2026 Healthcare Barometer: A Collaborative Model to Reduce Wait Times

An overloaded system: 90 days of uncertainty

18.2% of the population reports having needed a specialist consultation for emotional distress or mental health concerns in the past twelve months. This figure confirms the trend highlighted by organizations such as the Observatory on Unwanted Loneliness (which puts the share affected at 20% when including both diagnosed and undiagnosed cases).

The volume of cases has a major impact on the healthcare system. Professionals do not have unlimited time for each patient or the resources to keep up with the number of people affected. The impact on healthcare operations:

• First mental health consultation (referrals from primary care): an average wait of 90 days.

For mental health conditions, a prolonged wait for an initial consultation with a professional can lead to a worsening of the patient’s condition. Examples include more frequent or severe symptoms, or disruptions to daily life. The volume of cases also has an economic impact, since more consultations and more treatments mean higher spending by institutions.

The public’s view of the current trend is critical: 43% believe wait times remain the same as a year ago, and 38% say the situation has worsened.

The care model; what patients demand

Beyond the strain on the healthcare system, the study also examines the adoption of new medical technologies. Although 86.3% of users believe it is easy to find information about general well-being online, only 48.8% can easily access mental health information, highlighting a significant gap in health literacy.

Regarding artificial intelligence, the analysis shows how this technology is accepted in healthcare management:

• 48.8% feel uncomfortable talking to an AI during a consultation instead of a doctor
• 41.1% oppose having treatment follow-up handled entirely by artificial intelligence

The conclusion is clear: technology should not take the leading role in mental health treatment. Society accepts the inclusion of new technologies in the medical process, provided they act as a copilot (for example, interpreting test results), while the healthcare professional retains the leading role.

The synergy of Human-in-the-Loop

The study makes clear the public’s negative perception of AI taking full control of the medical process. Even so, the key to digital transformation lies in the Human-in-the-Loop model. The idea behind this model is to use the analytical capabilities of new technologies to give doctors back their most valuable assets: time, judgment, and empathy.

Strategic dimension	Doctor’s role	AI’s role
Data management	Contextualization	Large-scale processing
Patient experience	Trust and empathy	Hyperpersonalization of treatments
Decision-making	Final decision	Pattern prediction

Artificial intelligence’s data-processing capabilities can be a tremendous help by making it easy to manage vast amounts of data. This can take treatment personalization to the next level and make follow-up more precise, since potential risks can be predicted. In this context, the professional’s role remains central; they provide context for all the data obtained by AI, support the patient throughout the recovery process, and decide which steps to take to ensure a full recovery.

AI and healthcare professionals, a collaborative model

To give professionals more quality time, allowing them to provide more specialized care for each mental health case, the solution lies in optimizing the healthcare process, with particular emphasis on the stage before the first consultation.

At Nexi Health, our work centers on this core idea. Our device makes it possible to collect patient data before the first consultation. This gives professionals the opportunity to access patient-specific data before the first clinical visit and devote their time to medical decision-making and human connection.

This support translates into a concrete workflow in which the doctor always retains the final decision and Nexi provides the context that supports it:

At every stage, the doctor decides; Nexi only informs that decision.

Data collection continues between sessions, ensuring that patients do not spend that wait of more than 147 days in isolation. Patients maintain this follow-up through Bruna, our conversational agent, which continuously captures their emotional state without requiring the doctor to be present for every interaction. When a warning sign is detected, it activates several safety guardrails designed specifically for patient care, ensuring that the clinician receives a notification and can intervene in time, without technology ever deciding the course of care.

At no point in this process does technology decide: the doctor does, with more information and less uncertainty.