Europe's healthcare systems are under mounting strain as the population ages and chronic conditions become more common. The conventional response has been to treat illness after it appears, but a growing number of experts argue that the real opportunity lies in preventing disease before it takes hold. Artificial intelligence, they say, could be the tool that makes that shift possible—but only if the underlying systems change too.
Ricardo Baptista Leite, CEO of HealthAI, the global agency for responsible AI, is blunt about the limits of technology. "If you retrofit AI into an inefficient system, it just makes you very efficient at being inefficient," he told Euronews. His point is that AI cannot compensate for structural flaws in how healthcare is organised and funded.
From treatment to prevention
At the heart of the problem is the way hospitals and clinics are paid. Most European health systems reimburse providers for procedures and treatments, not for keeping people healthy. That creates a financial incentive to intervene after a diagnosis rather than to prevent the diagnosis in the first place. Baptista Leite argues that moving towards prevention will require new funding models that reward early intervention and proactive monitoring.
AI could play a pivotal role in that transition. By analysing health records alongside social determinants—such as housing, income, and access to healthy food—algorithms could flag individuals who are at risk of developing conditions like diabetes or heart disease before symptoms appear. The goal, as Baptista Leite puts it, is not simply to save someone after a heart attack, but to prevent the heart attack from happening at all.
Some European countries are already experimenting with predictive analytics in primary care. In the UK, the National Health Service has piloted AI tools to identify patients at risk of hospital admission. In Denmark, researchers are using registry data to model disease trajectories. But these efforts remain fragmented, and many are still in early stages.
Trust is the missing ingredient
Scaling up AI in healthcare will depend on another factor: trust. Patients and clinicians need to be confident that the technology is safe, effective, and that its benefits outweigh the risks. That requires oversight that continues after a system has been approved and introduced into clinical practice—not just a one-time regulatory check.
The gap between deployment and governance is stark. Hans Henri P. Kluge, WHO Regional Director for Europe, recently warned that while AI solutions are being used in hospitals across the continent, only a few countries have strategies to govern them. According to WHO Europe data, two-thirds of the 53 member states are already deploying AI diagnostics, and half have AI-powered patient chatbots. Yet only one in 12 has a national framework for AI governance.
Kluge called this a "concerning" picture, stressing that unregulated AI can harm patients and erode public confidence. "All of this erodes public trust in health systems more broadly," he said. The warning echoes broader concerns about AI accountability, from algorithmic bias to data privacy.
HealthAI is working with regulators in ten countries to develop a global early warning system designed to detect adverse events and share information about emerging risks. "These kinds of mechanisms will allow us to avoid harm at scale, if something does go wrong, so that we can detect it in time and keep citizens safe," Baptista Leite said.
The challenge is not unique to any single nation. From Lisbon to Warsaw, health systems are grappling with how to integrate AI responsibly. Some countries, like France and Germany, have invested heavily in digital health infrastructure, while others are still building basic data capacity. The European Union's proposed AI Act, which aims to regulate high-risk applications, could provide a common baseline—but implementation will vary.
For Baptista Leite, the path forward is clear: technology is necessary but not sufficient. "Technology is not going to save us alone," he said. The real transformation will come when healthcare systems align their incentives with prevention, and when regulators ensure that AI is used safely and transparently. Only then can Europe move from a culture of treatment to one of true prevention.
