As artificial intelligence continues to grow, it comes as little surprise that this innovative tech finds numerous applications in the healthcare sector. Here’s what investors need to know before they buy in.
What is healthcare AI?
Healthcare AI is a subcategory of artificial intelligence: a term broadly applied to machines programmed to think like humans. And as artificial intelligence becomes increasingly prevalent in our day-to-day lives, its applications continue to grow. Healthcare AI focuses on the use of artificial intelligence to research, treat and prevent diseases. With artificial intelligence, we can assess complex data sets, streamline medical services and make groundbreaking discoveries. In turn, these discoveries fuel the advancement of new technologies and tools in the healthcare sector.
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Healthcare AI stocks
Stocks in the healthcare AI industry scale from big names in artificial intelligence, like Alphabet, to niche medical device manufacturers, like Globus Medical.
See how the following stocks are performing, and view details like market capitalization, the price-to-earnings (P/E) ratio, price/earnings-to-growth (PEG) ratio and dividend yield.
Alphabet Inc. offers various products and platforms in the United States, Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Asia-Pacific, Canada, and Latin America. It operates through Google Services, Google Cloud, and Other Bets segments. The Google Services segment provides products and services, including ads, Android, Chrome, devices, Gmail, Google Drive, Google Maps, Google Photos, Google Play, Search, and YouTube. It is also involved in the sale of apps and in-app purchases and digital content in the Google Play and YouTube; and devices, as well as in the provision of YouTube consumer subscription services. The Google Cloud segment offers infrastructure, cybersecurity, databases, analytics, AI, and other services; Google Workspace that include cloud-based communication and collaboration tools for enterprises, such as Gmail, Docs, Drive, Calendar, and Meet; and other services for enterprise customers. The Other Bets segment sells healthcare-related and internet services. The company was incorporated in 1998 and is headquartered in Mountain View, California.
Globus Medical, Inc., a medical device company, develops and commercializes healthcare solutions for patients with musculoskeletal disorders in the United States and internationally. The company offers spine products, such as traditional fusion implants comprising pedicle screw and rod systems, plating systems, intervertebral spacers, and corpectomy devices for treating degenerative and congenital conditions, deformity, tumors, and trauma injuries; treatment options for motion preservation technologies that consist of dynamic stabilization, total disc replacement, and interspinous distraction devices; interventional solutions to treat vertebral compression fractures; and regenerative biologic products comprising of allografts and synthetic alternatives. It also offers products for the treatment of orthopedic trauma, including fracture plates, compression screws, intramedullary nails, and external fixation systems; and hip and knee joint solutions, including modular hip stems and acetabular cups, as well as posterior stabilizing and cruciate retaining knee arthroplasty implants. In addition, the company distributes human cell, tissue, and cellular and tissue-based products. It sells its products through direct or distributor sales representatives, as well as hip and knee products through independent sales agents. Globus Medical, Inc. was incorporated in 2003 and is headquartered in Audubon, Pennsylvania.
Health Catalyst, Inc. provides data and analytics technology and services to healthcare organizations in the United States. It operates in two segments, Technology and Professional Services. The company provides data operating system data platform which provides clients single comprehensive environment to integrate and organize data from their disparate software systems; and analytics applications, a software analytics applications build for data platform to analyze clients face across clinical and quality, population health, and financial and operational use cases. It offers services expertise solutions comprising data and analytics, domain expertise and education, tech-enabled managed, and implementation services; and opportunity analysis and prioritization, data governance, data modeling and analysis, quality and process improvement strategy, cost accounting, data abstraction, and population health strategies. The company was formerly known as HQC Holdings, Inc. and changed its name to Health Catalyst, Inc. in March 2017. Health Catalyst, Inc. was founded in 2008 and is headquartered in South Jordan, Utah.
Intuitive Surgical, Inc. develops, manufactures, and markets products that enable physicians and healthcare providers to enhance the quality of and access to minimally invasive care in the United States and internationally. The company offers the da Vinci Surgical System that enables complex surgery using a minimally invasive approach; and Ion endoluminal system, which extends its commercial offerings beyond surgery into diagnostic procedures enabling minimally invasive biopsies in the lung. It also provides a suite of stapling, energy, and core instrumentation for its multi-port da Vinci surgical systems; progressive learning pathways to support the use of its technology; infrastructure of service and support specialists, a complement of services to its customers, including installation, repair, maintenance, 24/7 technical support, and proactive system health monitoring; and integrated digital capabilities providing connected offerings, streamlining performance for hospitals with program-enhancing insights. The company sells its products through direct sales organizations, such as capital and clinical sales teams. It has a collaboration agreement with FluoGuide A/S for head & neck cancer. The company was incorporated in 1995 and is headquartered in Sunnyvale, California.
Nuance Communications, Inc. provides conversational and cognitive artificial intelligence (AI) innovations that bring intelligence to everyday work and life. The company delivers solutions that understand, analyze, and respond to people - amplifying human intelligence to increase productivity and security. Its Healthcare segment provides clinical speech and clinical language understanding solutions that improve the clinical documentation process, from capturing the complete patient record to improving clinical documentation and quality measures for reimbursement. Its solutions include Dragon Medical One, cloud-based speech solution; computer-assisted physician documentation; diagnostic imaging solutions; Nuance Dragon Ambient eXperience, a voice-enabled solution; and clinical documentation improvement and coding. The company's Enterprise segment primarily engages in using speech, natural language understanding, and artificial intelligence to provide automated customer solutions and services for voice, mobile, web, and messaging channels. Its solutions include intelligent engagement solutions; Conversational AI; Engagement AI; and Security AI. Its Other segment provides voicemail transcription services. It serves organizations across healthcare, financial services, telecommunications, government, and retail. The company markets and sells its solutions and technologies directly through sales force, as well as through a network of resellers, including system integrators, independent software vendors, value-added resellers, distributors, hardware vendors, telecommunications carriers, and e-commerce Websites worldwide. The company was formerly known as ScanSoft, Inc. and changed its name to Nuance Communications, Inc. in October 2005. Nuance Communications, Inc. was incorporated in 1992 and is headquartered in Burlington, Massachusetts. As of March 4, 2022, Nuance Communications, Inc. operates as a subsidiary of Microsoft Corporation.
Teladoc Health, Inc. provides virtual healthcare services worldwide. The company operates through Teladoc Health Integrated Care and BetterHelp segments. The Integrated Care segment offers virtual medical services, including general medical, expert medical, specialty medical, chronic condition management, and mental health, as well as enabling technologies and enterprise telehealth solutions for hospitals and health systems. The BetterHelp segment operates a mental health platform that provides online counseling and therapy services through website, mobile applications, phones, and text-based interactions by its licensed clinicians. The company offers its products and services under the Teladoc, Livongo, and BetterHelp brands. It serves employers, health plans, hospitals and health systems, and insurance and financial services companies, as well as individual members. The company was formerly known as Teladoc, Inc. and changed its name to Teladoc Health, Inc. in August 2018. Teladoc Health, Inc. was incorporated in 2002 and is headquartered in Purchase, New York.
Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. provides life sciences solutions, analytical instruments, specialty diagnostics, and laboratory products and biopharma services in the North America, Europe, Asia-Pacific, and internationally. The company's Life Sciences Solutions segment offers reagents, instruments, and consumables for biological and medical research, discovery, and production of drugs and vaccines, as well as diagnosis of infections and diseases; and solutions include biosciences, genetic sciences, and bio production to pharmaceutical, biotechnology, agricultural, clinical, healthcare, academic, and government markets. Its Analytical Instruments segment provides instruments, consumables, software, and services for pharmaceutical, biotechnology, academic, government, environmental, and other research and industrial markets, as well as clinical laboratories. The company's Specialty Diagnostics segment offers liquid, ready-to-use, and lyophilized immunodiagnostic reagent kits, as well as calibrators, controls, protein detection assays, and instruments; immunodiagnostics develops, manufactures and markets complete bloodtest systems to support the clinical diagnosis and monitoring of allergy, asthma and autoimmune diseases; dehydrated and prepared culture media, collection and transport systems, instrumentation, and consumables; human leukocyte antigen typing and testing for organ transplant market; and healthcare products. Its Laboratory Products and Biopharma Services segment provides laboratory products, research and safety market channel, and pharma services and clinical research. It offers products and services through a direct sales force, customer-service professionals, electronic commerce, and third-party distributors under Thermo Scientific; Applied Biosystems; Invitrogen; Fisher Scientific; Unity Lab Services; and Patheon and PPD. Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc. was founded in 1956 and is headquartered in Waltham, Massachusetts.
QIAGEN N.V. offers sample to insight solutions that transform biological materials into molecular insights worldwide. The company provides primary sample technology consumables, such as nucleic stabilization and purification kits for primary sample materials, manual and automated processing for genotyping, gene expression, and viral and bacterial analysis, as well as silica membranes and magnetic bead technologies; secondary sample technology consumables, including kits and components for purification of nucleic acids from secondary sample materials; and instruments for nucleic acid purification and accessories. It also provides interferon-gamma release assay for TB testing, and assays for post-transplant testing and viral load monitoring; assays for prenatal testing and detection of sexually transmitted diseases and HPV, as well as assays for analysis of genomic variants, such as mutations, insertions, deletions, and fusions; and sample to insight instruments, including one-step molecular analysis of hard-to-diagnose syndromes, and integrated PCR testing. In addition, it offers PCR consumables, such as quantitative PCR, reverse transcription, and combinations kits for analysis of gene expression, genotyping and gene regulation, and running on QIAGEN instruments and technologies; human ID and forensics assay consumables, including STR assays for human ID, and assays for food contamination; PCR instruments consist of digital PCR and qPCR solutions; and developed and configured enzymes and PCR solutions. Further, the company provides predefined and custom NGS gene panels, library prep kits and components, and whole genome amplification; QIAGEN consumables and instruments, as well as bioinformatics solutions; and custom laboratory and genomic services. It serves molecular diagnostics, academia, pharmaceutical, and applied testing customers. The company was founded in 1984 and is headquartered in Venlo, the Netherlands.
There are numerous artificial intelligence ETFs, including the Invesco QQQ, iShares US Technology ETF and First Trust Dow Jones Internet Index. But if you’re looking for something specific to healthcare AI, take a look at the Robo Global Healthcare Technology & Innovation (HTEC). The Robo Global Healthcare Technology & Innovation ETF was launched in 2019 by advisory and research firm Robo Global. It tracks over 80 US stocks in healthcare and artificial intelligence from the US and around the world.
Why invest in healthcare AI stocks?
To put it bluntly, there is high growth potential. The global AI healthcare market, worth $4.9 billion in 2020, is expected to grow to $45.2 billion by 2026 at a compound annual growth rate (CAGR) of 44.9%, according to Markets and Markets. Growth potential aside, artificial intelligence in the healthcare industry has the potential to produce lifesaving technology. AI developments in this sector can change how we identify and treat disease. And to see this in action, we need to look no further than Google’s AI research firm, DeepMind.
How DeepMind’s discovery will change healthcare
DeepMind announced in later November 2020 that its AlphaFold system had finally solved a protein folding challenge — one that had baffled and eluded the scientific community for decades. The successful passing of this protein folding test meant that AlphaFold could decipher the structure of proteins from an amino acid sequence in just a few days, a resource-intensive task that used to take years. DeepMind’s breakthrough showcases how powerful and prevalent AI technology has and will continue to be in the healthcare industry. And this emerging trend presents an invaluable opportunity for investors seeking growth stocks.
Risks of investing in healthcare AI
One of the most critical risks facing healthcare AI stocks is competition. Companies in sectors like this — sectors on the cusp of significant growth — may be vulnerable to the self-imposed volatility of a highly competitive playing field. Investors interested in these stocks have a challenging choice to make: invest in riskier small-cap stocks that may not survive the competition, or shell out hundreds for a single share of an already-established tech giant, like Google’s parent company, Alphabet. Another consideration is governmental regulation. Tech companies are far from immune to regulatory disputes, and as the way we interact with this type of technology continues to evolve, some companies may be forced to reconsider their approach — a potentially time and capital-intensive process.
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Bottom line
Healthcare AI stocks have plenty of room to grow — and analysts are optimistic about this subsector’s potential. But governmental regulation coupled with a high degree of competition may threaten your investment in this category. To invest in healthcare AI stocks, explore your brokerage account options with multiple platforms for the account best suited to your investment goals.
Frequently asked questions
Yes. Some that do include ABB and Thermo Fisher Scientific.
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Shannon Terrell is a lead writer and spokesperson at NerdWallet and a former editor at Finder, specializing in personal finance. Her writing and analysis on investing and banking has been featured in Bloomberg, Global News, Yahoo Finance, GoBankingRates and Black Enterprise. She holds a bachelor’s degree in communications and English literature from the University of Toronto Mississauga.
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