- In today’s CEO Daily: Health care leaders debate how AI is reshaping the industry.
- The big leadership story: New BP CEO Meg O’Neill makes a hard pivot.
- The markets: Down globally as the U.S. fires retaliatory strikes against Iran.
- Plus: All the news and watercooler chat from Fortune.
Good morning. Health care CEOs walked into 2026 carrying the same impossible mandate they’ve had for years: do more with less, improve outcomes, and somehow fix a system that the country can no longer afford. The difference now is that AI is actually starting to deliver—clinicians seeing on average eight more patients a week, hundreds of hours of administrative burden lifting, patient satisfaction rising. And the Future Health Index 2026, an annual global survey of more than 2,000 health care professionals and 20,000 patients commissioned by Philips, does show that AI is helping clinicians deliver better care with less stress. More than half of the patients who regularly use AI reported being positive about its impact, too. That’s a significant gain in trust and optimism from a year ago. “We’re talking about true adoption and what we call the AI dividend now because we’re actually starting to see the return,” said Jeff DiLullo, chief region leader for Philips North America.
But a dinner earlier this week—that Fortune and Philips cohosted in New York with leaders of the country’s major health systems—revealed a sharper question: Will those gains flow back into care, or disappear the way telehealth’s efficiencies did into lower reimbursements and thinner margins? After all, rising costs, reduced coverage, and labor shortages, along with regulatory challenges and a fragmented market, have put pressure on the industry to gain efficiencies while creating barriers to achieve them. Some participants expressed concern that AI gains could go the way of telehealth, where increased efficiency leads to less compensation from insurers for those delivering care.
And yet there was palpable excitement at what AI can do. “It’s truly changing the way we care for people, with better outcomes at a lower cost,” Kevin Mahoney, CEO of University of Pennsylvania Health System, told me. While it can’t fix everything, he added, “we’re in a moment where America can’t afford its health care, and we need to use every tool we can.”
Brian Donley, president and CEO of New York Presbyterian, agreed, adding that “AI is not an innovation strategy or an IT strategy. It has to be an enterprise strategy … with a constant focus on how we can expand that time where an exchange of empathy happens between a patient and provider.” That’s more likely when everyone trusts that AI is being deployed to enhance human interaction, not replace it.
Contact CEO Daily via Diane Brady at diane.brady@fortune.com
Top leadership news
BP’s new structure
New BP CEO Meg O'Neill is scrapping the company's green energy division and reorganizing the oil giant around just two units—upstream and downstream—in a sharp pivot back to fossil fuels. "We are moving firmly towards a simpler, stronger and more valuable BP," she said.
The risks of over-expansion
At Fortune Brainstorm Tech in Aspen, former HP and eBay CEO Meg Whitman said that companies expanding into too many countries can be harmful to their business, arguing that a smaller number of well-chosen markets drives better returns. "It is not a badge of honor to be in 120 countries," she said, adding that at HP's peak, 40 countries made up 85% of revenue and 125% of profits.
The future of gaming
Xbox's new CEO Asha Sharma is bringing the console back to its gaming roots, cutting Game Pass prices and reviving flagship titles after taking over in February. "This is definitely not an Allbirds moment where we're going to turn into xbox.ai," she said at Fortune Brainstorm Tech.
The markets
S&P 500 futures are down 0.45% this morning. The last session closed down 0.26%. The STOXX Europe 600 was down 0.03% in early trading. The U.K.’s FTSE 100 was down 0.04% in early trading. Japan’s Nikkei 225 was down 1.89%. South Korea’s KOSPI is down 4.52% today. China’s CSI 300 was down 1.11%. Hong Kong’s Hang Seng was down 0.64%. India’s NIFTY 50 was up 0.37%. Bitcoin was down at $61K.
Around the watercooler
The AI industry spent years chasing bigger models. Now it’s chasing efficiency by Sharon Goldman
‘Getting control where we can’—Europe wants sovereign AI, but most of the chips are from the U.S. by Amanda Gerut
A $200 million boomer estate, millennial heir Nick Reiner, and the dark side of the Great Wealth Transfer by Nick Lichtenberg
Anthropic releases its first Mythos-class model to the public by Bea Nolan
CEO Daily is curated and edited by Joseph Abrams, Jason Ma, Claire Zillman, and Lee Clifford.
