Contrary to conventional wisdom, large medical practices are predicted to outpace major hospital systems in AI adoption. Practices' more modern, cloud-based infrastructure allows them to deploy AI tools more quickly than hospitals, which are often hindered by legacy technology, complex governance, and slower ROI realization on new tech.

Healthcare has historically been a service, with costs tied to licensed professionals. AI models like Gemini and ChatGPT are changing this by providing medical advice, effectively turning healthcare into a product. This shift, currently tolerated by regulators, could dramatically lower costs and increase access, just like software products.

The pharmaceutical industry's historically high profitability created a lack of urgency for technological innovation beyond basic ERP systems. It wasn't until patent cliffs and messy M&A integrations squeezed margins that companies began seriously investing in modern data platforms and cloud infrastructure to improve efficiency.

The biggest threat to incumbent software companies isn't a new feature, but a business model shift. AI enables outcome-based pricing, which massively favors agile newcomers as incumbents struggle to adapt their entire commercial structure away from seat-based subscriptions.

To overcome the slow pace of building on legacy EHRs, Ambience created a proprietary data layer. This layer pulls and structures data from various systems of record, making it AI-ready. This reduces the incremental cost of building new use cases and allows them to scale from 2 to 24 products rapidly.

A primary barrier to modernizing healthcare is that its core technology, the Electronic Health Record (EHR), is often built on archaic foundations from the 1960s-80s. This makes building modern user experiences incredibly difficult.

The future business model for health tech will shift from subscriptions (SaaS) to outcomes. Vendors will be paid based on the tangible results they generate, such as cost savings or improved patient health, aligning incentives.

AI-driven approaches dramatically reduce the time and cost of modernizing legacy systems. What was once a multi-year, multi-million dollar mainframe project can now be completed in as little as 90 days, fundamentally altering the ROI for tackling technology debt.

Beyond low-cost generic drugs, Cuban's company negotiates directly with hospitals for better prices. The truly disruptive move is publishing this transparent contract online (at costpluswellness.com), empowering any self-insured business to bypass insurance middlemen and access the same pre-negotiated rates.