To provide high-quality medical care to its population - around 30% of whom are 65 or older - Japan is pursuing sovereign AI initiatives supporting nearly every aspect of healthcare.
AI tools trained on country-specific data and local compute infrastructure are supercharging the abilities of Japan's clinicians and researchers so they can care for patients, amid an expected shortage of nearly 500,000 healthcare workers by next year.
Breakthrough technology deployments by the country's healthcare leaders - including in AI-accelerated drug discovery, genomic medicine, healthcare imaging and robotics - are highlighted at the NVIDIA AI Summit Japan, taking place in Tokyo through Nov. 13.
Powered by NVIDIA AI computing platforms like the Tokyo-1 NVIDIA DGX supercomputer, these applications were developed using domain-specific platforms such as NVIDIA BioNeMo for drug discovery, NVIDIA MONAI for medical imaging, NVIDIA Parabricks for genomics and NVIDIA Holoscan for healthcare robotics.
Drug Discovery AI Factories Deepen Understanding, Accuracy and Speed NVIDIA is supporting Japan's pharmaceutical market - one of the three largest in the world - with NVIDIA BioNeMo, an end-to-end platform that enables drug discovery researchers to develop and deploy AI models for generating biological intelligence from biomolecular data.
BioNeMo includes a customizable, modular programming framework and NVIDIA NIM microservices for optimized AI inference. New models include AlphaFold2, which predicts the 3D structure of a protein from its amino acid sequence; DiffDock, which predicts the 3D structure of a molecule interacting with a protein; and RFdiffusion, which designs novel protein structures likely to bind with a target molecule.
The platform also features BioNeMo Blueprints, a catalog of customizable reference AI workflows to help developers scale biomolecular AI models to enterprise-grade applications.
The NIM microservice for AlphaFold2 now integrates MMSeqs2-GPU, an evolutionary information retrieval tool that accelerates the traditional AlphaFold2 pipeline by 5x. Led by researchers at Seoul National University, Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz and NVIDIA, this integration enables protein structure prediction in 8 minutes instead of 40 minutes.
At AI Summit Japan, TetraScience, a company that engineers AI-native scientific datasets, announced a collaboration with NVIDIA to industrialize the production of scientific AI use cases to accelerate and improve workflows across the life sciences value chain.
For example, choosing an optimal cell line to produce biologic therapies such as vaccines and monoclonal antibodies is a critical but time-consuming step. TetraScience's new Lead Clone Assistant uses BioNeMo tools, including the NVIDIA VISTA-2D foundation model for cell segmentation and the Geneformer model for gene expression analysis, to reduce lead clone selection to hours instead of weeks.
Tokyo-based Astellas Pharma uses BioNeMo biomolecular AI models such as ESM-1nv, ESM-2nv and DNABERT to accelerate biologics research. Its AI models are used to generate novel molecular structures, predict how those molecules will bind to target proteins and optimize them to more effectively bind to those target proteins.
Using the BioNeMo framework, Astellas has accelerated chemical molecule generation by more than 30x. The company plans to use BioNeMo NIM microservices to further advance its work.
Japan's Pharma Companies and Research Institutions Advance Drug Research and Development Astellas, Daiichi-Sankyo and Ono Pharmaceutical are leading Japanese pharma companies harnessing the Tokyo-1 system, an NVIDIA DGX AI supercomputer built in collaboration with Xeureka, a subsidiary of the Japanese business conglomerate Mitsui & Co, to build AI models for drug discovery. Xeureka is using Tokyo-1 to accelerate AI model development and molecular simulations.
Xeureka is also using NVIDIA H100 Tensor Core GPUs to explore the application of confidential computing to enhance the ability of pharmaceutical companies to collaborate on large AI model training while protecting proprietary datasets.
To further support disease and precision medicine research, genomics researchers across Japan have adopted the NVIDIA Parabricks software suite to accelerate secondary analysis of DNA and RNA data.
Among them is the University of Tokyo Human Genome Center, the main academic institution working on a government-led whole genome project focused on cancer research. The initiative will help researchers identify gene variants unique to Japan's population and support the development of precision therapeutics.
The genome center is also exploring the use of Giraffe, a tool now available via Parabricks v4.4 that enables researchers to map genome sequences to a pangenome, a reference genome that represents diverse populations.
AI Scanners and Scopes Give Radiologists and Surgeons Real-Time Superpowers Japan's healthcare innovators are building AI-augmented systems to support radiologists and surgeons.
Fujifilm has developed an AI application in collaboration with NVIDIA to help surgeons perform surgery more efficiently.
This application uses an AI model developed using NVIDIA DGX systems to convert CT images into 3D simulations to support surgery.
Olympus recently collaborated with NVIDIA and telecommunications company NTT to demonstrate how cloud-connected endoscopes can efficiently run image processing and AI applications in real time. The endoscopes featured NVIDIA Jetson Orin modules for edge computing and connected to a cloud server using the NTT communication platform's IOWN All-Photonics Network, which introduces photonics-based technology across the network to enable lower power consumption, greater capacity and lower latency.
NVIDIA is also supporting real-time AI-powered robotic sys
Most recent headlines
05/01/2027
Worlds first 802.15.4ab-UWB chip verified by Calterah and Rohde & Schwarz to be ...
14/11/2026
Marcelo Dai's Live Session Captured with URSA Cine Immersive
Brie Clayton November 14, 2026
0 Comments
Artist takes viewers on an immersive journe...
14/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
14/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
14/11/2026
Newest Lenses, Horizon Anamorphic Seminar & Guided Lens Character Experience Highlight Creative Possibilities
At the 2026 Toru CAMERIMAGE Film Festival, ZEISS...
14/11/2026
Sonnet Announces Black Friday Sale on Select Products
Brie Clayton November 14, 2026
0 Comments
WHAT: Sonnet Technologies is having a sale on a select...
14/11/2026
Berklee Alumni Shine at the 2026 Latin Grammy Awards This year's winners included songwriters, engineers, and performers who contributed to acclaimed reco...
13/11/2026
The UIM E1 Series wraps its third season this week with the Bombay Sapphire E1 Miami GP, Nov. 11-14, on Biscayne Bay at the Miami Seaplane Base on Watson Island...
13/11/2026
In-venue and creative video staffers at the professional and collegiate level ha...
13/11/2026
Singer-songwriter Benson Boone will headline entertainment for the Discover NHL Winter Classic between the Utah Mammoth and Colorado Avalanche at Rice-Eccles St...
13/11/2026
Blackmagic Design has announced the Blackmagic Ambisonic Microphone, a 7th order ambisonic microphone array that captures spatial audio for immersive video prod...
13/11/2026
SMPTE has announced that The Studio B&H and Riedel Communications will provide the video infrastructure and communications technology for the Solutions Hub at t...
13/11/2026
The Hollywood Professional Association (HPA) has announced the theme and program focus for the 2027 HPA Tech Retreat, which takes place Feb. 14-18, 2027, in La ...
13/11/2026
Football Manager 27 Touch is available on Apple Arcade starting today. The game ...
13/11/2026
MotoGP has announced a two-year media rights agreement with ESPN covering the Un...
13/11/2026
Apple Sports, the free iPhone app, has added the Ultimate Fighting Championship (UFC) to its lineup of supported sports, in time for Saturday's UFC 334. The...
13/11/2026
The NBA and Fanatics Studios, the joint venture between Fanatics and entertainme...
13/11/2026
ESPN held its annual EDGE Innovation Conference last night and offered up an ove...
13/11/2026
Regional sports network gives Ithaca College, SUNY Cortland students a platform to thrive
One of the biggest games in Division III college football will be pla...
13/11/2026
Studer-inspired 500-series PWM compressor unveiled
The HLabs range already includes a couple of Studer-inspired offerings in the form of the PRE169 and EQ16...
13/11/2026
Download Now!
To view the white paper, please enter the following details:
--
First Name* First Name
Company*
Country* Please select your countryA...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Blue Lucy, the workflow orchestration and integration platform for broadcasters, rights owners and localisation companies, today announced an integration with c...
13/11/2026
Krotos announces Black Friday offers on Studio Pro and Studio Max
Brie Clayton November 12, 2026
0 Comments
First-year annual plans start at US$195.99...
13/11/2026
Blackmagic Design Announces Blackmagic Ambisonic Microphone
Brie Clayton November 12, 2026
0 Comments
New 7th order ambisonic microphone with 108 MEMS...
13/11/2026
Meet the Berklee Student Setting Planetary Motion to Music With his compositional platform SoniKosmos, Javier Roqueni aims to make the universe the ultimate i...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , er...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , er...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Share
{alert(Link copied)}).catch(err => {console.error(Failed to copy: , err)}) data-platform=copy_link data-action= class=font-ui-heading py-2 text-sm tex...
13/11/2026
Amagi, the media industry cloud company, today announced a partnership with Golden Times Media Technology (stock code 920021.BJ), a Beijing-based media and tech...
13/11/2026
CGI (TSX: GIB.A) (NYSE: GIB), one of the largest independent IT and business consulting services firms in the world, together with its Malaysian partner, Cedar ...
13/11/2026
SMPTE, the home for media professionals, technologists and engineers, today announced that The Studio B&H and Riedel Communications will provide the video infra...
13/11/2026
iWedia, a global leader in connected TV software solutions, will present its software-first approach to DRAM optimization at Android TV APAC Summit 2026 in Bang...
13/11/2026
Beginning today, November 13, Apple HomeView is available for purchase at Apple Store locations, on the Apple Store online, and in the Apple Store app in select...
13/11/2026
From pediatric research to smart hospitals, AI is helping care teams spend less time on routine tasks and more time with patients.
Health systems and startups...
12/11/2026
Industry leaders examine how Dynamic Media Facility, Media eXchange Layer, and c...
12/11/2026
The junior Tar Heel is embracing the technical and creative challenges of live production while emerging as a leader and mentor in the control room...
12/11/2026
Gracenote, Nielsen's content intelligence business, has released its fifth a...
12/11/2026
RTL Deutschland will bring the NHL to free-to-air TV in Germany starting Nov. 30...
12/11/2026
Clear-Com supported On Air 2026, a 24-hour student-led broadcast connecting 45 u...
To provide high-quality medical care to its population - around 30% of whom are 65 or older - Japan is pursuing sovereign AI initiatives supporting nearly every aspect of healthcare.
