Artificial intelligence adoption across Indian hospitals remains at an early and uneven stage, with most healthcare providers still experimenting through pilots and meaningful deployment largely restricted to operational and workflow applications, according to a new report by Bain & Company and HealthQuad.

The joint report, “AI in Indian Healthcare Delivery,” finds that India has stronger foundations to scale AI than during earlier waves of digital technology adoption, supported by government initiatives, increasing electronic medical record (EMR) penetration, private capital, a growing start-up ecosystem and rising acceptance among clinicians.

However, only a small number of providers have begun expanding AI into clinical applications. Even among more mature healthcare organisations, clinical AI is currently being used primarily as a support tool rather than for autonomous decision-making.

As per report, hospitals strengthen their digital infrastructure and data capabilities, AI adoption is likely to accelerate. This could create a widening divide between early-moving providers that successfully integrate AI into their operations and clinical workflows and those that remain at the pilot stage.

The report comes as AI capabilities are advancing rapidly, creating opportunities for healthcare providers to automate increasingly complex workflows. Newer generative and agentic AI systems can execute multistep tasks with limited supervision, while the amount of expert-level work AI can perform autonomously has been doubling every six to nine months since 2023.

For hospitals, this could help reduce the administrative workload of doctors, nurses and other healthcare professionals, allowing them to spend more time on patient care and higher-value clinical activities.

Dhruv Sukhrani, Head of Bain & Company’s Healthcare & Life Sciences practice in India, said the next phase of AI adoption would depend less on access to technology and more on how effectively healthcare providers redesign workflows and build organisational capabilities.

“AI adoption in Indian healthcare is still early, but the conditions for it to scale are strengthening quickly. The technology itself has advanced significantly; the harder question now is how providers redesign workflows, manage change and build trust among doctors and nurses,” Sukhrani said.

Namit Chugh, Director at HealthQuad, said AI could potentially act as a capacity multiplier for India’s healthcare system, which continues to face shortages of clinicians and variations in access and outcomes.

“Healthcare in India has always been constrained by scarcity of clinicians leading to enormous variation in access and outcomes. AI can potentially change that equation by being not just an efficiency lever, but a capacity multiplier,” Chugh said.