Artificial intelligence use in healthcare is only as safe and accurate as the governance and trust frameworks surrounding it, particularly in clinical environments where errors or hallucinations can directly impact patient care, said Dave Bailey, vice president at consultancy Clearwater.

Britain will likely ban at least some types of ransom payments as it revamps the nation's cybersecurity laws, but many open questions remain, including sectors and the organizational sizes to be covered, and if all payments might be required to pass sanctions checks, said policy expert Jen Ellis.

Revisions to 42 CFR Part 2 that go into effect soon to better align federal regulations for the confidentiality of substance use disorder records with HIPAA require entities to adjust their compliance programs. But the changes aren't easy, said attorney David Holtzman, founder of HITprivacy LLC.

Large language models have a well-earned reputation for making things up. But for AI cybersecurity architect Erica Burgess, rather than being a bug, GPT hallucinations can be a threat-modeling feature. "I like to think of the hallucinations as just ideas that haven't been tested yet," she said.

Use cases of AI in healthcare will continue to expand in 2026 - including for back-office automation, ambient exam room documentation, claims processing and clinical decision support - but so will critical privacy, security, legal and other risks, said attorney Wendell Bartnick of law firm Reed Smith.

Implantable brain devices introduce a new and significantly more complex class of cybersecurity risk and critical privacy concerns, compared with traditional medical devices, given the sensitivity of neural data, says Professor Kevin Fu of the Archimedes Center at Northeastern University.

Healthcare sector mergers and acquisitions dramatically amplify cybersecurity and data privacy exposure for potential buyers and sellers, said attorney Jonian Rafti of law firm Proskauer. But there are critical steps entities can take to reduce those risks, he said.

Third-party security threats remain one of the most critical risks facing the healthcare sector. But now the increasing use of artificial intelligence by vendors adds a new layer of third-party concerns, said independent consultant Rick Doten, former healthplan CISO at Centene Corp.

Healthcare data breaches are becoming more frequent but smaller in scale, targeting smaller entities and high-value credentials and records - and AI is reshaping both the attack landscape and fraud patterns, said Jim Van Dyke, senior principal of innovation at TransUnion.

Preparing a healthcare workforce to responsibly engage with AI tools without over relying on automation or undermining human oversight will require awareness training akin to phishing exercises, said Skip Sorrels, field CTO and CISO at security firm Claroty.