We're at a pivotal moment to unlock a new, AI-accelerated era of discovery and medicine, says Kimberly Powell, NVIDIA's vice president of healthcare.
Speaking today at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare conference, held virtually, Powell outlined how AI and accelerated computing are enabling scientists to take advantage of the boom in biomedical data to power faster research breakthroughs and better patient care.
Understanding disease and discovering therapies is our greatest human endeavor, she said - and the trillion-dollar drug discovery industry illustrates just how complex a challenge it is.
How AI Can Drive Down Drug Discovery Costs The typical drug discovery process takes about a decade, costs $2 billion and suffers a 90 percent failure rate during clinical development. But the rise of digital data in healthcare in recent years presents an opportunity to improve those statistics with AI.
We can produce today more biomedical data in about three months than the entire 300-year history of healthcare, she said. And so this is now becoming a problem that no human really can synthesize that level of data, and we need to call upon artificial intelligence.
Powell called AI the most powerful technology force of our time. It's software that writes software that no humans can.
But AI works best when it's domain specific, combining data and algorithms tailored to a specific field like radiology, pathology or patient monitoring. The NVIDIA Clara application framework bridges this gap by providing researchers and clinicians the tools for GPU-accelerated AI in medical imaging, genomics, drug discovery and smart hospitals.
Downloads of NVIDIA Clara grew 5x last year, Powell shared, with developers taking up our new platforms for conversational AI and federated learning.
Healthcare Ecosystem Rallies Around AI She noted that amid the COVID-19 pandemic, momentum around AI for healthcare has accelerated, with startups estimated to have raised well over $5 billion in 2020. More than 1,000 healthcare startups are in the NVIDIA Inception accelerator program, up 4x since 2017. And over 20,000 AI healthcare papers were submitted last year to PubMed, showing exponential growth over the past decade.
Leading research institutions like the University of California, San Francisco, are using NVIDIA GPUs to power their work in cryo-electron microscopy, a technique used to study the structure of molecules - such as the spike proteins on the COVID-19 virus - and accelerate drug and vaccine discovery.
And pharmaceutical companies, including GlaxoSmithKline, and major healthcare systems, like the U.K.'s National Health Service, will harness the Cambridge-1 supercomputer - an NVIDIA DGX SuperPOD system and the U.K.'s fastest AI supercomputer - to solve large-scale problems and improve patient care, diagnosis and delivery of critical medicines and vaccines.
Software-Defined Instruments Link AI Innovation and Medical Practice Powell sees software-defined instruments - devices that can be regularly updated to reflect the latest scientific understanding and AI algorithms - as key to connecting the latest research breakthroughs with the practice of medicine.
Artificial intelligence, like the practice of medicine, is constantly learning. We want to learn from the data, we want to learn from the changing environment, Powell said.
By making medical instruments software-defined, tools like smart cameras for patient monitoring or AI-guided ultrasound systems can not only be developed in the first place, she said, but also retain their value and improve over time.
U.K.-based sequencing company Oxford Nanopore Technologies is a leader in software-defined instruments, deploying a new generation of DNA sequencing technology across an electronics-based platform. Its nanopore sequencing devices have been used in more than 50 countries to sequence and track new variants of the virus that causes COVID-19, as well as for large-scale genomic analyses to study the biology of cancer.
The company uses NVIDIA GPUs to power several of its instruments, from the handheld MinION Mk1C device to its ultra-high throughput PromethION, which can produce more than three human genomes' worth of sequence data in a single run. To power the next generation of PromethION, Oxford Nanopore is adopting NVIDIA DGX Station, enabling its real-time sequencing technology to pair with rapid and highly accurate genomic analyses.
For years, the company has been using AI to improve the accuracy of basecalling, the process of determining the order of a molecule's DNA bases from tiny electrical signals that pass through a nanoscale hole, or nanopore.
This technology truly touches on the entire practice of medicine, Powell said, whether COVID epidemiology or in human genetics and long read sequencing. Through deep learning, their base calling model is able to reach an overall accuracy of 98.3 percent, and AI-driven single nucleotide variant calling gets them to 99.9 percent accuracy.
Path Forward for AI-Powered Healthcare AI-powered breakthroughs like these have grown in significance amid the pandemic, said Powell.
The tremendous focus of AI on a single problem in 2020, like COVID-19, really showed us that with that tremendous focus, we can see every piece and part that can benefit from artificial intelligence, she said. What we've discovered over the last 12 months is only going to propel us further in the future. Everything we've learned is applicable for every future drug discovery program there is.
Across fields as diverse as genome analysis, computational drug discovery and clinical diagnostics, healthcare heavyweights are making strides with GPU-accelerated AI. Hear more about it on Jan. 13 at 11 a.m. Pacific, when Powell joins a Washington Post Live conversation on AI in healthcare.
Subscribe to
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
01/06/2026
January 6 2026, 05:30 (PST) Dolby Sets the New Standard for Premium Entertainment at CES 2026
Throughout the week, Dolby brings to life the latest innovatio...
31/05/2026
Olivia P rez-Collellmir to Premiere Original Work at Gaud Centennial in Barcelona The Berklee graduate and faculty member will debut her choral symphony with...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
30/05/2026
Zero in on one that says yes (and no)
Andy Marken May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Hero image courtesy of Deposit Photos
For content creators the most difficu...
29/05/2026
With InfoComm 2026 just weeks away, NDI is giving attendees plenty of reasons to...
29/05/2026
Reaffirming a partnership that has defined Canadian sports broadcasting since 19...
29/05/2026
Mobile/tablet is No. 2 device for watching TV, suggesting that the sports-production industry needs to take another look at the format
Ring Digital's Sprin...
29/05/2026
Berliner Ensemble, one of Berlin's five major theater companies, has expande...
29/05/2026
Solid State Logic will showcase its new compact, fly-away TCA Tour audio product...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, passed away last month on April 12 ...
29/05/2026
Paramount+ will be the English-language U.S. home for Barclays Women's Super...
29/05/2026
Further strengthening its virtualisation strategy to fully support broadcasters ...
29/05/2026
Swiss broadcaster Canal Alpha has deployed Harmonic's award-winning, software-based XOS Advanced Media Processor to modernize playout operations across cant...
29/05/2026
PTZOptics will showcase a new generation of intelligent video workflows at InfoComm 2026, June 17-19, Las Vegas. Visitors to booth N8227 will see how PTZOptics ...
29/05/2026
Arizona's Family has launched the Arizona's Family Sports (AZFS) streaming app, a new direct-to-consumer destination for live, local sports. The app is ...
29/05/2026
Starting in 2027, DAZN will be the exclusive home of The Canadian Football Leagu...
29/05/2026
Comcast Business has detailed the advanced network infrastructure it has deploye...
29/05/2026
In two-day event, leaders from academia and industry explored solutions to chall...
29/05/2026
The Basketball Tournament (TBT), now entering their 13th year of competition, ha...
29/05/2026
Roku has launched FOX One as a Premium Subscription on The Roku Channel in the U.S. Roku customers can now subscribe to FOX One using their Roku account for liv...
29/05/2026
In its sixth year, the broadcaster's coverage has become a global brand and ...
29/05/2026
Ratings Roundup is a rundown of recent ratings news and is derived from press re...
29/05/2026
The days are getting longer, the temperatures are rising, and playlists are filling up for the season. With summer around the corner, Spotify's global edito...
29/05/2026
New retro-inspired MPC announced
There are few devices that have gained the status held by Akai Pro's MPC range, and in recent years, the company have s...
29/05/2026
Save up to 30 on acclaimed titles
Following a successful launch at Superbooth 2026, Bjooks have revealed that they will be continuing the Kickstarter campa...
29/05/2026
Binaural monitoring application improved
Genelec have just released an update that brings some powerful new features to their HRTF-based binaural headphone ...
29/05/2026
6 June 2026 at SAE Institute, London, UK
IMSTA FESTA 2026 is almost upon us, with some of the biggest names in pro-audio set to descend upon SAE Institute i...
29/05/2026
Gerald (Jerry) Pierce, a pioneering technologist who helped shape the digital transformation of the motion picture industry, died April 12, 2026, at his home in...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Comparing 5 AI Video Enhancers for Restoring Old Video Quality
Kate Luvis May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Digitizing VHS, MiniDV, and other legacy formats doe...
29/05/2026
Studio Hamburg Builds New Post Pipeline with DaVinci Resolve Studio
Brie Clayton May 29, 2026
0 Comments
Workflow replaces a patchwork of legacy tools...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
29/05/2026
At the Intersection of Music and Dance, an Epic Collaboration Boston Conservatory musicians and dancers found creative parallels in their recent performance o...
29/05/2026
Back to All News
Latino Film Institute Fellows Screen Their Short Films at the Egyptian Theatre
The Inclusion Fellowship and Spark Animation Grant uplifts 15 ...
29/05/2026
GLOOKAST LAUNCHES CINNAFILM TACHYON PLUGIN FOR MEDIA PRODUCER AND MEDIA SERVICES
This release first appeared here.
Visit our Tachyon product page or contact...
29/05/2026
May 29 2026, 09:00 (PDT) Dolby and rednote Bring More Immersive Storytelling to...
29/05/2026
Something fundamental has shifted in how people consume media. Audiences aren't abandoning television or radio content; they're just expanding how, wher...
29/05/2026
Youtube exclusive special drops today
Watch now
UKTV today announces another e...
We're at a pivotal moment to unlock a new, AI-accelerated era of discovery and medicine, says Kimberly Powell, NVIDIA's vice president of healthcare.
