How AI is helping healthcare organizations achieve more with less

Healthcare organizations are finding themselves in a paradox. Budgets are tightening across marketing, IT, and digital operations, and yet patient and member expectations have never been higher.  

Every healthcare organization talks about building a modern digital front door for their patients and members to make care experiences easier. Few actually have the luxury of full-scale reinvention or multi-year transformation.  

The good news? You don’t need a massive budget to create connected, AI-powered healthcare experiences. Keep reading to learn our recommendations for how to do more with less when implementing AI and digital healthcare solutions in 2026. 

The new reality: Getting to ROI faster with fewer resources 

Healthcare payers face margin pressure from regulatory changes and medical cost trends. Providers are absorbing labor costs and reimbursement challenges. There’s limited appetite (and capacity) for yet another massive platform overhaul. 

Despite all this economic uncertainty, KPMG reports that 80% of healthcare CEOs still consider AI a top priority. With 10–20% of budgets dedicated to AI, leaders are under growing pressure to show clear, measurable ROI sooner. 

AI is the connective tissue for your digital experiences 

What exactly is a digital front door? Why is it important? How does AI fit into all this? 

The new digital front door is more than just a website or a patient portal. It’s the entire connected experience across:  

• Web and mobile 
• Search and discovery 
• Appointment scheduling 
• Content and education 
• Service and self-support 
• Personalization and follow-up 

Every click, every interaction shapes a patient or member’s impressions of your organization – and influences downstream outcomes like care engagement, retention, and cost-to-serve.

This is where AI becomes transformational, serving as the intelligence layer powering the entire experience. 

Maximize what you already own 

So how can you put this into practical application? To reconcile cost and expectation, start with the foundation you already have.  

Most healthcare organizations already own platforms like Sitecore, Salesforce, or Optimizely – all of which now embed HIPAA-compliant AI and personalization capabilities.  

For example, with the new launch of SitecoreAI, its AI agents are built into the unified platform to help you personalize content and analyze data faster than ever before – without introducing more complexity into the ecosystem. 

So instead of purchasing the shiniest new tool, here are some ways you can optimize what you already have:  

• Activate existing personalization engines or AI modules within your CMS/CRM stack 
• Leverage first-party data from existing sources (portal analytics, claims, EHR) rather than investing in new data lakes 
• Use AI to accelerate content production while maintaining human oversight 
• Connecting fragmented digital touchpoints into a single, measurable front door experience 

Start small to prove value with AI 

Not every organization can or should start with a full digital overhaul. And they don’t need to.

The most successful transformations we see begin with focused, high-impact use cases. This might look like: 

• Implementing an AI-driven chatbot on your site to deflect routine member inquiries to improve service and reduce call center costs 
• Personalizing high-value journeys, like appointment scheduling or benefit education and measure engagement and lift 
• Piloting AI-generated content for specific campaigns (i.e. flu shots) before scaling to other content 
• Using AI-driven search to improve content findability and reduce frustration 

And the ROI from use cases like these are already being proven. 64% of early AI adopters in healthcare report positive ROI, citing faster workflows, higher accuracy, and improved staff retention. 

AI as an enterprise strategy, not a marketing tool 

Too often digital transformation sits solely on the marketing or IT team’s shoulders.   

The organizations finding cost-effective success with AI treat their digital health experiences as an enterprise asset, co-owned across departments. Because after all, AI is connecting a growing number of platforms and tools across the enterprise. 

By sharing governance and ownership across departments, we’ve seen companies have success through: 

• Pooled budgets (reducing redundancy between marketing, call centers and IT) 
• Shared metrics (cost-to-serve, NPS, retention) 
• More efficient vendor management and AI model oversight 

This collaborative approach ensures every dollar works harder and aligns digital investments to measurable business outcomes.  

What to remember about AI and healthcare 

AI won’t replace your people, but organizations that don’t empower their teams to collaborate with AI risk falling behind. Marketing, digital, clinical operations, and IT must work together to define how AI fits into workflows, content creation, and the digital experience. 

The healthcare organizations that will lead in the next decade aren’t the ones spending the most. They’re the ones: 

• Starting small and scaling fast 
• Fully leveraging their existing technology ecosystems 
• Treating the digital front door as a shared, strategic asset 
• Using AI responsibly, practically, and measurably 

Because in the end, patients and members don’t judge you by your budget. They judge you by their first and last digital experience with your organization. And with the right approach and platforms (like SitecoreAI), delivering that experience is more achievable than ever.