The Forrester Wave™: Customer Experience Platforms For Healthcare, Q1 2026: The AI Race Is On, But Pace Is Uneven

2026-03-05 · Source: Featured Blogs - Forrester · Field: Health & Wellbeing — Healthcare Systems & Policy, Medical Devices & Health Technology · Depth: Intermediate, quick

Summary

Healthcare organizations (HCOs) face increasing pressure to enhance efficiency and reduce costs, with emerging technologies offering a clear path forward. However, many HCOs are hesitant to test and deploy AI, which has slowed vendor innovation and limited the development of responsible, healthcare-grade solutions. Consumers are already comfortable using AI for health decisions, with comfort levels for public AI tools (29%) and health insurer tools (31%) being nearly identical, indicating they will not wait for the healthcare industry to catch up. Organizations that delay risk ceding influence to external solutions that may provide inaccurate information. To address this, HCOs should adopt a CX platform for healthcare, focusing on conversational AI for after-hours support, AI agents to address workforce shortages and streamline operations, and AI search to manage the narrative across owned and third-party channels. A recent Forrester Wave™ evaluation assessed 12 vendors across 27 criteria, identifying Leaders, Strong Performers, and Contenders.

Key takeaway

For CTOs and VPs of Engineering evaluating digital transformation initiatives, your organization must prioritize the immediate adoption of AI-powered Customer Experience (CX) platforms. Delaying this integration risks losing patient engagement to external, potentially unreliable, AI tools and exacerbates operational inefficiencies. Focus on vendors offering explainable conversational AI, impactful AI agents for workforce augmentation, and robust AI search capabilities to maintain control over health information and patient trust.

Key insights

Healthcare organizations must rapidly adopt AI-driven CX platforms to meet consumer demand and avoid losing influence to external solutions.

Principles

• Inaction risks ceding influence.
• Explainable AI builds trust.
• Multi-pronged digital strategy is key.

Method

Evaluate CX platforms based on conversational AI capabilities, AI agent potential for operational efficiency, and AI search integration for consistent guidance across channels.

In practice

• Implement conversational AI for after-hours support.
• Deploy AI agents for tasks like prior authorizations.
• Optimize for answer engines across platforms.

Topics

• Healthcare AI Adoption
• Customer Experience Platforms
• Conversational AI
• AI Agents
• Answer Engine Optimization

Best for: CTO, VP of Engineering/Data, Product Manager, Executive, Director of AI/ML, AI Product Manager

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Editorial summary, takeaway, and curation by AIssential. Original article published by Featured Blogs - Forrester.