Healthcare AI today: Oracle reborn with AI, care affordability point/counterpoint, healthcare jobs vs. AI, more

News and views you ought to know about:

• The old Oracle—founded 1977—may be the new Nvidia. That’s what some investment experts are saying after Oracle, newly focused on AI and cloud infrastructure, posted eye-popping results for the first fiscal quarter of 2026—and projected cloud business revenues to top $144B by 2030. That would crush its expected 2026 forecast of $18B. After reporting the 2026 Q1 results Sept. 9, Oracle’s stocks skyrocketed 36%. That’s when Wall Street’s eyes got wide. “Of course, Oracle faces competition from other cloud providers, as Nvidia faces competition from other chip designers,” The Motley Fool acknowledges today. “But Oracle, thanks to the pairing of its database strengths with AI and its ecosystem of related services, may, like Nvidia, stand out from the crowd … and deliver explosive gains to investors over the long run.”
   
  • As for Nvidia itself, the chip giant said this week that AI infrastructure spending may reach $4T by five years from now. “This audacious outlook signals a profound re-architecture of computing and an AI arms race, positioning Nvidia, already the dominant player in AI chips, for an unprecedented revenue opportunity potentially exceeding $1 trillion,” MarketMinute remarks. “The declaration has sent ripples across the tech industry and financial markets, underscoring the escalating commitment to AI as the defining technology of the current era.” 
     
  • Note well that Nvidia too was an “overnight sensation” with a long leadup. It was famously founded in a chain restaurant back in 1993 and only soared into the financial stratosphere in the 2020s. The latter development came on the strength of Jensen Huang’s concentration on making AI-ready superchips. 
     
  • The news from Larry Ellison’s brainchild Oracle isn’t just of interest to investors. Healthcare stakeholders would do well to peruse two big announcements the suddenly scorching-hot company made Sept. 10: “Oracle to bring new AI capabilities to its patient portal, making it easier for people to understand their medical records” and “Oracle launches an AI center of excellence for healthcare to help customers maximize the value of AI across clinical, operational and financial workflows.” 
     
• AI is doing great things for healthcare. Making it more affordable isn’t one of them. That’s the view of thinkers at the American Enterprise Institute in Washington, D.C. “AI does not solve the basic problem in healthcare, which is that there are weak incentives for cost control,” write senior AEI fellow James Capretta and research associate Jack Rowing in a Sept. 10 post. “If AI is to lead to lower costs, the government and employers will need to deploy it aggressively to identify unnecessary spending and then incentivize patients to migrate toward lower-cost insurance and care options.” Hear them out. 
   
• Give it a little more time, will you? Over at the financial services firm Morgan Stanley in Midtown Manhattan, two money minds see things a little differently from their think-tank peers. Pointing out that hospitals’ biggest single expense by far is labor, healthcare financial analyst Erin Wright suggests AI could be just what the doctor ordered for achieving payroll moderation. “AI can optimize staffing, reduce burnout and [facilitate] more efficient healthcare record-keeping,” Wright says. “I mean, this can really help to drive meaningful cost savings. We think AI can drive meaningful efficiencies across healthcare delivery, with estimated savings of about $300 billion to $900 billion by 2050.” Her colleague Terence Flynn, a biopharma analyst, concurs. “The challenge is adoption,” Flynn says, “but the potential is transformative.” Audio and transcript here. 
   
• If it weren’t for the intransigence of the American Medical Association, we’d be well on our way to fleets of AI doctors diagnosing diseases and prescribing treatments. That’s pretty much verbatim from the billionaire businessman and venture capitalist Vinod Khosla. Speaking at the Deus Ex Medicina conference in San Francisco Sept. 9, Khosla drew some crossfire with the comment. “Healthcare is about people,” Shiv Rao of Abridge said before stressing that conversations between patients and providers “continue to be a core signal.” Summary coverage here. 
   
• What say ye, AMA? Short answer: We’ll let one of our constituents do the talking this time. “Healthcare for us is both high tech and high touch. There’s a lot of things we do today with robots, but [quality care] requires demonstrating empathy and caring, like touching someone’s hand when they’re sick or helping someone navigate social determinants of health issues. You just can’t do that through a machine.” The AMA ally is Baligh Yehia, MD, MPP, MSc, president of Jefferson Health in Philadelphia. More here. 
   
• Sam Altman wants healthcare workers to know: Your jobs may be among the very few not at risk of replacement by AI. If, that is, you work directly with patients. “A job that I’m confident will not be that impacted is nurses,” Altman recently said when asked for an example of a “AI-safe” occupation. “I think people really want that deep human connection with a person in that time, no matter how good the advice of the AI is or the robot or whatever. Like, you’ll really want that.”
   
• He’ll get no argument from two advanced practice providers who state their opinion for public consumption. “Based on our experience as APPs, AI performs many helpful functions, but it doesn’t replace the human component,” write Ashley Campbell, MSN, and Cassidee Kuehner, RN, of The Christ Hospital in Cincinnati. “Instead, AI gives providers the time to focus on what we were trained to do: comfort patients with empathetic touch, explain test results in an individualized way that is easy to understand, and work with the medical team, patients and their families to develop the most effective plan of care.” Read the whole piece. 
   
• Helpful, understandable, correct and complete. Oh, and transparent with potential clinical harms. These are the descriptors any healthcare AI model must demonstrably deserve to be worthy of adoption in clinical settings. Details on the source of the view and the ramifications of its rightness here. 
   
• Also worth your while:
   
  • AI is revolutionizing healthcare. But it can’t replace your doctor (Time) 
     
  • UnitedHealth & AI: Can technology redefine healthcare efficiency? (Zacks Investment Research) 
     
  • FDA panel to weigh in on AI mental health devices (Reuters)
     
  • Lab results confusing? Some patients use AI to interpret them, for better or worse (KFF via NPR)
     
  • AI may diagnose an illness—but only trust can heal healthcare (USA Today) 
     
• From AIin.Healthcare’s sibling outlets:
   
  • Health Exec: Largest physician-owned health system in Utah braces for AI-driven layoffs
     
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  • Radiology Business: Experts push for new generalist radiology AI models that move beyond single tasks, ease financial concerns 
     
  • Health Exec: High school seniors create AI chatbot that understands medical bills
     
  • Cardiovascular Business: Exploring the link between left ventricular diastolic function and AFib