AI Health Tech vs. Real Cures
AI health tech is booming, but the cures are not.
The drug discovery revolution is real but radically overstated. Health chatbots are a documented hazard, and diseases that matter most remain unsolved.
At Novartis, in late 2025, researchers used AI to screen 15 million molecules a day for Huntington’s disease treatment. From those 15 million candidates, only 60 were synthesized in the lab. While an impressive feat of computational triage, it's not a cure.
This gap between AI's laboratory potential and patient outcomes is the defining tension of health tech in 2026. The industry talks revolution; the evidence describes incremental, uncertain, and often disappointing progress.
While AI can compress drug discovery timelines by 30-40% and reduce preclinical development time, no AI-discovered drug has received FDA approval yet.
Here’s why:
- Traditional pharmaceutical failure rates stand at 90%, a figure AI hasn't fundamentally changed.
- AI-discovered compounds appear to show progression rates similar to traditionally discovered ones.
As of December 2025, at least 75 drugs or vaccines from AI-first biotechs had entered clinical trials, but the technology remains in its early stages.