Work & Society · 28 charts · 9 topics
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Stanford AI Index Report 2026
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28 with CSV data
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20 Oct 2026
AI-enabled medical devices are reaching the US market in growing numbers. The Food and Drug Administration (FDA) authorised 258 AI-enabled medical devices in 2025, up from 235 in 2024 and the most of any year, bringing the total since 1995 to 1,357. Radiology accounts for 1,039 of them (76.6%); outside radiology, authorisations rose from 7 in 2016 to 60 in 2025. GE Healthcare holds 93, the most of any company.
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Research output is rising in most areas the AI Index tracks. Publications on AI for drug discovery rose 58% to 3,311 in 2025, AI-driven protein research publications rose 71% to 3,855, and papers reporting prospective trials of clinical imaging AI rose 29% to 536. Larger models do not always score higher: a 600-million-parameter E1 model scored 0.48 on ProteinGym against 0.41 for the 3-billion-parameter ESM-2, while AlphaFold 3 still leads FoldBench at 64.9%, ahead of every 2025 model in the data.
The page covers AI in drug discovery, AI protein models such as AlphaFold, AI in genomics and biomedical research, FDA AI-enabled medical devices, medical AI clinical trials, medical digital twins, patients and AI, medical AI ethics and AI in global health. In 2025, 2,378 medical AI publications discussed ethics, 43.4% of the total, while only 14 discussed biosecurity. Google showed an AI Overview on 92% of the symptom searches analysed.
The figures come from Stanford's AI Index Report 2026, which draws on the FDA's list of AI-enabled devices, publication counts by RAISE Health, patent data and published benchmark results. Most research figures are publication counts, which measure research activity rather than quality or clinical use. FDA figures cover the US only, and the 2025 patent count for medical digital twins is incomplete.
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01

AI in Drug Discovery

Publications on AI for drug discovery rose 58% to 3,311 in 2025, almost eight times the 431 of 2018. In Adaptyv Bio's 2025 Nipah virus binder challenge, 9.6% of 1,026 protein designs bound the target; Mosaic did best, with 8 of its 9 designs binding.
02

AI Protein Models (AlphaFold)

AlphaFold 3, released in 2024 with 370 million parameters, still leads FoldBench at 64.9%; the best 2025 model, SeedFold, scored 63.1%. Publications on AI-driven protein research rose 71% to 3,855 in 2025, and a 600-million-parameter E1 model outscored the 3-billion-parameter ESM-2 on ProteinGym, 0.48 to 0.41.
03

AI in Genomics & Biomedical Research

Publications on multimodal biomedical AI rose 47% to 462 in 2025, from 2 in 2021. On variant effect prediction, the 200-million-parameter GPN-Star scored 0.75 AUPRC against 0.53 for Evo 2, which has 200 times as many parameters. Work on virtual cell models remains small, at 24 publications in 2025.
04

FDA AI-Enabled Medical Devices

The FDA authorised 258 AI-enabled medical devices in 2025, up from 235 in 2024, bringing the total since 1995 to 1,357. Radiology accounts for 1,039 of them (76.6%), with cardiovascular a distant second at 130. GE Healthcare holds 93 authorised devices, the most of any company, ahead of Siemens Healthineers' 82.
05

Medical AI Clinical Trials

Papers reporting prospective clinical trials of medical imaging AI reached 536 in 2025, up 29% from 417 in 2024 and more than nine times the 58 of 2019. Prospective trials test a model on patients as care happens rather than on past records; a paper count is not a count of distinct trials.
06

Medical Digital Twins

Publications on medical digital twins, computer models of individual patients that update over time, reached 372 in 2025, 2.1 times the 176 of 2024. Patent filings on healthcare digital twins reached 4,926 in 2024, up from 30 in 2016; the 2025 count of 4,087 is incomplete.
07

Patients & AI

Google showed an AI Overview on 92% of the symptom searches and common health questions RAISE Health analysed, and on 84% of condition searches. Research on how patients see AI in healthcare reached 102 publications in 2025, 11 times 2020; the US produced 62 of the 204 studies, more than twice the UK's 27.
08

Medical AI Ethics

In 2025, 2,378 medical AI publications discussed ethics, 43.4% of all 5,477 medical AI papers and 2.1 times the 2024 count. Governance was the most discussed ethics topic, in 1,228 publications, ahead of algorithmic (896) and societal concerns (874). Only 14 publications discussed biosecurity.
09

AI in Global Health

100 of the 193 medical AI publications on global health in 2025 discussed ethics, 51.8%, against 43.4% across all medical AI. East Asia produced 25 of these papers, overtaking Europe (23). Unlike the field as a whole, societal concerns such as equity and access led, in 54 publications, ahead of governance (43).

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About the data: 28 interactive charts from the AI Index Report 2026 (Stanford HAI), using data from RAISE Health, Adaptyv Nipah Binder challenge, Ye et al. and FDA. Each chart page explains what the chart shows, lists its key numbers, cites its source and links to the data as a CSV.