Artificial intelligence is moving from the margins to the mainstream of healthcare, touching everything from how new drugs are discovered to how ordinary people look up symptoms.
The most striking sign of that shift comes from patients themselves. According to ZDNet, 61% of US adults now use AI to find health information, a dramatic jump from just 2% in 2024. The same reporting notes a trust gap in where that AI lives: people are three times more likely to trust an AI tool inside their doctor's secure patient portal than a public chatbot.
The drug industry is leaning in too. A Motley Fool comparison frames the trend through two contrasting companies: Recursion Pharmaceuticals, which uses AI to power large-scale drug discovery, and Summit Therapeutics, which is betting on a single oncology candidate. The piece weighs their financials and risk profiles as investors size up healthcare stocks for 2026, illustrating how AI-driven discovery has become a distinct investment thesis.
Mental health is another fast-moving front. Endpoints News reports that virtual mental health companies once wary of AI are now racing to build their own chatbots to stay competitive, as people increasingly turn to AI for everyday tasks, companionship and emotional reassurance. According to Endpoints, some of these mental health chatbots are being trained on therapy sessions.
Taken together, the three reports point to AI spreading across very different layers of healthcare at once: the laboratory, the stock market and the doctor-patient relationship.
Why it matters: when most adults are already asking AI about their health and companies are training chatbots on sensitive therapy data, the quality, safety and trustworthiness of these tools stops being a tech-industry question and becomes a public-health one.