AI in medicine, in plain English
How far away is that breakthrough, really?
Every week there's a headline about AI curing something. We check the evidence, rate how close it really is, show where it's approved around the world, and tell you what it means for you and what to ask your doctor. No hype, no medical advice, just honest answers.
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- Every claim linked to its source
- Ratings never higher than the evidence
- AI-assisted source checks; not clinically reviewed
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Top stories
Short videos, under a minute
We make short, plain-English videos about AI in medicine, including what it can't do yet. Follow How Far for the next one.
More stories
- Cancer
The FDA clears an AI that estimates whether breast cancer will come back, using MRI scans
TumorSight Risk, from SimBioSys, got US FDA clearance on 25 September 2026.
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- Drug discovery
An AI matched old drugs to a rare disease, and doctors credit it with helping one man
Researchers at Every Cure, a nonprofit, use AI to score how likely each of about 4,000 existing drugs is to treat each of about 18,500 diseases.
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- Regulation
JAMA is launching a medical journal just for AI research
On 15 October 2026 the JAMA Network, which publishes one of the world's biggest medical journals, announced JAMA AI.
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Cancer
More cancer stories →Swapping one of the two mammogram readers for AI found slightly more cancers
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The FDA clears an AI that estimates whether breast cancer will come back, using MRI scans
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Answering patients' questions with AI before a surgery chat cut their anxiety in a trial
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FDA advisers vote on Galleri, the blood test that looks for many cancers at once
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Heart and lungs
More heart and lungs stories →Drugs and discovery
More drugs and discovery stories →An AI matched old drugs to a rare disease, and doctors credit it with helping one man
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An AI-designed lung drug may have slowed 'biological age' in blood tests
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An AI-designed drug for lung scarring (rentosertib)
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AlphaFold 3: predicting how the molecules of life fit together
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Diagnosis and imaging
More diagnosis and imaging stories →Meta gets FDA clearance for hearing-aid software
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Swapping one of the two mammogram readers for AI found slightly more cancers
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An AI that reads a routine heart tracing to spot hidden heart disease held up in a new hospital
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A man with ALS used a brain implant to talk and work from home for nearly two years
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AI doctors and chatbots
More ai doctors and chatbots stories →Can a chatbot that always agrees push people into false beliefs?
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Answering patients' questions with AI before a surgery chat cut their anxiety in a trial
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Chatbots ace medical exams, but people using them didn't get better health advice
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Does writing with ChatGPT make your brain work less?
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How our ratings work
We rate two things separately. Evidence strength: Strong (large randomised trials in patients, or one very large well-run trial), Moderate (smaller or shorter randomised trials), Early (lab, computer or past-records studies) or Claim only (no published data). How far from you: for the US, EU, UK and Australia, the furthest stop on our track that a regulator record backs. Company claims are labelled "Company says". "Register not searched yet" means we haven't searched that register; "Not checked yet" means we haven't rated the evidence. No rating or status is a recommendation.
A rating can never be higher than the evidence behind it. Read our editorial standards.
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Who's behind How Far?
How Far is run by the How Far team, curious non-doctors who got tired of headlines that promise miracles. We check pages against primary studies and regulator records where we can find them, and say when we couldn't. Each page shows how it was checked. So far, pages have had AI-assisted source checks only; none has been clinically reviewed. More about us.