Your Health - Which Way Will AI Go in 2025?

If 2023 was the year that generative AI came crashing into the world of humans and made everybody fear for their jobs and their futures, 2024 was the year that the narrative changed.

The past 12 months have seen astonishing developments in healthcare and while those not engaging with AI will surely lose their jobs, for those who can afford it, AI is going to prolong lives and banish diseases that today damage people’s quality of life. 

I give it about five years. Hang on until then and while we may not live forever, we will live better and stronger, holding hands with the machines of loving grace.

AI is pulsing through diseases like some kind of digital defibrillator. But is AI the angel on our shoulder or the devil in disguise? Will it be Jekyll or Hyde, what has 2025 in store for our health and our outlook on life?

AI has already changed healthcare forever

DeepMind’s AlphaFold, the molecular mastermind that cracked protein structures has already turbocharged drug discovery. The result? Incipient therapies for living nightmares such as Alzheimer’s, cancer and rare genetic diseases. What used to take years now takes days to diagnose.

AI is already used widely in healthcare. Algorithms are used to predict patients' risk of death or deterioration, to suggest diagnoses or triage patients, to record and summarise visits to save doctors work and to approve insurance claims.

The thing about AI in diagnostics is that it doesn’t blink. It doesn’t get tired. It doesn’t miss that shadow in an X-ray or the subtle rhythm of a faulty heartbeat. Algorithms are already outshining even the most eagle-eyed radiologists, flagging diseases in their infancy and saving countless lives.

Wearable tech is also getting in on the action. Smartwatches and biosensors are syncing with AI to spot anomalies in real-time, whether it’s a looming diabetic spike or a cardiac hiccup. For rural or under-resourced communities, these tools are bridging the gap between no care and life-saving care.

Improved Efficiency in Healthcare Systems

According to CB Insights, bringing a drug to market traditionally involves staggering costs that average $1.3 billion when accounting for all failed compounds.

Costs are continuing to rise as productivity in the drug R&D process declines, but in 2025 AI has the potential to break this pattern by dramatically accelerating drug discovery and reducing costs.

Moreover, AI software is now used to analyse medical images, predict patient outcomes and assist in diagnosis. For example, IBM Watson Health uses AI to analyse vast amounts of medical data, providing insights that give doctors more informed decisions. 

Additionally, AI-driven diagnostic tools such as PathAI use annotated medical images to improve the accuracy of cancer diagnoses and are using AI-powered pathology to advance every phase of drug and diagnostic development.

But not everything AI-related is good news for humans’ health. While AI is undoubtedly creating a healthcare future that was unthinkable only a few years ago, there are costs as well.

While AI healthcare is saving time and money, it also requires a lot of expensive humans to ensure it works properly. The so-called hallucinations of AI algorithms may be quirky when it comes to searching for facts and truth, it’s another story when it comes to people’s health. 

They, therefore, require regular monitoring and it appears that it will be no different in 2025. Until AI technology is almost fool-proof, it will also add significant costs to healthcare. 

The Dangers of AI in Healthcare in 2025

Of course, every silver lining has its clouds. AI’s dark side isn’t just lurking, it’s actively shaping the same future it promises to improve. Here’s what could go wrong.

AI’s hunger for data is insatiable and healthcare data is its fine dining main course. But what happens when hackers get hold of it? Sensitive medical records will end up in the hands of cybercriminals, leading to identity theft or worse.

Encryption, ethical data-sharing practices and iron-clad cybersecurity protocols must become non-negotiable. Otherwise, AI risks becoming the weakest link in healthcare trust.

AI isn’t inherently biased—it’s just really good at learning from our messy history. If datasets skew white, male, or affluent, AI models will perpetuate those biases. Imagine diagnostic tools that work brilliantly for some groups but fail others—it’s not just unethical; it’s deadly. 

Expect 2025 to be a battleground between the good and the bad actors in AI healthcare.

Ethical Dilemmas in Decision-Making

AI doesn’t agonise over moral quandaries, it optimises and regards discretion as a dirty word; there can be no arguments or grey areas. That’s a problem when decisions such as resource allocation or treatment denial hang in the balance. Who’s accountable when an algorithm makes a life-or-death mistake? The hospital? The developer? The AI?

Ethics frameworks will need to be watertight in 2025. Transparent guidelines and human oversight aren’t optional; they’re essential.

Parmy Olson is one of the world’s leading experts on AI and who last month won the 2024 Financial Times and Schroders Business Book Award for Supremacy. 

In the book, Open AI’s Sam Altman and Google’s Dennis both believed AGI — the point at which AI surpasses humans’ cognitive abilities — ‘would solve many of our current social ills and problems’. 

Both shared concerns about lack of regulation and an excess of corporate control of AI. 

“Both tried to put in governance structures to separate the technology a little bit and give it proper oversight and both of them failed to do it,” says Olson.

Deaths from faulty devices

Last month, the BBC reported on a 2018 investigation by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists that revealed more than 83,000 deaths and over 1.7 million injuries were caused by medical devices and suggested that so-called AI digital twins could revolutionize the efficiency of healthcare machines.

Then there’s the resource cost in supercharging AI and the huge amounts of energy it uses. It’s one thing to harness this technology, it’s another when this creates negative healthcare outcomes such as increased asthma cases when using fossil fuels to create the power for AI.

Conclusion

There's no doubt that AI will continue to revolutionise healthcare during 2025 and beyond, however regulation or capitalism affects it. But whether it will help everybody and not just those who can afford it is another matter.