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 ...
06/09/2026
June 9 2026, 23:00 (PDT) Dolby and MagentaTV Bring Fans Closer to the FIFA Worl...
04/08/2026
Dalet, a leading technology and service provider for media-rich organizations, t...
07/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
07/07/2026
New appointments to Screen Australia board 7 July 2026
The Albanese Labor Government has made new appointments to the Screen Australia board.
Dr Tania Chamber...
07/07/2026
The right team. The right time.' How The Killings at Parrish Station stuck t...
07/07/2026
Berklee College of Music Alum and Faculty Perform at Boston Public Library's...
07/07/2026
Scripps Research scientists train the immune system to make antibodies against numerous HIV strains Preclinical findings mark progress toward a long-sought vacc...
06/07/2026
Long-developed relationships and informal access, three production models, and c...
06/07/2026
The deal follows Lumine's recent acquisition of Synamedia's video-networ...
06/07/2026
This former SportsCenter producer is shaping local-team studio coverage to surro...
06/07/2026
IMS Productions and FOX Sports deployed more than 100 cameras, 32 onboard feeds,...
06/07/2026
Lumine Group Inc. has announced the completion of its acquisition of the Video Network Business from Synamedia. The business will operate as a standalone compan...
06/07/2026
NASCAR has announced a content and commercial partnership with Motorsport Network, a motorsports and automotive media platform, to distribute NASCAR original co...
06/07/2026
Versant Media Group has announced a definitive agreement to acquire Full Swing, a sports technology company, from Bruin Capital and a group of minority investor...
06/07/2026
DAZN has announced global broadcast rights to 3ICE, a professional hockey format featuring three skaters and a goalkeeper per side, with no power plays or offsi...
06/07/2026
Bundle gains 100 new synths & more
Synth Anthology 5 the largest and most feature-packed edition of UVI's hardware synth emulation bundle, bringing toge...
06/07/2026
Available now via free firmware update
MOTU have just announced that three of their popular audio interfaces now boast official Milan Certification. The 16A...
06/07/2026
Rohde & Schwarz completes Hunter Preliminary Design Review for the Integrated Co...
06/07/2026
The R&S IMAGER from Rohde & Schwarz uses millimeter wave imaging to inspect the ...
06/07/2026
The National Film and Video Foundation (NFVF), an agency of the Department of Sp...
06/07/2026
Digital Domain Appoints Industry Veteran Patrick Davenport as Executive Vice Pre...
06/07/2026
Gravity Media USA appoints Brittney Boston as Head of Business Development
Brie Clayton July 6, 2026
0 Comments
The strategic new appointment supports...
06/07/2026
Remote Editing Without Cloud Storage in Resolve
Michael Cioni July 6, 2026
0 Comments
This is a step-by-step guide that demonstrates how to setup your...
06/07/2026
Automatic Caption Translation in Adobe Premiere Pro
Colin Smith July 6, 2026
0 Comments
Here I showcase the innovative automatic caption translation f...
06/07/2026
Flavor's First Ever Managing Director Neal Cohen Retires; Longstanding Execu...
06/07/2026
How Adam Rosenwach Pivoted from Music to Medtech Without Missing a Beat What do the rehearsal room and the boardroom have in common? More than you might think...
06/07/2026
Zhongyi Optics unveils the Dreamy Zone T1 FF Cine Lens Series on Indiegogo with ...
06/07/2026
Open source AI has shown how quickly developers can innovate when models, data a...
06/07/2026
Techtel debuts insyght: making ST 2110 media discovery easy
intellisphereinsyght2026
6 July Written By Suzanne Costello
Sydney, Australia - 06 July 2026 T...
06/07/2026
Monday 6 July 2026
Sky agrees to acquire ITV Media & Entertainment, creating a ...
06/07/2026
Fresh from his World Cup heroics with Cabo Verde, Roberto Pico' Lopes will join the RT panel for Argentina v Egypt tomorrow and for the England v Norway q...
06/07/2026
Nations have long invested in domestic infrastructure to advance their economies, protect and use their data, and take advantage of technology opportunities in ...
06/07/2026
Every year, the International Conference on Machine Learning (ICML) reveals where thousands of AI researchers have decided to put their work.
This year's ...
06/07/2026
A death can be unsuspicious, but it has to be explained
What happened to Ke...
05/07/2026
We've gone to another level of integrating the graphics into the set architecture' - Zac Fields, SVP, Graphic Technology and Integration, FOX Sports...
05/07/2026
Browser-based and desktop apps available
Digital Sunset Studios have been busy working on an interesting project: a free software tool that provides compute...
04/07/2026
When Canada qualified for the FIFA World Cup 2026, OneSoccer knew this wasn'...
04/07/2026
Celebrates company's 80th anniversary
Rhodes have recently revealed that they will be producing a limited run of electric pianos in celebration of their...
04/07/2026
Blackmagic Design Cameras Empower Youth Broadcasting Program
Brie Clayton July 3, 2026
0 Comments
Blackmagic Pocket Cinema Camera 6K Pro and Blackmagi...
04/07/2026
iZotope Joins Boris FX
Boris Yamnitsky July 3, 2026
0 Comments
iZotope, the team behind RX and Ozone, is joining Boris FX. A letter from founder Boris...
04/07/2026
April 7 2026, 19:00 (PDT) Detective Conan: Fallen Angel of the Highway Opens in...
03/07/2026
New bundle & three Single Packs
Continuing to expand their already sizeable orchestral collection, VSL's latest release introduces three new Single Pack...
03/07/2026
Venue installs new ATC-equipped control room
LSO St Luke's, a unique music venue that also serves as the home of the London Symphony Orchestra, have rec...
03/07/2026
Caden Pearson appointed new Commissioning Editor for NITV
3 July, 2026
Media releases
National Indigenous Television (NITV) has strengthened its commitment...
03/07/2026
1 February 2023
SHARE Facebook Twitter Linkedin Email
Munich, Germany, 1st February 2023: Cinegy GmbH, the premier provider of software technology for digit...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
03/07/2026
Share
Copy link
Facebook
X
Linkedin
Bluesky
Email...
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.
