes for clinical AI.
Guerra noted that CMS has been working to leverage artificial intelligence to expand access and improve care. She highlighted the potential for AI-driven diagnostics, remote patient monitoring and longitudinal care, but emphasized the need to navigate regulatory and reimbursement models such as CPT codes and CMS experiments.
The report also states that cash-paying patients will accelerate clinical AI adoption faster than any reimbursement code, as these consumers are often motivated by convenience, faster access, and the promise of more accurate or personalized care.
This clinical AI adoption among cash-paying consumers could take the form of AI-driven primary care visits, imaging second opinions, or subscription-based health AI coaches that track wearable metrics and flag risks.
Health AI data infrastructure will become a new category
Bessemer investors say health AI data infrastructure could become an emerging category in digital health.
“For a long time, we've seen a lot of attempts to build interoperability startups or horizontal healthcare-specific infrastructure companies in this space. It's difficult for them to really reach scale or capture value because they have a limited type of buyer,” Guerra explained.
But today, she said, there is growing demand from health care organizations and external AI labs looking for unique data sets for tools that can access and transform health care data in a HIPAA-compliant way.
She believes the key question in 2026 is whether this demand is sustainable and whether independent companies focused on healthcare can capture meaningful market share, or whether large horizontal players like AWS, Snowflake and Anthropic will dominate the space.
A new class of AI-driven value-based care companies will emerge
Guerra believes a wave of AI-first, value-based care companies is about to emerge and grow.
She believes there are two types of companies: established tech-enabled or value-based care businesses using AI as a tool, and brand new AI-first companies being built from the ground up.
She explained that the AI-first model focuses on engaging patients through digital tools, triaging their needs and providing a holistic view of care at scale, rather than relying on human coordinators. Starting such companies will require a new type of entrepreneur with deep healthcare expertise, Guerra said, because the approach differs from simply adding AI to existing scaled operations.
Photo: Yana Iskayeva, Getty Images
