This article was written for Greystone.Net by Jessica Levco, a freelance healthcare writer and event strategist. 

While health systems continue investing millions in website redesigns and SEO, a fundamental shift in how patients search for care is already underway. Unfortunately, most healthcare systems aren't ready for it.

At the Healthcare Interactive Conference (HCIC) in Las Vegas, Sujal Raju, founder and president of Enqbator, gave attendees a wake-up call about AI-powered search and what it means for healthcare organizations.

The traditional, page-centric model of website design is becoming obsolete. Healthcare leaders must begin preparing for an intent-driven, AI-mediated digital future now — not years from now.

The Decline of Traditional Search

Traditional search, defined as people actually clicking through to websites from search engines, has declined by 25%. While Google search still dominates the search landscape, approximately 1 in 4 people start a search now with an AI tool. This represents a massive behavioral shift that venture capitalists have noticed, pouring billions of dollars of investment into search engine and AI companies.

AI-powered search introduces a capability traditional search never could: context-aware, hyper-personalized discovery. Instead of navigating menus, filters, and forms, users communicate their intent directly — and AI synthesizes the answers instantly. This means that the fundamental website architecture that hospitals use needs to change.

“Even with the best user experience design, personas and navigation structures, websites still force users into predetermined paths,” Raju says. “Websites are still defined by someone on your team saying, ‘This is the best way we think users are going to find our information.’ But that’s not what’s happening with AI searches. AI flips that model entirely. People want to search in whatever way feels natural to them — and receive direct, relevant answers.”

The API-First Approach

Take a deep breath. Don’t abandon your website. You just need to think about how information is structured, exposed and consumed on your website.

Raju says hospital leaders should put healthcare data through API-first architecture (Application Programming Interfaces) that AI assistants can access directly. Instead of designing elaborate website layouts with 25 different parameters for finding a physician, organizations should expose their databases to AI systems that can slice and dice it by millions of combinations, he says.  

Consider this scenario: A parent whose child fell playing soccer could provide a detailed description of the injury to an AI assistant. Rather than navigating through specialty categories, insurance filters and location searches on a website, the AI assistant could access the healthcare system’s physician database directly and find the perfect match based on all relevant factors simultaneously.

“We have to build those microservices that can be something that the agents of the AI chatbots can consume and give out that data to the end consumer,” Raju says. “These microservices

could include everything from physician search and appointment scheduling to patient portals, taxonomy research and language translation.”

Security and access control are natural concerns, but modern APIs support sophisticated permission structures. Much like airline and banking systems, healthcare APIs can securely personalize experiences for authenticated patients based on medical record number, insurance profile and care history.

Quality Over Quantity for Website Engagement

Many hospital marketers have noticed a decline in website traffic. Don’t panic, Raju says. If you use an API-first approach, you can still convert patients.

“If you used to have 50,000 visitors on your website and now you have 10,000 — but 90% of those visitors convert — you are vastly outperforming the old model,” Raju says. “Previously, you might have had large traffic numbers with minimal real engagement or conversion.”

Why the higher conversion rate? Because visitors arriving from AI-powered searches have already done extensive research.

“When someone lands on your site from an AI-driven search, they’re not browsing—they’re ready to act,” Raju says. “Your role is to remove friction, validate the answer they’ve already received and enable fast conversion.”

From Pages to Intent-Driven Digital Experiences

From voice assistants in vehicles to smart devices that anticipate our needs, AI-mediated services are reshaping user expectations across industries. Healthcare is no exception.

This shift is not merely about search. It represents an evolution from page-based websites to intent-driven digital experiences. AI no longer retrieves information; it interprets intent, connects to live data and triggers real-world actions through secure microservices.

Raju says this isn’t something organizations should plan for in 2027 or 2028. The transformation is already happening.

“The organizations that begin exposing intelligent, secure microservices today will define the next decade of digital healthcare,” Raju says. “In the near future, websites won’t be visited — they’ll be consulted. And AI will handle the consultation.”