From Reactive to Proactive: The Rise of Agentic AI in Healthcare

Agentic AI is forecast to make 15 percent of work decisions by 2028. Healthcare organizations can prepare by aligning human intelligence, technology, and governance to accelerate innovation.

// By Jane Weber Brubaker //

Digital marketers have been immersed in generative AI for at least a couple of years now, building the plane while flying it, trying to understand the opportunities and threats while figuring out how to get and stay up to speed.

But what about agentic AI? What is it? Where does it fit in?

First, a couple of definitions: Agency is the ability to act independently. Agentic AI systems have agency, that is, they are designed to act independently to carry out complex tasks without needing humans to supervise or micromanage the process.

The term “agentic AI” was popularized by Andrew Ng in 2024. He was attempting to resolve a controversy about what was, or wasn’t, an AI agent. He explains in his newsletter: “Rather than having to choose whether or not something is an agent in a binary way, I thought, it would be more useful to think of systems as being agent-like to different degrees. Unlike the noun ‘agent,’ the adjective ‘agentic’ allows us to contemplate such systems and include them in this growing movement.”

Most of us are familiar with generative AI platforms. We enter a prompt or create an AI assistant that responds to our directions and generates the requested response. These platforms are reactive. The difference between “generative” AI and “agentic” AI is that AI agents are proactive and run independently.

But humans need to lead all aspects of the process, from strategy to development, execution, and ongoing validation.

As we prepare for our upcoming AI in Healthcare Marketing Week virtual summit and, in particular, the sessions on “AI Agents and Workflow Optimization,” we’ll look at the potential for agentic AI, in partnership with humans, to solve some of healthcare’s biggest problems, and share a successful case study featuring NYC Health + Hospitals and its technology partner, Snowflake.

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