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There are widely mixed opinions on the state of the current job market. Most industry leaders signal that economic conditions seem to be healthy and the state of the market is incredibly robust. In fact, the latest report indicates that the U.S. economy added nearly 256,000 positions in December. However, many individuals are equally frustrated with the lack of opportunities and are experiencing a relatively stagnant labor market, especially with the numerous layoffs that have occurred in the last year.
Some sectors have been more proactive than others, especially with regards to investing heavily in the new wave of AI innovation and digital transformation, which has resulted in increased demand for talent and skilled workers. Healthcare is one such field and has especially embraced AI as a means to reduce administrative burdens and improve workflows in the field. Indeed, 2025 will be a monumental year for this work.
Individuals that are interested in healthcare technology and AI may have opportunities in the following 5 growth areas that are actively ramping up spending and hiring:
1) Work surrounding AI agents: 2025 is purported to be the year of AI agents in healthcare, which may be used for a variety of roles including responding to customer service inquiries, assisting with routine paperwork or even streamlining common and protocolized tasks. In fact, founder and CEO of Nvidia Jensen Huang mentioned at the CES conference earlier this month that IT departments will soon “become the HR of AI agents,” given how widespread and prevalent they will become.
2) Cloud engineering and architecture: many of the largest AI platforms including those by Google, Amazon and Microsoft are hosted and provided through their respective cloud services. For example, Google’s Vertex AI Search is a widely successful product which streamlines search within healthcare organizations and enables rapid insight generation for providers. Healthcare organizations can access this platform through Google Cloud. AWS and Microsoft Azure offer similar services. Thus, cloud applications have become incredibly critical in the AI arena and will undoubtedly require a lot of talent.
3) Digital Twins technology: this is another growing area which enables organizations to create virtual models to run simulations and alter paradigms to better inform decision-making. Digital twin platforms can entail technical models such as a human heart model or a protein molecule to aid in drug development, or larger datasets across an entire population or community to inform macroscopic decisions. Digital twins have immense potential in healthcare as the technology can be used to resolve critical situations with high fidelity representations. Dr. Natalia Trayanova leads some of this work at Johns Hopkins University and uses the technology to support personalized healthcare in the field of cardiology: “digital twinning technology promises to deliver a digital representation of organs or even patients by using tools capable of simulating personal health conditions and predicting patient or disease trajectories on the basis of relationships learned both from data and from biophysics knowledge. Such virtual replicas would update themselves with data from monitoring devices and medical tests and assessments, reflecting dynamically the changes in our health conditions and the responses to treatment.”
4) Health devices: this area is projected to have a blockbuster decade as there has been an increased focus by the general population on collecting more health metrics and insights. For example, Google’s FitBit is one of the most popular devices in the world of personalized hardware and provides users with information on their daily energy expenditure and fitness goals. Another great example is the Oura ring, which has been incredibly popular in the last few years as a sleep tracking device; the company just recently hit $5 billion in valuation. There is a huge demand for both software experts and hardware engineers in this line of work.
5) Technology strategy: these roles will be a key aspect of healthcare organization portfolios in the coming years. Despite all the technical work, organizations must ultimately devise a strategy and justify their investments in artificial intelligence and digital health. This is where senior strategists and those familiar with enterprise optimization can come in handy, especially as many organizations are struggling to still define and realize the true ROI for healthcare AI applications. These leaders will be paramount to understand the technology landscape, develop accurate forecasts and determine the future course for organizations.
Undoubtedly, those interested in technology will have to remain nimble and willing to up-skill themselves accordingly. Despite a rapidly changing job landscape, the swift growth of technology and AI, especially as they pertain to healthcare, offer numerous potential opportunities for determined job seekers to take advantage of.