12/15/2025
The RPA era in healthcare is ending, and that’s okay. For more than a decade, robotic process automation (RPA) played an important role in helping hospitals cope with manual, rules-based work. In many ways, it was a necessary bridge technology.
At its peak, RPA grew into a $20B market and delivered real value in a pre-AI world.
But healthcare is entering a different phase.
Today’s challenges aren’t about automating keystrokes, they’re about understanding data, context, coding, contracts, policies, and constantly changing reimbursement rules. Static bots struggle in environments where regulation and payer policies shift frequently and exceptions are the norm.
This is where agentic AI fundamentally changes the equation.
When large language models are securely connected to a hospital’s data, the need for brittle, rules-based automation disappears. Instead of scripting workflows, AI agents can reason across datasets, adapt in real time, and explain why a financial outcome occurred.
In that sense, traditional RPA is starting to look like flip phones in a smartphone world, useful for a time, but no longer aligned with how healthcare work actually happens.
The next gains in margin, efficiency, and insight won’t come from more bots, they’ll come from intelligent, data-aware systems that can think alongside operators.
