Two-thirds of healthcare organisations expect their AI budget to grow, according to the fourth annual 2026 Wasabi Global Cloud Storage Index.
The Wasabi Cloud Storage Index, developed in collaboration with Vanson Bourne, is a leading source of industry trends and IT decision-maker insights on cloud infrastructure and storage services, based on global survey data from 1,700 business and IT respondents – including 171 respondents within the healthcare sector.
Healthcare organisations are increasing investment in AI infrastructure. Nearly two-thirds (64 per cent) of healthcare IT professionals expect their organisation's AI infrastructure budget to increase over the next year
However, despite growing investment, many organisations are struggling to control the costs associated with AI-related storage and infrastructure. Nearly half (43 per cent) of healthcare respondents cite high or unpredictable costs as a top challenge in managing AI-related cloud storage, while 27 per cent report that their AI projects are currently operating at a loss, suggesting that cost management remains a significant barrier to unlocking AI's full value.
Cloud fees are becoming difficult to manage, leading many to adopt multicloud strategies. Multi-cloud adoption reflects growing cost concerns, with 73 per cent of healthcare respondents use more than one public cloud storage provider and two thirds pursuing hybrid storage deployments.
Large volumes of data remain underutilised. Most healthcare organisations estimate up to 49 per cent of their stored capacity consists of unanalysed or underutilised ‘dark data’, suggesting significant untapped opportunities to derive additional value from existing data assets while also reducing unnecessary storage costs.
Andrew Smith, director of strategy and market intelligence at Wasabi, said: “Healthcare organisations increasingly recognize the true cost of cloud storage extends beyond the baseline storage capacity utilised. As AI, analytics, and other data-intensive workloads drive more frequent needs for data to be accessed, the fees associated with moving and using that data become increasingly difficult to predict and manage. At the same time, the prevalence of dark data highlights an opportunity for healthcare organisations to unlock more value from the information they already have and position themselves to support innovation while keeping storage spending under control.”
