By 2028, 70 per cent of US healthcare payers will address workflow, data and service automation using no-code agent builders, cutting manual workloads by 50 per cent, Gartner predicts. The forecast signals a broader shift: AI agent development moving from centralised IT projects to business-led automation, with governance the deciding factor between value and risk.
The prediction appears in the Gartner report Innovation Insight: No-Code Agent Builders Improve Efficiency for U.S. Healthcare Payers.
No-code agent builders (NCABs) offer an integrated design and runtime environment to build, publish and manage AI-powered agents without exposing any code to the builder. Gartner says the tools let business teams create agents through visual or conversational interfaces with minimal IT support, providing a sanctioned alternative to shadow AI deployments.
The warnings are as prominent as the promise. Gartner finds many IT and business teams are not fully prepared to implement the tools, facing difficulty defining use cases, insufficiently trained personnel and inadequate governance structures. Deploying NCABs without proper controls can disrupt essential systems, introduce security vulnerabilities and cause service and operational issues.
Rapid growth in the agentic AI market - fuelled by vendor hype, inconsistent terminology and what Gartner calls agent-washing - is also making it hard for leaders to understand available solutions.
Gartner recommends a readiness evaluation before implementation, dual-layer governance separating platform controls from agent-specific functions, a well-defined inventory of use cases, enforced guardrails for citizen developers and a phased rollout starting with small, targeted projects.
Use cases cited include prior authorisations, member enrolment, provider directory maintenance, appeals and grievances, eligibility verification, regulatory reporting and process documentation.
"Health plans have run enough pilots. The question now is not whether to use agentic AI; it is whether the AI you deploy can be trusted at scale," said Simha Sadasiva, CEO and Co-founder of Ushur.
While the report focuses on US healthcare payers, its governance framework - separating platform-level controls from agent-level oversight, with clear responsibilities for development, security and maintenance - applies to any organisation opening agent-building to business users.