Data equity: Who owns healthcare AI’s most valuable asset?

There is a growing reality in healthcare AI: sometimes the most investable asset isn’t the platform itself, it’s the data. Much of the world’s richest clinical data remains locked inside hospitals and health systems, siloed by infrastructure, governance, and risk aversion. If data now has the power to shape investment decisions and determine who scales, how can access to it be made fair, responsible, and equitable? While federated data platforms promise a way forward, access is often complex, costly, and out of reach for many startups and researchers. Who gets access to valuable datasets, and at what price? Do providers, patients, and public systems see fair returns when their data underpins commercial success? And are today’s AI models being trained on populations that reflect reality, or only those that are easiest to access?