Where Home Care Is Headed: AxisCare CTO/COO on Industry Trends, AI & What Comes Next
An exclusive interview with John Atkinson explores insights from AxisCare’s research report, The State of AI for Home Care Agencies, and how providers are approaching the next era of technology.
The home care industry has entered a period of evolution as agencies navigate pain points like caregiver shortage, economic strife, and revenue stagnation. As a result, the leaders of these organizations are seeking strategies that will propel them into the future of care delivery.
According to AxisCare’s research report, The State of AI for Home Care Agencies, including more than 400 home care leaders, providers are prioritizing opportunities to improve efficiency, operations, and support for the people responsible for delivering care. The findings reveal an industry moving beyond reacting to change and toward making intentional decisions about where technology and investment can have the greatest impact.
For John Atkinson, Chief Technology Officer and Chief Operating Officer at AxisCare, those findings reflect what his team has been hearing directly from providers.
“Home care has traditionally been careful about adopting new technology, and for good reason. Agencies are managing sensitive data, complex workflows, and deeply personal care relationships. What the research showed is that leaders are no longer asking whether AI belongs in home care, they are asking how to implement it while keeping the human touch central, where it can create the most value, and how quickly they can get started."
From technology adoption to operational efficiency, the survey highlights a broader shift in how home care leaders are approaching the future. Rather than reacting to industry changes as they arise, agencies are evaluating how new tools and strategies can fit into the realities of everyday care delivery.
How Agencies Are Approaching the Next Era of Technology
For years, the conversation around artificial intelligence in home care centered on possibility. Could AI improve scheduling? Could it reduce administrative work? Is it mature enough for agencies to trust? But those questions are fading as the conversation around AI matures.
According to AxisCare's report, the industry has moved beyond debating whether AI belongs in home care. Instead, agency leaders are focused on where it can create the greatest operational value while preserving human relationships. Atkinson was glad to uncover the level of optimism agencies have around AI, finding that 91% of respondents are either using AI or planning to use it for operations.
This shift may prove more significant than the rapid rise of AI itself. It signals an industry moving from experimentation toward operational strategy. Teams are now evaluating not just what AI can do, but how it should fit into the daily realities of delivering care.
While enthusiasm for AI is high, Atkinson believes agencies are becoming increasingly selective about how they adopt new technology. One of the strongest themes to emerge from the survey was concern over adding yet another disconnected application to already complex technology environments. Agencies want AI capabilities, but they want those capabilities embedded within the systems they already rely on rather than scattered across multiple standalone tools.
That concern mirrors a broader trend reflected throughout the survey. Home care leaders increasingly view technology as a means of improving efficiency within existing operations rather than fundamentally changing their business models. Improving performance in current markets ranked as the industry's greatest growth opportunity, while leveraging technology and AI to improve efficiency emerged as a top strategic priority.
Rather than chasing every new AI application, agencies appear focused on reducing friction inside the workflows that already consume the most time and resources.
Building AI Around Real-World Workflows
As conversations around AI in home care have matured, AxisCare’s approach has shifted from exploring what AI can do to determining where it can create value. Rather than focusing on technology for its own sake, the company is prioritizing solutions that address real operational challenges and deliver measurable outcomes.
Atkinson says conversations about AI have evolved considerably over the past two years, with early discussions focused on what generative AI was capable of producing. Today, those conversations are centered on how AI can support agencies in their day-to-day work.
"We are not interested in adding AI simply because a capability is technically possible. We want to understand the challenges our customers face every day and determine whether AI can help them complete that work more accurately, efficiently, or consistently."
That philosophy also challenges a common misconception among home care leaders: that adopting AI requires an entirely new system or major changes to how teams operate. Atkinson says the research confirmed that agencies see the value of AI but remain concerned about complexity, implementation, and disruption.
The goal, he says, is to make AI a natural extension of the tools teams already use. Agencies should not need to become AI experts or learn an entirely new platform to benefit from the technology. Instead, AI should be practical, accessible, and integrated into existing workflows.
Rather than building isolated AI products, AxisCare has focused on embedding intelligence directly into the workflows agencies already rely on, including:
Scheduling
Communication
Billing
Compliance
Care oversight
Growth
Atkinson describes this evolution as a move beyond the traditional “system of record” toward what he calls a “system of action.” While a system of record stores and organizes information, a system of action helps agencies understand what requires attention and identify the next best step.
For AxisCare, the future of AI is not about replacing existing software or changing how agencies deliver care; it is about making the systems teams already rely on more proactive, intelligent, and actionable.
Keeping Care Human
Despite widespread optimism around AI, neither the survey nor Atkinson's perspective suggests agencies are looking to automate human care itself. Instead, the emphasis is on removing administrative work that competes with time spent serving clients.
"We start by asking whether AI can reduce administrative burden without removing the judgment, empathy, or accountability that the situation requires," Atkinson said.
He points to applications like reviewing documentation, identifying potential care concerns, supporting scheduling decisions, and streamlining billing workflows. These are areas where AI can surface information more quickly while leaving important clinical, employment, and financial decisions to people.
That philosophy aligns with another notable survey finding. The applications respondents believe will have the greatest impact are overwhelmingly operational:
Scheduling
Workforce utilization
Caregiver engagement
Recruiting
Client communication
Change-of-condition monitoring
Atkinson wants to design these applications to help people work more effectively rather than replace the interactions that define home care. AxisCare’s goal is not to remove people from home care, but to give them better information and more time to focus on the work that requires a person.
Transformation Happens One Workflow at a Time
Although AI dominates industry conversations, Atkinson cautions against expecting overnight transformation. The agencies seeing the greatest success, he says, are taking an incremental approach:
Identifying one high-friction workflow
Implementing AI where it provides measurable value
Evaluating the results
Expanding from there
Those individual improvements compound into broader operational transformation over time. The survey supports that practical mindset. While caregiver shortages remain the industry's leading challenge, leaders are increasingly focused on other goals. Often, these include profitability, operational efficiency, and sustainable growth. Each of these are areas where thoughtful technology adoption can produce measurable gains without disrupting care delivery.
In other words, agencies aren't looking for AI to solve every problem. They're looking for it to solve the right problems.
Looking Ahead
When asked what the industry might misunderstand about AI today, Atkinson offered a perspective that extends beyond any single technology platform.
Five years from now, he believes organizations won't think of AI as a separate product at all. Instead, it will simply be an expected capability woven throughout the software agencies use every day. Atkinson thinks AI will help teams access information, complete work, understand data, and make better decisions without requiring another application or another workflow.
More importantly, he expects the technology's greatest contribution won't be replacing people, but increasing the capacity of the people already delivering care. For an industry facing persistent workforce challenges, growing financial pressure, and rising demand, that distinction may ultimately define the next chapter of AI adoption.
Whether the broader industry adopts a similar approach remains to be seen. But for AxisCare, the value of AI lies not in replacing human expertise, but in augmenting it. They aim to help caregivers, coordinators, and agency leaders dedicate more time to the people and decisions that need them most.
