Indian hospitals set to raise digital spending by 25% in next 3 years, says CII-EY survey

IT innovation budgets in Indian hospitals are set to rise by 20–25 per cent over the next 2–3 years, with nearly half of healthcare providers already allocating 20–50 per cent of their spends to digital innovation, the Confederation of Indian Industry (CII)- EY HealthTech Survey 2025 has revealed

The report, launched at the CII Hospital Tech 2025 Summit, highlights how automation is taking centre stage in patient experience, clinical outcomes, and data-driven decision-making.

Titled “Unleashing digital momentum to shape the future of healthcare—enabling automation to enforcing transformation,” the report also flags the barriers of legacy systems, workforce readiness, and patient-centric delivery that hospitals must overcome to become future-ready.

Six in ten hospitals plan to invest in IT capability building, followed by BI tools and data lakes (50 per cent). Hardware upgrades and critical application enhancements fall lower on the priority list (10 per cent), while medium-priority areas include data management and cybersecurity, it said.

Evolving AI use cases in clinical areas

Healthcare providers are also leaning into AI with a clear focus on enhancing visibility of clinical data and generating meaningful insights to assist doctors. Top priorities include AI for clinical documentation and data analysis (72 per cent), decision support systems (64 per cent) and imaging (60 per cent), according to the survey.

This reflects a pragmatic approach where CIOs are choosing to invest in high-impact applications that enhance data visibility for clinicians, providers and patients, strengthen everyday clinical decision- making thereby improving clinical outcomes, the report said.

“For India to unlock the full potential of HealthTech, collaboration across government, industry, and providers will be critical. The next wave of healthcare delivery will be defined by how quickly we can bridge these gaps and enable hospitals to scale innovation without compromising patient trust or data security. The CII-EY HealthTech Survey 2025 provides a timely roadmap for healthcare leaders navigating a fast-changing landscape,” said Joy Chakraborthy, Chairman CII HospiTech 2025.

Ankur Dhandharia, Partner—Healthcare, EY Parthenon India, elaborated on how the survey highlighted the current state, hurdles, and ambition of India’s healthcare sector and made it clear that leaders have put in place scalable systems and are now prioritising digital investments to create a seamless patient journey and improve health outcomes.

"When it comes to AI and analytics adoption, there is a clear shift reflecting move away from pilots to practical, scalable use cases that enhance efficiency and drive data driven decision making. Further, key government initiatives such as ABDM and DPDPA are expected to enable and accelerate this journey. Over the next few years, we expect to see technology in healthcare move from foundational to truly ‘future ready’ - where smart hospitals are patient-centric, efficient, data-driven and health outcome focussed,” he said.

Among other findings, more than half (60 per cent) of healthcare service providers identify capability building and IT team upskilling as their biggest digital challenge, underscoring the sector’s need for a more digitally fluent workforce.

Equally pressing are difficulties in integrating data and driving adoption of business intelligence (BI) tools, flagged by 50 per cent of respondents.

While hardware and network infrastructure and data storage and management are rated as moderately challenging, nearly 60 per cent of respondents admit to ongoing struggles with data management.