A comprehensive study of health impacts of heatwaves and AI-based preparedness for sustainable healthcare

The problem of heatwaves is emerging as a major community health concern particularly in the areas where medical facilities are strained already. The review discusses the impacts of heatwaves on health and the role of artificial intelligence in helping to prepare, respond, and gain long-term resilience to sustainable healthcare. The PRISMA-based review procedure was considered. In all, 1220 records were located and 134 studies were eventually selected to be reviewed in more detail. The article gathers evidence of heat-related mortality, morbidity, hospitalization, emergency demand, and system-wide stress. It further discusses the recent AI applications in heat prediction, health effects, predicting healthcare surges, and decision support. The review further maps the included studies across major evidence areas to show where the literature is concentrated and where important gaps remain. The synthesis indicates that existing work is strongest in heatwave health-burden assessment and hazard prediction, while fewer studies connect AI outputs with hospital surge planning, operational decision support, and low-resource health-system preparedness. To address this gap, the paper proposes an AI-enabled heat–health–system framework that links hazard forecasting, health-risk estimation, healthcare demand prediction, early warning, and sustainable response planning. The review concludes that AI can potentially be effective in enhancing early warning and preparedness, but the practical utility of AI requires better quality of data and interpretability, equity, as well as compatibility with systems that provide real healthcare.