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Trust Article February 4, 2026

Trend Article November 11, 2025

Medical innovations have been improving patient care—and outcomes—for decades. Today’s cutting-edge care—from robotic surgeries, to AI-assisted medical devices, to clinical trials—is reaching larger numbers of Americans in many different areas of health care.

Today, FDA-approved AI-enabled medical devices are used in a wide range of medical specialties.

Sepsis—when the immune system overreacts to a severe infection, which can quickly lead to organ failure—affects 1.7 million adults annually and contributes to 1 in every 3 hospital deaths.

A new diagnostic tool called IntelliSep helps predict which patients are likely to develop sepsis, so they can be quickly treated. Louisiana’s Our Lady of the Lake Regional Medical Center, where the tool was developed in partnership with Louisiana State University and the company Cytovale, has improved sepsis patients' survival rates by 39%.

Once the exclusive provenance of teaching hospitals, robotic surgeries are now common in a range of different types and sizes of facilities. Different hospital types by % are displayed in the graphic.

Clinical trials test promising new treatments and are often a patient’s last-hope chance for a cure—some 15% of Americans surveyed said they or a family member had participated in one in 2025.

The U.S. ranks above most of Europe in the 2024 World Index of Healthcare innovation (WIHI), which ranks health care systems on quality, choice, science & technology, and fiscal sustainability.

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