The convergence of quantum computing and artificial intelligence is creating new opportunities for smart healthcare, particularly in medical image analysis, privacy-preserving data management, and clinical decision support. This chapter presents a conceptual and architectural overview of quantum machine learning (QML) for a multidisciplinary audience. It introduces quantum computing fundamentals and discusses quantum kernel methods and variational quantum circuits using the MedMNIST benchmark. A geometric separation diagnostic is proposed as a conceptual, computationally inexpensive, hardware-independent screening construct for indicating whether quantum encoding places data in a label-separable configuration, with its empirical validation identified as future work. The chapter further examines privacy-preserving healthcare through federated learning, synthetic data governance, differential privacy, post-quantum cryptography, and regulatory considerations, and presents a five-layer quantum-enhanced healthcare architecture together with key challenges and future research directions.
The convergence of quantum computing and artificial intelligence is creating new opportunities for smart healthcare, particularly in medical image analysis, privacy-preserving data management, and clinical decision support. This chapter presents a conceptual and architectural overview of quantum machine learning (QML) for a multidisciplinary audience. It introduces quantum computing fundamentals and discusses quantum kernel methods and variational quantum circuits using the MedMNIST benchmark. A geometric separation diagnostic is proposed as a conceptual, computationally inexpensive, hardware-independent screening construct for indicating whether quantum encoding places data in a label-separable configuration, with its empirical validation identified as future work. The chapter further examines privacy-preserving healthcare through federated learning, synthetic data governance, differential privacy, post-quantum cryptography, and regulatory considerations, and presents a five-layer quantum-enhanced healthcare architecture together with key challenges and future research directions.
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 discipline at the intersection of quantum computing and artificial intelligence, providing new approaches to address the increasing computational and analytical challenges in healthcare. This chapter explores how quantum principles, such as superposition, entanglement, and interference, can enhance the efficiency and accuracy of machine learning when applied to complex biomedical data. It presents an overview of the fundamental concepts of QML, compares its capabilities with those of traditional machine learning systems, and examines important algorithmic frameworks, including Quantum Support Vector Machines, Quantum Neural Networks, and Variational Quantum Algorithms. Practical examples are explored across several healthcare domains—drug discovery, medical imaging, genomic research, patient monitoring, and hospital resource management—showing how quantum methods are beginning to improve data interpretation and clinical decision-making. The chapter also outlines current limitations related to hardware capacity, data preparation, interpretability, and regulatory standards, while emphasizing ethical and cybersecurity considerations that accompany quantum-enabled systems. Finally, it looks ahead to a future in which accessible quantum computing, open-source development, and collaboration among scientists, clinicians, and technologists drive a new generation of personalized, secure, and data-driven healthcare.
The healthcare sector is undergoing a significant transformation driven by advances in Artificial Intelligence, Big Data Analytics, Internet of Medical Things, Cloud Computing, and Digital Health technologies. While these technologies have enabled intelligent healthcare services, the increasing complexity, volume, and heterogeneity of healthcare data pose substantial computational challenges for conventional systems. To address these limitations, Quantum Computing, has emerged as a promising solution. This chapter presents a comprehensive review of the integration of quantum computing and intelligent technologies in smart healthcare systems. It examines the fundamental concepts of quantum computing and explores their applicability in healthcare environments. It also discusses quantum machine learning models for diagnostic support and personalized healthcare. It further investigates emerging applications including drug discovery, genomic analysis and medical image reconstruction. Finally, the challenges, implementation barriers, and future directions are also presented.
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.
Quantum Machine Learning (QML) is an emerging, powerful paradigm at the intersection of quantum computing and artificial intelligence, with the potential to enhance medical image analysis. We compared their performance with classical counterparts, while critically examining the gap between theoretical quantum advantages and the practical constraints of current Noisy Intermediate-Scale Quantum (NISQ) implementations. This review explored the current landscape of QML-based methodologies applied to key medical imaging modalities - Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI), Computed Tomography (CT), X-rays, and histopathology. We systematically analyzed how quantum-enhanced models were employed for critical tasks such as image classification, segmentation, and reconstruction, and we compared their performance with that of classical counterparts. The review delved into the architectural innovations that enabled these quantum approaches, including hybrid quantum-classical frameworks, variational quantum circuits, and quantum convolutional neural networks. Particular emphasis was given to the clinical relevance of QML applications, from early diagnostics to real-time surgery planning, and how quantum advantage might influence data efficiency, interpretability, along computational scalability. Finally, we highlighted current challenges in data encoding, noise resilience, and hardware limitations, and discussed promising future directions that could enable the practical deployment of QML in healthcare settings. This comprehensive review aimed to serve as a foundational reference for researchers and practitioners looking to harness quantum computing in medical imaging and precision medicine.
Abstract Quantum computing and artificial intelligence (AI) are converging to reshape the future of healthcare. Modern medicine generates vast and complex datasets from imaging, genomics, wearable sensors, and real-time clinical records. While AI has already demonstrated significant potential in diagnostics, drug discovery, and personalised medicine, its progress is often constrained by high computational demand, limited interpretability, and energy inefficiency. Quantum computing offers a fundamentally different paradigm, using qubits, superposition, and entanglement to process high-dimensional data and explore solution spaces in parallel. This synergy-quantum-enhanced AI or quantum machine learning (QML)promises transformative capabilities across the healthcare continuum. This narrative review explores the foundations of quantum computing, the evolution of AI in medicine, and the points where these technologies intersect. Applications span a range of biomedical domains. In radiology and pathology, quantum-assisted classifiers can enhance both the speed and interpretability of image analysis. In drug discovery and genomics, variational quantum eigensolvers and hybrid quantum–classical models may accelerate molecular simulations and genome-wide association studies. In personalized medicine, quantum kernel methods enable more precise phenotype clustering and improve the accuracy of treatment response predictions. Operationally, quantum-AI integration also supports hospital logistics, ICU resource allocation, and supply-chain resilience. Despite these opportunities, significant challenges remain, including hardware limitations, data encoding bottlenecks, interpretability deficits, and regulatory ambiguity. Ethical concerns around privacy, equity, and compliance with frameworks such as HIPAA and GDPR must also be addressed. By mapping opportunities and risks, this review underscores that quantum-AI is no longer speculative but an emerging reality. Harnessing its potential requires multidisciplinary collaboration to translate qubits and algorithms into tangible improvements in patient outcomes, clinical trust, and system efficiency.