There may be a new artificial intelligence-driven tool to turbocharge scientific discovery: virtual labs.

Modeled after a well-established Stanford School of Medicine research group, the virtual lab is complete with an AI principal investigator and seasoned scientists.

A new research article published in the Journal of Participatory Medicine unveils how successive waves of digital technology innovation have empowered patients, fostering a more collaborative and responsive health care system. The paper, titled "From Internet to Artificial Intelligence (Al) Bots: Symbiotic Evolutions of Digital Technologies and e-Patients," explores the symbiotic evolution of digital health tools and the increasingly engaged e-patient.

A new artificial intelligence (AI) model can improve the process of drug and vaccine discovery by predicting how efficiently specific mRNA sequences will produce proteins, both generally and in various cell types. The new advance, developed through an academic-industrial partnership between The University of Texas at Austin and Sanofi, helps predict how much protein cells will produce, which can minimize the need for trial-and-error experimentation, accelerating the next generation of mRNA therapeutics.

Computer scientists at the University of Rochester have developed an AI-powered, speech-based screening tool that can help people assess whether they are showing signs of Parkinson’s disease, the fastest growing neurological disability in the world. A study published in the journal npj Parkinson's Disease introduces a web-based screening test that asks users to recite two pangrams - short sentences using all 26 letters of the alphabet.

A new study from the University of Colorado Anschutz Medical Campus shows that free, open-source artificial intelligence (AI) tools can help doctors report medical scans just as well as more expensive commercial systems without putting patient privacy at risk.

The study was published in the journal npj Digital Medicine.

The use of large language models (LLMs) and other forms of generative AI (GenAI) in healthcare has surged in recent years, and many of these technologies are already applied in clinical settings. As such, they often qualify as medical devices and must comply with specific laws and regulatory frameworks. Recent decisions have shown that approval is possible for applications with narrowly defined tasks.

Scientists have used an AI model to reassess the results of a completed clinical trial for an Alzheimer’s disease drug. They found the drug slowed cognitive decline by 46% in a group of patients with early stage, slow-progressing mild cognitive impairment - a condition that can progress to Alzheimer’s.

Using AI allowed the team to split trial participants into two groups: either slowly or rapidly progressing towards Alzheimer’s disease.