Highlights & Summary

Q1 of 2026 saw several landmark moves across drug discovery, diagnostics, and healthcare delivery. In drug discovery, Lilly deepened its AI commitment on two fronts: a global R&D collaboration with Insilico Medicine worth up to $2.75B and the deployment of its own NVIDIA-powered AI supercomputing system. In diagnostics, the FDA's cleared AI device count crossed 1,450, RadNet made a major bet on radiology AI with its $270M acquisition of Gleamer, and Perimeter Medical secured the first FDA approval for an AI-enabled surgical imaging device. On the healthcare delivery side, ambient AI documentation hit a tipping point as Epic launched its native AI Charting tool and athenahealth made its scribe free for all customers, while CMS formalized new CPT billing codes for AI-augmented clinical services and moved to deregulate low-risk AI and digital health tools. Across all three areas, the throughline is the same: AI is moving from pilot to infrastructure.

‍

Headlines

AI in Drug Discovery  

1 | Insilico Medicine announces global R&D collaboration with Lilly worth up to $2.75B | Partnership

2 | Scala Biodesign raises $16M to accelerate AI-driven protein engineering | Financing

3 | BullFrog AI lands top-5 pharma deal in major depression drug discovery, stock surges >100% | Partnership

4 | Asha Therapeutics launches “zero-shot” AI drug design platform (rebrands as First Atom) | Company Creation

5 | Lilly launches NVIDIA-powered “AI factory” for drug discovery (DGX B300 SuperPOD) | New Product

‍

AI in Diagnostics  

1 | Tempus announces collaboration with Median Technologies to integrate AI-powered lung cancer screening into the Pixel platform | Partnership

2 | RadNet acquires radiology AI firm Gleamer for up to $270M | M&A

3 | FDA Updates AI List with New Clearances | Regulatory

4 | Natera Announces Next Breakthrough in MRD-Based Risk Stratification, Leveraging Multi-Modal AI Modeling | Pipeline

5 | FDA approves 1st AI-enabled imaging device for breast cancer surgery | Regulatory

AI in Healthcare  

1 | Ambient AI Scribes Hit Mainstream with ~2/3 of Epic Hospitals Now Using AI Documentation | New Product

2 | AMA CPT 2026 Code Set Adds 288 New Codes for AI, Digital Health, and Remote Monitoring | Regulatory

3 | Oracle, Cleveland Clinic, and G42 Partner to Build AI-Powered Global Healthcare Platform | Partnership

4 | FDA Deregulates Low-Risk AI and Digital Health Tools | Regulatory

5 | Epic Enters the Ambient Scribe War | New Product Launch

‍

Summaries

AI in Drug Discovery  

1 | Insilico Medicine announces global R&D collaboration with Lilly worth up to $2.75B | Partnership

Insilico Medicine announced a global R&D collaboration with Lilly to advance AI-driven drug discovery, with total deal value reaching up to ~$2.75B. The agreement grants Lilly exclusive global rights to develop, manufacture, and commercialize select preclinical oral therapeutics discovered using Insilico’s AI platform, building on prior partnerships dating back to 2023. Insilico will receive $115M upfront plus downstream milestone payments and tiered royalties.

‍

2 | Scala Biodesign raises $16M to accelerate AI-driven protein engineering | Financing

Scala Biodesign raised $16M in a Series A round led by Grove Ventures with participation from TLV Partners and others. The company is developing a computational protein engineering platform based on research from the Weizmann Institute designed to improve protein stability and binding, key parameters in drug and vaccine development. Scala reports early traction, with its technology already used by 9 of the world’s top 20 pharma companies, including applications in stabilizing drug targets for downstream R&D.

‍

3 | BullFrog AI lands top-5 pharma deal in major depression drug discovery, stock surges >100% | Partnership

BullFrog AI announced a commercial agreement with a top-five global pharmaceutical company to apply its bfLEAP AI platform toward identifying and prioritizing novel drug targets in major depressive disorder (MDD). The deal includes milestone-based collaboration with the pharma partner receiving exclusive access to a selected target candidate, with potential expansion across additional R&D programs. Financial terms were not disclosed, but the partnership is positioned as external validation of BullFrog’s causal AI approach to analyzing complex biological datasets.

‍

4 | Asha Therapeutics launches “zero-shot” AI drug design platform (rebrands as First Atom) | Company Creation

Asha Therapeutics announced its launch as a zero-shot de novo drug design company, rebranding as First Atom Therapeutics, focused on generating novel molecules from scratch using its AI-enabled PRISM platform. Unlike traditional approaches that rely on screening existing compound libraries, the company’s system designs drugs atom-by-atom, tailoring molecules to specific protein binding sites without prior examples. The platform targets high unmet-need areas including neurodegenerative, neuro-oncology, and rare diseases, and is supported by expanded leadership with deep expertise in computational chemistry and structure-based drug design.

‍

5 | Lilly launches NVIDIA-powered “AI factory” for drug discovery (DGX B300 SuperPOD) | New Product

Lilly deployed “LillyPod,” the pharmaceutical industry’s most powerful AI supercomputing system, built on NVIDIA’s DGX B300 SuperPOD architecture. The system, which is powered by ~1,000+ next-gen GPUs, enables large-scale training and inference across applications including molecular design, genomics, imaging, and manufacturing, with the goal of dramatically expanding the number of hypotheses scientists can test in parallel. Notably, the infrastructure is fully owned and operated by Lilly, marking a shift toward in-house, industrial-scale AI compute.

‍

AI in Diagnostics  

1 | Tempus Announces Collaboration with Median Technologies to Integrate AI-Powered Lung Cancer Screening into the Pixel Platform | Partnership

Tempus and Median have teamed up to integrate Median’s eyonis LCS, an AI tool which screens for, characterizes, and risk-stratifies lung cancer from CT images, into Tempus’ Pixel. Pixel is an FDA-cleared, CE-marked, AI-enabled solution for automated analysis and reporting from radiology images. Median’s algorithm received FDA 510(k) clearance from the FDA earlier this year.

‍

2 | RadNet acquires radiology AI firm Gleamer for up to $270M | M&A

RadNet reached a deal to acquire Paris-based Gleamer, an AI radiology company. Gleamer has achieved CAGRs of over 90% from 2022 to 2025, and has a suite of solutions spanning X-rays, mammography, CT and MRI imaging. It has analyzed over 30 million exams, including FDA-approved and CE-marked tools, and its offerings span from traumatic injury to cancer. RadNet will integrate Gleamer’s tools in its Deep Health subsidiary’s portfolio which will support screening, detection, interpretation and follow-up across many of the most common cancers.

‍

3 | FDA Updates AI List with New Clearances | Regulatory

The FDA updated its list of AI-enabled medical device clearances through the end of 2025. The count of AI-enabled medical devices for radiology exceeded 1,000, and the total number of approved medical devices now stands at 1,451. GE HealthCare and Siemens Helthineers lead the charge, with the highest number of radiology clearances (120 and 89, respectively)

‍

4 | Natera Announces Next Breakthrough in MRD-Based Risk Stratification, Leveraging Multi-Modal AI Modeling | Pipeline

Natera announced progress in its MRD-based risk stratification research. It has developed a multi-modal model which will integrate longitudinal ctDNA and clinical data, as well as pathology imaging and tumor sequencing, to enhance its Signatera MRD test. The model was trained on molecular and clinical outcomes from Natera’s proprietary database of ~300,000 patients who have been tested using Signatera, and is said to provide statistically and clinically significant enhancements with data forthcoming. One day earlier, Natera also announced its collaboration with NVIDIA to accelerate the development of its AI model.

‍

5 | FDA approves 1st AI-enabled imaging device for breast cancer surgery | Regulatory

The FDA approved the first AI-powered imaging device for breast cancer surgery. Perimeter Medical Imaging’s Claire, as the test is called, received Breakthrough Device designation previously. It aims to reduce residual disease and the need for repeat surgeries–which Perimeter estimates occur in 20% of breast cancer surgeries–through real-time evaluation of tumor margins. In trial, it gave 88.1% margin accuracy, and statistically significant reduction in patients with residual post-surgery cancer.

AI in Healthcare  

1 | Ambient AI Scribes Hit Mainstream with ~2/3 of Epic Hospitals Now Using AI Documentation | New Product

Ambient AI tools that passively capture patient encounters and auto-generate clinical notes are now live in nearly two-thirds of U.S. hospitals on Epic, with early deployments showing meaningful reductions in after-hours charting and roughly 15,000 clinician hours reclaimed across AMA-surveyed sites. Clinicians report improved patient engagement and same-day chart closure, though health systems are building governance guardrails around accuracy, consent, and data handling as adoption scales — with uneven uptake between well-resourced and under-resourced hospitals remaining a key equity concern.

‍

2 | AMA CPT 2026 Code Set Adds 288 New Codes for AI, Digital Health, and Remote Monitoring | Regulatory

The AMA's CPT 2026 code set adds 288 new codes effective January 2026, with notable expansions in AI-augmented clinical services, remote patient monitoring, and digital health. New AI-specific codes now cover use cases like coronary plaque assessment from CT angiography, cardiac dysfunction detection via acoustic and ECG analysis, and algorithmic burn wound classification — giving providers a formal billing pathway for tools that were previously difficult to code. Remote monitoring codes have also been updated to reflect shorter monitoring durations (2–15 days) and lower time thresholds, aligning reimbursement with emerging clinical evidence. Additional updates modernize leg revascularization coding (46 new codes) and expand telehealth-eligible behavioral health services to improve access in underserved communities.

‍

3 | Oracle, Cleveland Clinic, and G42 Partner to Build AI-Powered Global Healthcare Platform | Partnership

Oracle Health, Cleveland Clinic, and Abu Dhabi-based G42 announced a strategic partnership to develop an AI-based healthcare delivery platform combining Oracle's cloud infrastructure, Cleveland Clinic's clinical expertise, and G42's sovereign AI and health data capabilities. The platform aims to enable real-time population health analytics, AI-enhanced diagnostics, precision medicine, and streamlined clinical trial enrollment — starting with the U.S. and UAE. The collaboration also targets bridging the gap between clinical research and care delivery by giving researchers access to real-world data at the point of care. The agreement is currently non-binding.

‍

4 | FDA Deregulates Low-Risk AI and Digital Health Tools | Regulatory

At the start of 2026 the FDA published guidance reducing oversight of certain digital health products, including AI-enabled software and wearable devices. The agency softened its approach to clinical decision support software, allowing products that deliver a single recommendation to enter the market without FDA review as long as they meet other criteria. Commissioner Makary signaled a broader push to create a new regulatory framework for AI that emphasizes post-market monitoring over premarket gatekeeping.

‍

5 | Epic Enters the Ambient Scribe War | New Product Launch

Epic launched its AI Charting feature in February 2026, entering the ambient scribe market directly through its "Art" clinical AI suite. The tool listens during patient encounters, drafts notes, and suggests orders, all natively embedded in the EHR. With Epic holding 42% of the acute care hospital market and 55% of US beds, this puts direct competitive pressure on standalone players like Abridge, Suki, DeepScribe, and Nuance/Microsoft DAX. Athenahealth added to the shift the same month by launching athenaAmbient free to all customers.