New Watch List Spotlights Advances and Issues in Artificial Intelligence Use in Canadian Health Care

The use of artificial intelligence (AI) has the potential to reshape many aspects of the health care systems in Canada, from streamlining documentation and workflows to improving how conditions are diagnosed and tailoring treatments plans.

The 2025 Watch List, published by Canada’s Drug Agency, signals 5 AI technologies that are poised to have a meaningful impact on health systems. The report helps unpack the hype from the hope about these technologies and also identifies 5 key issues that will significantly influence their wider adoption and implementation.  

Read the 2025 Watch List.

The top 5 technologies are:

• AI for notetaking
• AI tools to accelerate and optimize clinical training and education
• AI for disease detection and diagnosis
• AI for disease treatment
• AI for remote monitoring.

The top 5 issues to examine are:

• privacy and data security
• liability and accountability
• data availability, quality, and bias
• data sovereignty and governance
• environmental costs.

In developing the Watch List, Canada’s Drug Agency is advancing our ambition to alert decision-makers to emerging technologies with the highest potential to deliver value to patients and health systems. We aim to help them understand the evidence landscape and prepare for implementation challenges.

The AI technologies identified may offer the hope of more efficient, accurate, and accessible care for people living in Canada. However, questions remain about their effectiveness and the readiness of health systems to safely and equitably adopt these potentially disruptive technologies.

And while many of these AI technologies are increasingly used in some health systems in Canada, they are not yet widely adopted, and their integration varies by location and health care setting.

Cocreation With Patients, Clinicians, and Other Experts

Input from a diverse range of experts, including patient partners, clinicians, policy-makers, and others, was central to the development of the Watch List. An advisory group of external experts guided the overall direction of our work, and the final 10 items were selected using a modified James Lind Alliance approach to facilitate a consensus-based decision-making process. The report provides a detailed description of the methodology used and the individuals involved in the project.

We extend special thanks to all the contributors who participated for sharing their time, expertise, and often personal experiences. A full list of contributors is outlined in the final report.

Quick Facts

Our Watch List is an annual must-read forecast of emerging technologies and issues that have the potential to transform the delivery of health care. This work delivers on our ambition to support health system readiness for rapid advances in technology.

The items in the Watch List are not ranked in order of importance, potential impact, or timing of that impact; however, some technologies are further along in their development than others.