Nearly 50% of patients don’t follow their prescribed treatment plans. Too often, healthcare blames “patient motivation” when the real issue is simpler: most adherence tools were designed for efficiency, not effectiveness.
Carlos A.S. Rodriguez has spent more than 20 years across healthcare management, startups, and executive leadership roles at Fortune 500 companies worldwide, watching this pattern erode outcomes and waste resources. As Co-Founder and CEO of Humanate, he’s seen how fragmented systems, overworked teams, and generic communication don’t just fail to improve adherence. They can actually create the confusion and overwhelm that cause patients to disengage. Agentic AI changes this by shifting support from reactive to proactive, from generic to personalized, and from passive alerts to active guidance that understands patient behavior and takes initiative to remove barriers to care.
What Is Agentic AI and Why Does It Matter?
Agentic AI goes beyond traditional reactive AI. It’s proactive, empathetic, and autonomous. “Think of it as a digital health concierge that understands patient behavior and takes initiative,” Rodriguez explains. “Instead of generic reminders, it engages patients in context, asking the right questions, offering support, and removing barriers to care.” Traditional healthcare AI typically waits for input, then responds. Agentic AI observes patterns, anticipates needs, and acts without waiting for patients to ask for help.
When a patient misses medication doses on weekends, agentic AI doesn’t just send another reminder. It asks whether weekend routines differ, whether reminder timing should change, and whether barriers exist on weekends that don’t show up during the week. When a patient reports side effects, agentic AI asks clarifying questions to understand severity, provides guidance on next steps, and flags the issue for clinical review if patterns suggest the side effect could lead to discontinuation. That level of personalization builds trust. Patients stop experiencing technology as nagging and start experiencing it as support that understands their situation and helps them navigate complexity.
Real-World Implementation and ROI
At Humanate, Rodriguez has implemented agentic AI across multiple healthcare systems with measurable results: up to a 30% improvement in patient follow-through, reduced readmissions, and a meaningful drop in administrative burden for staff. “The ROI is clear,” Rodriguez notes. “Better outcomes, happier patients, and more efficient operations.”
A 30% improvement in follow-through translates directly to clinical outcomes. Patients who adhere to treatment plans tend to have stronger disease management, fewer complications, and lower healthcare costs. Reduced readmissions mean fewer emergency interventions and hospitalizations that could have been prevented with consistent adherence.
The reduction in administrative burden matters just as much. Healthcare staff spend enormous time on manual outreach to improve adherence: calling patients who missed appointments, following up on refills, and answering basic questions about treatment plans. Agentic AI can handle much of this proactively, freeing staff for higher-value work that requires human judgment and expertise.
The Future Is Agentic
The future of healthcare is agentic. Intelligent systems will work alongside clinical teams as partners in care, not just tools that respond when prompted. “Patient adherence doesn’t have to remain an unsolved problem,” Rodriguez concludes. “With the right balance of empathy and intelligence, agentic AI is changing what’s possible.”
For healthcare organizations facing patient engagement challenges or staff burnout, there’s an option beyond hiring more people or accepting poor adherence as inevitable. Agentic
AI provides the personalized, proactive support patients need to follow treatment plans, while reducing the burden on clinical teams trying to deliver that support at scale. This shift from reactive to agentic AI represents a fundamental change in how healthcare supports patients between clinical encounters, moving from generic communication that patients ignore to personalized engagement that builds trust and removes barriers to care.
Connect with Carlos A.S. Rodriguez on LinkedIn for insights on agentic AI and patient adherence.
