Agentic AI Poised too Transform Healthcare & Life Sciences, Says AWS Healthcare & Research GM
Seoul, South Korea – Cho Min-sung, General Manager of Amazon Web Services (AWS) Healthcare & Research Division, highlighted the potential of “agentic AI” to revolutionize workflows in the medical and life science sectors at the Future Healthcare Trend Conference hosted by Medigate News on November 2nd at COEX in Seoul.
Cho defined agentic AI as artificial intelligence capable of autonomous reasoning and action towards a specific goal, moving beyond the limitations of traditional generative AI. He presented its potential applications across patient care, clinical trials, and new drug development. Unlike generative AI which provides answers based on direct prompts, agentic AI proactively sets objectives, explores relevant knowledge, and assists medical professionals.
The adoption of agentic AI is expanding from processing patient medical records to supporting clinical trials and treatment optimization.Cho noted that medical institutions and pharmaceutical companies internationally are already exploring its implementation in areas like general administrative tasks, streamlining hospital business processes – including reducing emergency room wait times and predicting patient re-admission risk – and accelerating new drug discovery thru biomarker identification.
He specifically pointed to oncology as a field where the application of agentic AI is being most actively discussed, due to the specialized terminology and communication nuances within the discipline.
according to Gartner, currently only 1% of companies are actively implementing agentic AI, but a meaningful 33% plan to do so by 2028. AWS anticipates that over 15% of commercial software will incorporate agentic AI, forecasting a 35-40% annual growth rate for the agentic AI market in the field over the next five years.
AWS is providing a suite of technologies to facilitate this transition, including Amazon Bedrock Agent and Strand Agent, designed to support customer development of agentic AI solutions. The AWS Marketplace offers a subscription-based ecosystem of solutions, alongside data explanation capabilities for trading pseudonymized and anonymized data. AWS reports having already reduced developer work hours by over 4,500 years and lowered internal costs by more than $2.6 billion annually through large-scale legacy system conversions and application code migration utilizing these technologies.
Cho emphasized that the speed of adoption will be directly correlated to data availability, stating, ”Agent AI will vary depending on how much data I have, but it will vary depending on how fast it starts.”
To accelerate implementation, AWS is actively supporting partners in bringing innovative ideas to fruition through experimental challenges. The company has also launched medical and life science-specific open-source agent toolkits, enabling hospitals, pharmaceutical companies, and research institutes to easily deploy customized agents tailored to thier specific needs. The AWS Life Science Agent Toolkit currently features over 20 starter agents covering areas like biomarker analysis, clinical statistical analysis, and medical video interpretation.
Cho Min-sung brings a strong background in medical innovation, combining cloud and AI expertise. He holds a master’s degree from Yonsei University and completed his bachelor’s at the Korea Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST).Prior to AWS, he worked in medical IT at GE Healthcare. Currently,he is focused on leveraging generative AI to enhance efficiency in the medical field and improve data accessibility for researchers.