IDC PlanScape: GenAI in the Life Science and Healthcare Industries

This IDC PlanScape helps healthcare and life science IT and business leaders plan and justify GenAI initiatives. The document specifically explores the business case, planning considerations, stakeholders, outcomes, and actions to implement and scale GenAI initiatives in these industries. "In this era of AI everywhere, healthcare is embracing disruption, challenging the status quo, and banking on GenAI potential to drastically reduce the time and costs associated with a wide range of customer and employee facing use cases linked to automation and intelligence. This new era is changing our relationship with content as well as how we extract value and insights from structured and unstructured data," states Jennifer Eaton, research director, IDC Health Insights. IDC's November 2023 Life Sciences Generative AI Survey shows that more than half of the life science industry plans on increasing its spend on life sciences in 2024, with 40% increasing it by 10-25% and 16% increasing it by over 25%. Notably, one-fourth of the life science industry will add new money to the IT budget to fund this spend. "GenAI has opened the floodgates of opportunity for the life science and the healthcare industries. These industries are moving fast, stepping beyond ideation to implementation. A significant percentage of industry leaders have already set targets for cost savings in 2024. While the industry is in a hurry to demonstrate success, it should tread with caution, carefully choosing its use cases, because patient safety and regulatory compliance are top priorities for both the healthcare and the life science industries," said Dr. Nimita Limaye, research VP, Life Sciences R&D Strategy and Technology at IDC.