Merck's new up-to-$1-billion partnership with Google Cloud will embed agentic AI across drug research, manufacturing and corporate operations, joining a wave of pharma giants making nine-figure AI infrastructure bets in 2026.
A 175,000-woman NHS study found AI acting as a second mammogram reader caught more invasive cancers, produced fewer false positives, and cut radiologists' scan-reading time by nearly a third, adding fuel to the health service's push toward wider AI screening trials.
A Nature Cancer study spanning over 125,000 mammograms found Google's AI outperformed human radiologists on sensitivity while matching them on specificity — the largest NHS test yet of AI in breast cancer screening.
Qure.ai's qXR-Detect just won six new FDA clearances for chest X-ray findings, becoming the first such tool cleared with a plan to keep updating its algorithm without a new filing each time.
The OpenAI Foundation is putting $125 million into Public Data for Health, funding open scientific datasets at UNC's cancer center, OpenADMET and CTD Commons in a bet that better biological data, not just bigger models, is the real bottleneck for AI in medicine.
Apple delayed its AI health coach, Project Mulberry, at WWDC 2026 but is shipping AI sleep-sound detection and an Apple Watch Series 12 with 5-second heart-rate sampling.
Google is retiring the Fitbit brand for a $9.99/month Gemini-powered Health Coach launching May 19, 2026, alongside a new $99.99 Fitbit Air tracker.
New data presented at the 2026 International Stroke Conference shows a regional California hospital cut stroke-transfer times by 44% using Viz.ai's AI detection platform, beating national benchmarks for getting patients to lifesaving thrombectomy care.
Cooper University Health Care has adopted hellocare.ai's computer-vision platform to power AI-assisted hospital rooms, joining WVU Medicine and MultiCare in a growing trend of using virtual nursing and automated fall detection to stretch scarce nursing staff.
Abridge's ambient AI documentation tool, built with Epic and Mayo Clinic nurses, is now live at more than 250 U.S. health systems, extending AI scribing from physicians into nursing, ER, and post-acute care.