Reenvisioning Healthcare with Autonomize AI’s Ganesh Padmanabhan

Global healthcare has undergone radical shifts in recent years, as biotech treatments and robotic surgery change how care is administered. However, in the eyes of Autonomize AI’s CEO and Founder Ganesh Padmanabhan, the whole sector is weighed down by outdated administrative models: “We haven’t structurally changed healthcare.”

As artificial intelligence (AI) is touted as a transformative technology in sectors as diverse as software design and insurance, Padmanabhan argues that it has a real chance at changing the healthcare system in the US for the better. However, the key is to use agentic AI systems to complement and enhance human judgement, not replace it. “Healthcare is not just about the data or the interaction, it’s about people delivering care to people.”

In the latest episode of OPTO Sessions, Padmanabhan sits down to discuss why the US healthcare system is lagging behind, despite the rapid advance of technology, and how agentic AI could transform it.

Why an MRI Costs So Much

While many aspects of the sector have been revolutionized by technological advancements, the core issue lies in the system itself, Padmanabhan explains. “There are incentive structures that are kind of misaligned. There’s multiple parties coming in. There is a lot of friction in the system.”

To illustrate this friction, Padmanabhan outlines the process for getting an MRI in the US. First, the doctor ordering the MRI has to send a prior authorization request to the patient’s insurer. The insurer then has to investigate the patient’s medical background to justify the MRI before submitting the claim for approval. The result is a long, painstaking process for the doctor and the insurer, as well as an extended wait for the patient. “The whole MRI process is probably 15 minutes, [but] you’re actually spending three or four weeks to go do it,” Padmanabhan says. 

So while healthtech as an investment class has done well over the past decade, patient care has lagged behind. 

He attributes these issues to two factors: the involvement of multiple parties, and the outdated nature of the healthcare system. “These processes were built in an age that AI or even the internet didn’t exist”.

By integrating an AI-powered operating layer into healthcare provision, companies like Autonomize AI have the chance to transform care provision from an episodic process to a holistic one, and to make treatment more pleasant for patients — and more profitable for hospitals.

Operational Challenges

While operating margins have rebounded from negative values during the Covid-19 pandemic, the median figure for US hospitals was 1.3% in December 2025, down from 1.5% in November but up from 1% at the start of the year. As the graph below shows, hospitals recorded relatively stable operating margins in 2025, but the compressed figures point to rising expenses. 

“You look at the premium revenue for a health insurance company, [the majority of it] is spent on delivering that care. They’re not going to make money. Everybody’s margins are getting compressed.”

A deeper problem, perhaps, is the dearth of healthcare professionals. With a population of over 340 million, the US has just under 1 million doctors, and around 4 million nurse practitioners. 

The result of understaffing and soaring expenses is that key information is often overlooked, to the detriment of patient outcomes. “That information is ignored, because you’re not looking at it as a collective system, you’re looking at it as a siloed evidence, an episode.”

What Care Could Look Like

AI is already transforming the business of healthcare, he says, especially in terms of patient expectations. As patients adjust to free medical advice from AI tools such as ChatGPT, and a competitive health products sector, their expectations around care have grown. At the same time, the capitalist nature of the US healthcare system means that “if you really want to make a difference to the healthcare industry, as they say, follow the money, or optimize the flow of that dollars.”

The real value of an agentic solution such as Autonomize AI, however, “is when you compound across workflows,” he explains. By deploying agents that can reach across previously separate processes, the firm brings three distinct advantages to the providers it works with. “Number one is shorten the cycle time. The second big part is cost savings. The third part is how you bend the cost curve for healthcare.”

One of the biggest complicating factors in the US healthcare system, Padmanabhan says, is that each development in a patient’s care journey is treated as a separate episode: diagnosis, insurance approval, and treatment are all handled independently, creating delays and extra costs. 

In a future where agentic AI has been integrated into the care process, “a request comes in, a coordinated set of agents goes, intercepts it, logs the case, gets the doctor or the nurse involved to review it, fetches the information to go do it, but also sends an event to the care manager.” 

Little efficiencies translate into a big difference in both costs and patient care. “If you know that the group of in-network providers is what this patient should use and you help them navigate that, a cancer treatment is not $340,000 for the insurance company, it’s $120,000.”

Additionally, rather than having a patient face a months-long wait, the coordination of agents allows for a single unified patient roadmap. 

“Imagine that patient getting a call that same afternoon: ‘Hello, I’m your health insurance company calling. I know you’re going through a tough time, but let me help you navigate the next six months. Here’s a list of doctors you’re going to see. Here’s the procedures you have to do. Here’s how much it’s going to cost you. And we’re here for you.’

“That’s the experience that is possible with an agentic operating layer in health care.” 

With all hands on-deck, sector-wide progress is being made, Padmanabhan emphasizes — and that’s part of what makes this such an exciting time to be in healthcare. “There’s a group of 40+ health plans that made commitments [on] how they’re to improve things like prior authorization for patients, the experience for patients and providers. The administration is doing its part … Private industry is doing its part. And more importantly, I think the best part about healthcare today is the average patient has got a lot of tools to educate themselves, to ask intelligent questions … it raises the level of fairness for everybody in the system.

“This is the Kairos moment in healthcare.”