News & Insights

This TCT 2025 session covered four areas of innovation: New, Now, Next

Hint: It’s already happening everywhere.  You guessed it: Artificial Intelligence

Survey Question: Where will AI have the most immediate impact on the MedTech industry?

More than 56% of the 357 audience participants said: Automated diagnostics and imaging.  (improving workflows was a solid #2).

The ultimate goal of incorporating AI technology is to move from disease management to diagnosis and intervention – a theme throughout the conference.

With AI as a central focus, TCT conference organizers felt it necessary to pull from the academic world outside MedTech to inform conference attendees about what may find its way into our field.

Speaker Vivek Natarajan runs an AI accelerator group at Google’s DeepMind.  He and his team have asked its AI agents to engage in debates about medical treatments, patient care and more.  As a test, they followed the 10-year cycle of research in the UK that ultimately led to a treatment breakthrough.

After setting his AI agents on this task, they arrived at the same outcome as their human counterparts – but in 2 days vs 10 years.

This provides evidence for Vivek’s goal: accelerate the clock of discovery itself.  The hurdle is that the regulatory pathway must rise to meet this speed for approvals.

Using an AI agent as an “co-pilot” to expert human scientists promises greater breakthroughs at speed.  Can regulators keep up?

For Vivek, the goal is to democratize medical expertise (make it universally accessible) and more empathetic.

In his view, AI is not a replacement for physicians, it helps master medical science so humans can practice the art of medicine.  For him, AI’s greatest contribution will be in medicine.