How AI has moved from the sidelines to the center of health care

When cancer patients need radiation treatment, doctors often rely on CT scans to plan therapy. But a new approach in Australia is changing that — AI can now create synthetic CT scans from MRI images, giving doctors the planning data they need while reducing how much radiation patients receive.

That's one example from a major new report by CSIRO, Australia's national science agency. The report, called "AI Trends for Healthcare," shows that artificial intelligence has moved far beyond laboratory experiments and is now embedded in real hospitals and clinics across the country.

"For many years, AI has largely been 'under the hood' — a powerful but often invisible technology understood mostly by technical experts," said Dr. David Hansen, CEO and Research Director of CSIRO's Australian e-Health Research Centre. "The rapid rise of generative AI has changed that. These tools have brought AI into the spotlight."

The report documents AI helping with tasks like analyzing medical images, supporting doctors' decisions, managing diseases, and tailoring care to individual patients. But Hansen stressed that as AI becomes more common in healthcare, the focus on safety and quality must grow too.

"As healthcare systems increasingly rely on AI-powered tools, the need for robust evidence, quality assurance and community co-designed standards has never been greater," he said.

The report identifies several challenges that still need solving, including rules around AI regulation, managing data responsibly, and making sure different health systems can communicate with each other. Hansen pointed to ongoing work through Sparked — an Australian initiative working on standardizing health data formats — as one effort helping to bridge those gaps.

The report also explores emerging technologies on the horizon, like multimodal AI, which can combine different types of data like images, text, and patient records to give doctors a fuller picture.

With more than two decades of experience developing healthcare AI, Hansen said the sector is at a turning point. "We are in a pivotal new chapter where responsible innovation, rigorous evidence and collaboration will determine how successfully AI delivers on its promise for patients, clinicians and communities."

The hope is that tools like the synthetic CT scanner will become more widespread — giving patients better care while keeping them safer from unnecessary procedures.