Healthcare 5.0 combines artificial intelligence, the Internet of Medical Things, edge and cloud computing, and digital twins to support safer, more personal, and more efficient care. Interest in quantum machine learning is growing in this space, but the current evidence is fragmented and hard to compare across studies. Many reports focus on small tasks, use weak or inconsistent baselines, and do not separate algorithmic gains from costs caused by data encoding, repeated circuit execution, and hardware noise. This survey addresses these gaps by providing a structured synthesis of Healthcare 5.0 applications and by offering a practical comparison between classical machine learning and quantum machine learning using criteria that matter for clinical use. We review representative use cases in medical imaging, electronic health record based prediction, remote monitoring, decision support, and digital twin enabled systems. We then analyze QML integration patterns that are realistic today, with emphasis on hybrid pipelines where classical models extract features and quantum components act as narrow decision or optimization modules. Finally, we consolidate the barriers that currently limit adoption, including encoding overhead, limited qubit counts and circuit depth, training instability and reproducibility, privacy and governance constraints, and the need for careful benchmarking and reporting. We conclude with guidance on evaluation and study design to support fair comparison, clearer clinical relevance, and better alignment with Healthcare 5.0 engineering requirements.
Healthcare 5.0 combines artificial intelligence, the Internet of Medical Things, edge and cloud computing, and digital twins to support safer, more personal, and more efficient care. Interest in quantum machine learning is growing in this space, but the current evidence is fragmented and hard to compare across studies. Many reports focus on small tasks, use weak or inconsistent baselines, and do not separate algorithmic gains from costs caused by data encoding, repeated circuit execution, and hardware noise. This survey addresses these gaps by providing a structured synthesis of Healthcare 5.0 applications and by offering a practical comparison between classical machine learning and quantum machine learning using criteria that matter for clinical use. We review representative use cases in medical imaging, electronic health record based prediction, remote monitoring, decision support, and digital twin enabled systems. We then analyze QML integration patterns that are realistic today, with emphasis on hybrid pipelines where classical models extract features and quantum components act as narrow decision or optimization modules. Finally, we consolidate the barriers that currently limit adoption, including encoding overhead, limited qubit counts and circuit depth, training instability and reproducibility, privacy and governance constraints, and the need for careful benchmarking and reporting. We conclude with guidance on evaluation and study design to support fair comparison, clearer clinical relevance, and better alignment with Healthcare 5.0 engineering requirements.
Background Artificial Intelligence (AI) incorporation within healthcare applications has significantly helped in the improvement of healthcare diagnostics, patient forecasting, and clinical decision-making. The steady growing of medical data in terms of quantity, quality, and dimension poses more significant problems for traditional AI methods in terms of size, time, and computational efficiency. However, classical machine learning models often struggle with high-dimensional, imbalanced, and heterogeneous medical datasets, which limits their scalability and generalizability. The Quantum Artificial Intelligence (QAI) model, which combines quantum computing and machine learning in a complementary way, has emerged as one of the main trends to defeat these problems. This complementary approach is gaining more popularity, with the most advanced work being developed in this area, as it offers a fundamental explanation of current complexities and the underlying principles and their applications. Methodology This paper begins with the basic concepts of quantum computing and where it overlaps with AI. It then moves to a comparative approach, discussing various quantum machine learning algorithms such as quantum support vector machines, quantum neural networks, and variational quantum circuits. A comparative evaluation of quantum support vector machine, variational quantum classifier, quantum neural network, quantum K-means, and quantum Boltzmann machine is conducted using the Pima Indians Diabetes dataset to assess model behaviour and performance under standard metrics. Further detail is provided on the theoretical and practical implications of QAI in medical imaging, genomics, electronic health records, and drug discovery. Additionally, this paper examines platforms, tools, and quantum hardware used for QAI research, and discusses unique challenges currently faced in quantum technology. Results Unlike prior surveys that primarily provide conceptual overviews, this paper uniquely combines a comprehensive review with practical benchmarking of multiple quantum machine learning models on a benchmark medical dataset. This provides comparative insights into algorithmic performance under real-world constraints, particularly in relation to high-dimensional medical data, genomic data, electronic health records with large number of clinical attributes, radiology images, etc. In this study, dimensionality arises from multivariate clinical features encoded into quantum feature maps and the limitations of current quantum systems. Conclusion This paper aims to serve as a starting point for researchers and practitioners interested in the potential of quantum-enhanced AI to transform health data analytics. By identifying current limitations, evaluating the performance of emerging quantum machine learning approaches, and outlining gaps in the literature, the paper highlights future research directions necessary to advance QAI in healthcare. Overall, the findings outline both the potential and practical constraints of quantum models, offering a foundation for future work toward scalable, clinically applicable QAI solutions.
The growing volume of biomedical data from electronic health records, medical imaging, genomic sequencing, wearable Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) devices, and precision medicine has created new opportunities as well as significant computational challenges for healthcare. This chapter explores how Quantum Machine Learning (QML) can complement conventional machine learning by improving the analysis of complex, high-dimensional healthcare data through hybrid quantum–classical approaches. It introduces the fundamentals of quantum computing and discusses their application in genomics, medical imaging, drug discovery, IoMT-enabled healthcare, and cybersecurity. The chapter also presents an integrated framework that brings together quantum-enabled analytics, secure communication, and clinical decision support, while highlighting current challenges, ethical considerations, and future directions such as fault-tolerant quantum computing, explainable quantum AI, federated quantum learning, and post-quantum healthcare security.
Quantum machine learning (QML) is an emerging field combining quantum computing and artificial intelligence, with promising applications in medicine and healthcare. This survey reviews more than 60 studies published between 2018 and 2025, highlighting a sharp increase in research activity, especially in the last three years. We address seven core research questions related to publication trends, the use of real quantum hardware versus simulators, quantum architectures overview, dataset types, medical domains, algorithmic frameworks, and reported results. Our analysis shows that most QML research in healthcare is conducted on simulators due to limited hardware access, and it relies on small datasets. Quantum convolutional neural network (QCNN) architectures dominate image-based medical tasks such as tumor detection, pneumonia diagnosis, and ECG interpretation, while feature-based datasets are mainly analyzed with variational quantum classifiers and quantum support vector machines. Despite hardware constraints, QML models often match or surpass classical machine learning approaches in accuracy, frequently reaching 95–99%. However, these performance statements should be qualified to recognize experimental limitations and avoid excessive optimism and should not be interpreted as definitive proof of quantum superiority at this stage. Additionally, issues with reproducibility and reporting of hardware details persist, which is a significant research gap. This review emphasizes the need for standardized benchmarks, more real hardware testing, and architecture-aware algorithm design. With the potential for accelerated diagnostics and personalized healthcare, QML represents a strategic direction for future medical research.
The growing digitalization of medical diagnostics has resulted in massive amounts of complicated data, including medical imaging and genomic sequences, clinical writing and real-time patient monitoring. Classical machine learning (CML) has achieved amazing success in evaluating such data. But its computational restrictions hinder scalability and efficiency when dealing with high-dimensional biomedical problems. Quantum machine learning (QML) combines the principles of quantum computing (QC) with advanced learning algorithms to offer a transformative paradigm for digital healthcare. This paper provides a systematic overview of QML foundations including quantum data encoding (QDC), variational quantum circuits (VQC), kernel methods, and hybrid quantum classical models. This paper also focuses on their applications in medical imaging, genomics, natural language processing (NLP) for electronic health records, drug discovery and healthcare security. We present comparative insights between classical and quantum approaches such as slow processing of high-dimensional data, limited scalability and inefficiency in complex optimization problems. This review also emphasizes the emerging directions towards quantum-based personalized digital healthcare approaches. By combining medical science with quantum QML has the potential to revolutionize the future of precision diagnostics, treatment optimization and healthcare data security. This study also provides a valuable resource for those interested in quantum computing and researchers who want to stay updated on the fast-growing area.
Medical decision-making is increasingly integrating quantum computing (QC) and machine learning (ML) to analyze complex datasets, improve diagnostics, and enable personalized treatments. While QC holds the potential to accelerate optimization, drug discovery, and genomic analysis as hardware capabilities advance, current implementations remain limited compared to classical computing in many practical applications. Meanwhile, ML has already demonstrated significant success in medical imaging, predictive modeling, and decision support. Their convergence, particularly through quantum machine learning (QML), presents opportunities for future advancements in processing high-dimensional healthcare data and improving clinical outcomes. This review examines the foundational concepts, key applications, and challenges of these technologies in healthcare, explores their potential synergy in solving clinical problems, and outlines future directions for quantum-enhanced ML in medical decision-making.
Abstract The convergence of quantum computing and medical image analysis has emerged as a promising frontier for advancing diagnostic intelligence beyond the limits of classical machine learning. Recent developments in quantum hardware and quantum machine learning (QML) algorithms have stimulated growing interest in their potential to enhance complex medical imaging tasks, including disease classification, image segmentation, and clinical decision support (Wei et al., 2023; Ullah and Garcia-Zapirain, 2024). This study presents a comprehensive review and synthesis of state-of-the-art QML methodologies applied to medical imaging, systematically examining both theoretical foundations and empirical implementations. We analyze quantum-based and hybrid quantum–classical models employed across modalities such as MRI, CT, X-ray, and histopathological imaging, with particular attention to classification accuracy, computational efficiency, and diagnostic robustness (Maheshwari et al., 2022; ElBedoui et al., 2025). Our findings reveal clear trends indicating that hybrid quantum–classical approaches currently dominate practical applications, consistently outperforming purely classical baselines in select low-dimensional and domain-specific diagnostic tasks. Performance gains are most evident in feature-rich yet data-constrained scenarios, where quantum kernels and variational circuits demonstrate enhanced representational capacity (Ajlouni et al., 2023; Landman et al., 2022). However, these advantages remain context-dependent and sensitive to noise, circuit depth, and encoding strategies. Overall, QML holds significant promise for improving medical image-based diagnosis, but its widespread clinical adoption is constrained by hardware scalability, limited qubit coherence, and unresolved data encoding challenges. Addressing these limitations will be critical for translating QML from experimental feasibility to routine medical practice (Marengo and Santamato, 2025; Rawas and AlSaeed, 2026).