AI Agents in Healthcare: Applications, Evaluation, and Future Directions
With the rapid development of large language model technology, AI agents have rapidly emerged in the healthcare domain. This article reviews the historical evolution and core characteristics of AI agents, and systematically analyzes their applications in auxiliary diagnosis, clinical decision support, medical report generation, patient chatbots, healthcare system management, and medical education. In addition, the article discusses existing evaluation frameworks and proposes seven future development directions, including integration with physical systems, mixture of experts models, expanded evaluation paradigms, safety and controllability, ethical governance and user trust, and guidance for the evolving roles of healthcare professionals.