HealthAI: Artificial Intelligence Helps Healthcare Shift from Treatment to Prevention

Artificial intelligence could help make this shift possible. However, as Ricardo Baptista Leite, CEO of HealthAI, the Global Agency for Responsible AI, points out, technological advances alone are not enough.

“If you embed AI into an inefficient system, you will simply become very efficient at your own inefficiency,” he told Euronews.

AI can help identify people at risk of developing certain diseases before they become ill, enabling doctors and healthcare services to intervene earlier. But technological breakthroughs alone will not bring about this transformation.

“Technology alone will not save us,” says Baptista Leite, head of HealthAI. According to him, healthcare systems also need to change the financial incentives that reward treatment rather than prevention.

He argues that hospitals are often paid for treating patients rather than keeping them healthy. Shifting towards prevention will require new funding models that reward early intervention and proactive monitoring.

By analysing medical data alongside the social factors that influence health, AI can help identify people who need support before their condition deteriorates. The goal, Baptista Leite emphasizes, is not just to save someone after a heart attack, but to prevent it from happening in the first place.

However, scaling up the use of AI in healthcare faces another major obstacle: trust.

Patients and healthcare professionals need to be confident that these technologies are safe and that their benefits outweigh the risks. This requires oversight that continues after a system has been approved and introduced into routine clinical practice.

Recently, Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, warned that although AI-powered solutions are already being introduced in hospitals across Europe, only a small number of countries regulate their use, potentially putting patients at risk.

Two-thirds of the 53 countries in the WHO European Region already use AI-based diagnostics, and half use chatbots to communicate with patients. Yet only a few — one in twelve — have strategies for governing AI.

“This is a worrying picture,” Kluge noted, emphasizing that the situation could negatively affect people's health. “All of this undermines public trust in healthcare systems as a whole,” he warned.

HealthAI is working with regulators in ten countries to develop a global early-warning system designed to detect adverse events and rapidly share information about emerging risks.

“Such mechanisms will allow us to prevent widespread harm if something goes wrong: we will be able to detect it in time and protect citizens,” he said.