PwC’s Raymond Martin explores his day-to-day at the intersection of technology and healthcare.
“I lead technology-driven transformation for PwC’s healthcare clients in Ireland, helping them to improve patient care, increase access to services and run more efficient operations,” said Raymond Martin, director of healthcare technology at the organisation.
He explained that, increasingly, healthcare teams are being asked to do more with the same resources, so targeted change using technology is often one big factor in change.
Here he discusses his day-to-day at PwC.
If there is such a thing, what is a typical day like at your job?
There really isn’t one and that’s a positive. The pace of change across technology, health and business over the past five years has been staggering and AI has kicked it into overdrive over the past two years.
My time is usually divided in three ways. First, overseeing the delivery of live customers, the introduction of technology in critical hospitals, community groups and national programs, often involving a significant redesign of care methods to improve the collection and use of data and to promote data and measurement processes. Second, working with our medical and operational experts to shape new services based on what customers are asking for and the trends we see around the world. Third, to help our PwC team evolve and discover what market dynamics mean for our people, their skills and their jobs.
In the more than 20 years you’ve worked in the health technology space, how has the landscape changed?
It is night and day. 20 years ago, health technology was dominated by back-office systems, heavy custom development, complex configuration projects and clinical systems that were mostly based on paper or niche high tech. The delivery of any change took years.
When I started in the US Medicaid systems in 2008, the average time from design to first release was four years and some releases could be a year apart. Five years later, I’m working on the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act in California, which was reduced to two years. The explosion of cloud infrastructure and SaaS platforms brought it down to less than a year and Covid again compressed it to months.
During Covid, for the New Mexico Department of Health, I led a team to integrate the contact center, deploy CRM and onboard hundreds of employees, starting work within 30 days and adding a lot of functionality within three months of that. The challenge for us is to make sure that governance and methodology are aligned so that speed does not introduce new risks. Another big change is the democratization of technology. 20 years ago, technology was a niche skill. Today our clients come prepared, tool-savvy and often using AI to improve their awareness and position in conversations.
How is technology changing the healthcare landscape of the future?
It’s hard to find an area of health care that technology won’t touch. The clinical relationship with the patient will always be the core of the human being, but everything around it is changing rapidly. Data is the first frontier. Healthcare generates large volumes of rich data, but historically it has been confined to archives, useful within a single system or location, not visible everywhere.
Joining that data across borders unlocks enormous value, such as better planning of national and local services at the outset. With better access to clinical data and the ability to supplement it with lifestyle data from wearable devices and dietary habits, patients can take control of their own health and care journey. The most obvious benefit is that it gives doctors a complete picture of the person in front of them.
Beyond clinical interactions, cloud platforms and AI are reshaping access to care. Virtual consultations, remote monitoring and home visits are becoming commonplace. AI assistants will help people form healthy habits and manage conditions through prevention. Genetic testing will drive personalized therapies into the mainstream and AI-accelerated trials will shorten the path from discovery to approval. And that’s just the beginning.
What are some of the challenges and how are they being addressed?
The pace of technological change is now testing the governance and procurement models organizations rely on. It was not built for this level of arrival.
Healthcare and public sector clients feel the most because they work in highly regulated environments and rightly so. Patient safety, public confidence, data privacy and fair use of public money are the currencies they trade on.
‘Move fast and break things’ is not an effective strategy in a hospital. Processes must be proven safe and compatible before they are adopted. Our role is to help our customers adopt new technologies at speed without compromising on those fundamentals, putting the right methods, validation frameworks and clinical governance in place so that innovation and safety go hand in hand.
Another challenge our clients face is finding the right way to adopt AI and get a real return on investment. That came out clearly in PwC’s latest Workforce study. The answer goes beyond isolated proof-of-value pilots to AI-enabled process management at scale, and exploring opportunities for growth rather than just cost savings. In healthcare, that translates to taking management responsibility away from front-line and back-office staff, applying AI to the problems they’re best at. This is where the real value can be unlocked.
Do you see new and emerging trends so far in 2026?
AI is the story of 2026. It went from novelty and experimentation to mainstream discovery. A large proportion of people now use it every day, including therapists and patients. People have seen what AI is doing for the customer service they get from their insurance company, their utility provider, or their streaming service and they expect the same level from their healthcare provider. Conversational tools mean patients arrive better informed about their conditions, changing the dynamics of consultation. We are also seeing native AI companies turn their focus to healthcare, which will accelerate the pipeline of AI-driven products to market.
Do you have any advice for professionals interested in a career similar to yours?
Stay positive. There is a lot of pessimism in the articles about disruption and changing business models, but disruption often accelerates great opportunities. If you look beyond the migration headlines, there is a bigger story about the opportunities created by AI.
This is the fifth major technology disruption cycle in my career, starting with the dot-com crash of 2001. I was an intern waiting for a successful career that didn’t happen because of the crash. That led to a different career and career that took me from Ireland to the US, Canada, India, the UK and a few places in between.
Every cycle since, from the financial crash of 2008 to the cloud and the SAAS revolution of 2011, and even Covid, was initially disruptive but ultimately created many opportunities for people in this industry. This is a reality we are seeing as we are currently growing and hiring consultants for our health team.
My second piece of advice, don’t wait for doors to open. Ask. Tell people what you like, ask for new roles, ask for introductions, find out what’s possible. You manage your own work. That is as true now as it has ever been.
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