At Web Summit Vancouver, experts speaking on the panel ‘A History of the Future of Healthcare’ delivered a striking message: medicine is moving faster than ever, but it’s not fast enough.
This paradox set the stage for a discussion about the transformation of healthcare via artificial intelligence (AI).
While many industries have been completely revolutionized by technology, the healthcare sector has often lagged, clinging to outdated practices. However, the participants agreed that AI is beginning to change that narrative, offering promising solutions and a glimpse into a future of personalized, efficient and proactive care.
The healthcare status quo is cracking
As mentioned, panelists noted that while technology has transformed nearly every sector of modern life, healthcare still largely operates on practices that have seen little change for decades.
“The moment of physician-to-patient interaction, the physical examination, literally has hardly changed in the past 200 years,” said moderator Ohad Arazi, setting the stage for a talk about what healthcare could look like in 2030.
“Of course, many things in healthcare have changed, but it’s been a very slow slog. And yet we see that the pace of change, the pace of adoption of innovation on both therapeutics and diagnostics, is accelerating.”
Lu Zhang, founder of Fusion Fund, highlighted that healthcare is now entering its “prime time for innovation,” emphasizing that the core goal for the future is to ‘improve the quality of life, to really enable the future of healthcare to be personalized … and also be able to do super early diagnostics and reduce the healthcare burden in the long term.’
AI as a catalyst for regenerative and personalized medicine
Zhang pointed to advances in AI-powered digital diagnostics for conditions like cancer, heart disease and mental health, citing the recent launch of the Arc Institute’s Evo 2 AI model, designed to understand and generate genetic code.
Arc researchers recently published a preprint showing that their gene-editing technology can implement broad alterations to the human genome, something not achievable with other gene-editing techniques.
She also mentioned the promise of new digital therapeutics and regenerative medicine, noting a recent exhibition where researchers showcased 3 centimeters of beating heart tissue created from iPS cells.
These kinds of innovations could transform how practitioners approach health and wellness. Eric Hoskins, partner at Maverix Private Equity, offered a more cautious but ultimately optimistic perspective, identifying AI-guided personalized medicine as one of the “fast movers” poised to bring an abrupt and immediate change to healthcare.
However, the consensus was that challenges remain, particularly when it comes to navigating the regulatory landscape and addressing persistent data isolation issues within healthcare.
Dr. Victoria Lee, a physician and prominent leader in Canadian healthcare who previously served as president and CEO of the Fraser Health Authority, called for a decisive shift from a reactive “sickness care” model to a more proactive, AI-augmented model focused on prevention, personalization and long-term wellbeing.
She asserted that healthcare’s massive data output (30 percent of global data) is an underutilized resource.
Zhang agreed, adding that less than 5 percent of that data is currently being used. This is primarily due to privacy compliance concerns, which could also be mitigated by the use of AI.
Coupled with a global healthcare worker shortage, Lee presented AI as the crucial enabler for this transformation, arguing that it is indispensable for improving both the efficiency of healthcare operations and the effectiveness of medical professionals in an era of exploding medical knowledge. Her most compelling vision is the implementation of precision wellbeing through digital twins and AI agents.
Cancer care as a testbed for change
AI is already being used to personalize cancer treatment and reduce travel barriers via distributed platforms. A separate panel featuring James Lumsdaine, CEO of healthtech company Avitia, showcased the company’s AI-powered molecular diagnostics platform, which supports distributed cancer testing through simple blood draws. The technology has already been deployed in seven countries and has processed over 40,000 tests.
The platform, validated in Canada, the Middle East and Southeast Asia, reduces treatment times from weeks to days, improving patient outcomes and quality of life. Avitia’s initiative aims to make cancer a manageable chronic condition, advocating for better access to precision care and advanced diagnostics at or near the patient’s point of care.
“The ability of a patient to get personalized care for their cancer is now no longer limited by their ability to travel and where they’re based,” Lumsdaine explained, laying out his vision for the company’s role in therapeutic innovation.
Opportunity, strategy and real-world fit
As transformative as AI-driven healthcare could be, scaling breakthroughs requires investment and infrastructure alongside regulatory evolution. During opening remarks at Web Summit, AI researcher and author Gary Marcus said biology is a natural fit for AI, especially in protein interaction modeling and drug development.
At the ‘Smart Money in 2025’ panel, Wesley Chan of FPV Ventures also pointed to the life science space as a sector where AI has the clearest potential to deliver real-world productivity gains.
He argued that the convergence of biology and AI represents a generational opportunity for investors, citing companies like Strand Therapeutics, which used AI to develop a new mRNA cancer therapy.
Tom Beigala, founding partner at Bison Ventures, told journalist Anne Gaviola, moderator at the “The Healthtech Investment Checkup” panel, that he believes AI and next-generation computational technologies are driving innovation across the entire healthcare system, from making drug discovery easier and more cost effective, to optimizing data utilization and significantly increasing labor and clinical productivity.
Bison invests in early stage frontier tech companies, and its portfolio spans AI-enhanced drug discovery, advanced life science tools for pre-clinical testing and synthetic biology applications addressing broader public health challenges.
Outside AI, Beigala revealed his interest in the field of non-invasive cancer surgery using focused ultrasound technology. This burgeoning field uses technology that is often enhanced by AI for precision targeting. He pointed to an unnamed company rumored to be in acquisition discussions for a multibillion-dollar valuation.
For her part, Zhang highlighted Fusion Fund’s focus on AI-powered healthcare solutions that enhance workflow efficiency. She also pointed to physical AI, particularly surgical robots, as a promising area within healthcare, noting its potential to enable more non-invasive and micro-invasive surgical approaches.
But while the opportunity landscape is expanding, panelists emphasized that deploying these innovations successfully requires a clear-eyed understanding of the healthcare system’s structural complexity.
Beigala underscored that successful AI applications in healthtech require a deep understanding of the healthcare system’s existing incentives and workflows, including how doctors bill and how insurance companies operate.
He also cautioned that AI, as merely a tool, must be strategically integrated to avoid unintended consequences and to ensure that it genuinely fits within established practices.
Beyond those challenges, Zhang touched upon external regulatory hurdles, citing the US Food and Drug Administration’s current processes as a significant hurdle for innovation and market entry. However, she expressed optimism that the agency’s exploration of AI could eventually accelerate and streamline the approval process.
Bridging the imagination gap
The promise of AI to revolutionize healthcare is undeniable, but it’s solely a matter of technological development.
The conversations at Web Summit were a reminder that the future of healthcare also requires collaboration, trust and data governance. Together, these elements can pave the way for a healthcare landscape profoundly reshaped by AI.
Securities Disclosure: I, Meagen Seatter, hold no direct investment interest in any company mentioned in this article.