Business

There’s A New Gold Rush Inside America’s Operating Rooms

(Tom Crane/Wikimedia Commons}

The amount of artificial intelligence (AI) used in hospital operating rooms is expected to rapidly expand by 2030, according to a Research and Markets report released Monday.

The market is projected to climb from $0.9 billion in 2025 to $1.17 billion in 2026, reaching a 30% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), according to Research and Markets’ estimates. The worldwide AI in operating rooms market is also expected to reach $3.29 billion by 2030, rising at a CAGR of 29.6%, the report shows.

This growth in market value is largely driven by a surge in minimally invasive surgeries, AI-powered surgical robotics, healthcare digitization and precision-based interventions, per the report.

Robot installations in operating rooms rose to 553,052 units worldwide in 2022, marking a 5% year-over-year increase, according to the report.

The newly released data comes as AI adoption in medical care has been surging across the U.S. and other countries in recent years. A Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis report published in July 2025 found that 43.9% of hospitals in metro counties nationally reported utilizing some type of AI tool in their operations.

Implementing AI-driven models in operating rooms can potentially bolster the efficiency, cost-effectiveness and safety of surgical procedures, according to a February 2024 report published in Springer Nature Link.

However, problems including “data access, privacy concerns, and the need for extensive validation studies pose hurdles to the widespread implementation of AI solutions” in operating rooms, the report states.

Experts previously warned the Daily Caller News Foundation that AI may be worsening healthcare affordability across the U.S. Additionally, reports suggested that AI tools can sometimes make major diagnostic errors.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella notably claimed in an April 12, 2021, statement that “AI is technology’s most important priority, and healthcare is its most urgent application.”