Italy enters the decisive phase of the digital transformation of healthcare: Artificial Intelligence grows by 90% in three years, the Regions are focusing on digital PDTAs, advanced Electronic Health Records, robotics and precision medicine. But skills, interoperability and governance remain the real challenges to overcome.
The impression, listening to the data and the voices that emerged at the 9th Digital Health Conferenceis that of a sector that has stopped speaking to the future and wants to build it. The 5th edition of the study “Digital Healthcare 2025 – Towards integration: of data, processes, organisations”created by NetConsulting cubephotographs an Italian healthcare system in full transition: a system that moves from experimentation to the structured diffusion of digital technologies and which identifies artificial intelligence as the cornerstone for making the treatment path more predictive, personalized and continuous.
“The challenge to be overcome is the creation of a unique and integrated ecosystem, which leverages increasingly interoperable and systemic technologies”, we read among the conclusions of the study. A road not without obstacles, as he underlines Annamaria Di Ruscio, CEO of NetConsulting cube: “Italy is in an important transition phase: if on the one hand we are catching up thanks to PNRR investments and a growing awareness of the strategic value of digital healthcare, on the other there still remain significant margins for improvement compared to European and international benchmarks”. The central issue, observes Di Ruscio, remains “a certainty organizational fragmentation and technological, with a lack of semantic interoperability and a governance still not fully integrated between hospital, territory and society”.
Investments: +90% in three years
The numbers reveal an unequivocal trend. Spending on AI & Analytics in the Italian healthcare sector rose from 120.9 million in 2022 to 153.8 million in 2023, reaching 191 million in 2024. The forecasts for 2025 speak of 228.1 million: a 90% jump in just three years. A sign that artificial intelligence is no longer perceived as a pilot project, but as a strategic lever for sustainability and transformation of the National Health Service.
“The use of Artificial Intelligence will be increasingly crucial for the personalization of treatment paths and the early identification of care needs,” Di Ruscio further observes. In the world of clinical engineering, over 80% of professionals recognize the positive impact of AI: from reduction of diagnostic and therapeutic errorsto the automatic analysis of radiological images, up to predictive platforms in intensive care that allow more timely interventions.
Where AI is used: administration, waiting lists, diagnostics
The Northern Regions lead the transformation, while The Center and South are progressing more slowly. But the diffusion process is now systemic: AI is used in administrative automation (91%), in the simulation of healthcare spending (60%), in diagnostics (57%), in management of waiting lists and in purchasing optimization (both 50%). The most promising projects concern the simulation of spending and the dynamic management of expectations, together with the tools that support the evaluation of prescriptive appropriateness.
Benefits already visible, but insufficient skills
70% of CEOs report a positive impact of AI on speed of decision makingwhile 80% of clinical engineers show an improvement in the quality of care. Yet there is no shortage of barriers: lack of skills (indicated by 73% of general managers), high costs, data fragmentation and privacy concerns. Hence the urgency of training and the creation of multidisciplinary teams capable of managing increasingly complex technologies. 83% of the Regions provide platforms dedicated to assisting clinicians in choosing the most appropriate therapies. Over 80% intend to extend the Electronic Health Record to genetic and environmental data, while some structures – especially private ones – are already creating clinical data lakes, centralized repositories of heterogeneous information useful for developing advanced predictive models.
Robotics and telemedicine: growth 2025-2026
The study signals a further push towards medical and surgical robotics for intraoperative support (45%), remote monitoring and telemedicine (27%), personalized medicine powered by genomic analysis (21%). Automated image analysis is also increasing (42%) ei clinical decision support systems (27%). An evolution that finds in clinical engineers the professionals most ready to adopt and guide it. 88% of the Regions consider it essential a Electronic Health Record including PDTA (Diagnostic Therapeutic Assistance Path). Yet, only 45% of Chief Information Officers say they have PDTAs that are fully digitalized or integrated into information flows. 76% of the Regions and 43% of the general directors also hope for telemedicine platforms integrated with care pathways. In this framework, the role of the Privacy Guarantor it is indicated as a determinant for defining common rules and transforming data protection into an enabling factor.
