A few weeks ago, the world’s largest annual consumer electronics exhibition — the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2026 — came to an end. CES 2026 delivered a parade of ambitious consumer tech: AI companions, advanced driver assistance, home humanoids, and smarter devices for everyday life. It’s impressive, yet at times the demos feel like a polished version of ideas we’ve already seen in speculative fiction, with just enough “Black Mirror” energy to make you pause.
Health tech was one of the most visible themes at CES 2026 — from smart diagnostics to wearable neurostimulation and at-home monitoring. These tools promise earlier insights and more personalized care, yet conspicuously resemblant of Black Mirror episodes: they listen, track, and interpret our daily lives in ways that conflate health monitoring with constant surveillance.
The Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation and OpenAI have announced a joint $50 million initiative aimed at using artificial intelligence to support and improve healthcare systems across African countries. The project, called Horizon1000, was unveiled at the World Economic Forum in Davos and is set to deploy AI tools in primary healthcare, starting in Rwanda.
Bristol Myers Squibb and Microsoft announced on Tuesday a partnership aimed at accelerating the early detection of lung cancer using artificial intelligence across the U.S. healthcare system. The collaboration will be implemented through Microsoft’s Precision Imaging Network, a platform that analyzes X-ray and CT scans using FDA-cleared AI algorithms.
AI in pharma and life sciences is an easy “sell,” yet delivering real value remains a formidable challenge. Progress is most often hampered by closed data, weak data sharing, and inflated expectations. In this interview with Marcin Wawryszczuk (PhD, MBA) — Head of AI at Andersen and an AI researcher — we discuss how data platforms are becoming the bottleneck, whether it is possible to distinguish a viable project from a mere demo, and why, in production, resilience to drift and explainability of results outweigh impressive metrics.
The FDA, through its Center for Biologics Evaluation and Research (CBER), has informed manufacturers of several widely used influenza vaccines that safety information must be updated after post-marketing surveillance data revealed a small but statistically significant increase in the risk of febrile seizures in young children shortly after vaccination.
Personalized medicine is becoming the infrastructural element of healthcare. We discuss how AI acceleration, falling DNA sequencing costs, and government funding are driving this massive industry change.
As the year draws to a close, major analytics firms traditionally share their view on where the medtech industry is heading and what to expect in the near future. We have gone through these reports and distilled the essentials: from the explosive growth of AI in medical devices and the portable tech market to regional regulatory specifics and shifting investment priorities. This article brings together the key figures, insights, and directions that will shape medtech over the coming years.