Below the Waterline: The AI Exposure Most Health Leaders Are Missing
A majority of the discussions of AI in healthcare focus on the “tools” clinicians use. Specifically, the role of "scribes," "copilots," or "pilot" technologies operating in separate corners of organisations. While this is a great starting point, these tools only represent a fraction of AI’s true reach. What could happen if we looked below the waterline?
Research from MIT’s Project Iceberg, in collaboration with Oak Ridge National Laboratory, recently completed measuring something previously unquantifiable. The amount of technical capability of AI being used versus where AI has simply been implemented (capability vs adoption).
The researchers modelled 151 million workers across 32,000 skills and 923 occupations to determine the sectors that are the most impacted by the potential exposure to AI. What they found was that a further 11.7% of total wage value sits beneath the surface. And healthcare was explicitly identified as one of the most exposed sectors.
While the impact of AI does exist in clinical areas, the area of greatest risk lies in the layers of work that support the delivery of care, including administrative, financial and professional service work that coordinate care, manage revenue and facilitate movement of data throughout the organisation. The types of tasks that include billing, scheduling, coding, reporting, authorisation, and other jobs that typically don’t appear on digital health roadmaps, but support all aspects of operational activity within health systems.
The researchers describe this as a four-layer structure. The visible tools make up the top layer. Beneath the waterline is where AI has already demonstrated ability for tasks and workflows; beneath that lies how people in an organisation have structured their jobs and working practices around the people who would do those jobs; and then, the deepest layer of all, there's the leadership capability to navigate what changes next.
What does this exposure mean? It means most health organisations have untapped potential to introduce AI where they haven’t strategically reviewed yet.
The organisations that successfully navigate reviewing their strategies through the Iceberg lens will be the ones that ask themselves honest questions about how work truly operates (not just what tools they purchase) and develop sufficient organisational leadership to make intentional strategic decisions when necessary.
Navigating this kind of change can be complex, but it doesn't have to be done alone. Evolve Health Digital supports health system leaders in ANZ through making sense of AI exposures, developing practical approaches, and building organisational and leadership capabilities to achieve with confidence.
Read more about MIT’s Project Iceberg here.
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