JPM Healthcare Conference Reflections

The JPM Healthcare Conference 2026. Beyond the formal sessions at the Westin Hotel, which are for clients of the firm and by invitation only, hundreds of side events, meetups, interviews, and parties unfolded within a few-mile radius. The conference is where major biotech deals are usually announced and also the place where founders network with partners and investors through events like BioTech showcase and the RESI conference. This time around, I was not actively pitching to investors and instead spent time actively listening and understanding the current landscape.

Here are my top takeaways from attending several of the satellite events around JPM Healthcare 2026:

1. OpenAI for Healthcare, ChatGPT for Healthcare, and Anthropic’s Claude for Healthcare signal a clear shift from fragmented, niche tools toward large-scale platform consolidation. Companies offering simple “wrappers” (interfaces that merely pass data to GPT) for tasks like medical scribing, lab summarization, or patient Q&A face obsolescence as these capabilities become native features of the core platforms.

2. AI is now table stakes. This was underscored by Eli Lilly’s $1B deal with Nvidia to build a co-innovation AI lab focused on drug discovery and delivery.

3. AI was front and center in almost every panel discussion and talk. It is no longer confined to the periphery, helping with administrative tasks (though that remains a major push, with doctors reportedly spending up to 70% of their time on paperwork). AI is moving into drug development, precision medicine and diagnostics, and even surgical assistance via robotics. It is increasingly at the heart of medicine and healthcare.

4. Innovation X’s theme, “From Scarcity to Plenty: The Next Leap in Intelligent Health,” envisioned a future where healthcare is no longer defined by shortages of clinicians, capacity, or time, but by an abundance of intelligence, automation, and participation. Still, there is a fine line between abundance and analysis paralysis caused by too much data and too many fragmented tools. Healthcare data now doubles every 73 days. The open question is how to best harness this data and turn it into actionable insight.

5. Several speakers discussed a shift from “human in the loop” to “human on the loop,” where humans move from active, continuous decision-making to intervening primarily in exception cases.

6. Community clinicians shared a sobering statistic. With the recent Big, Beautiful Bill changes, more people are losing health insurance, and many are likely to present to emergency rooms at advanced stages of disease. The U.S. healthcare system has long been reactive rather than preventive, but these policy changes risk pushing it toward an even more emergency-driven model, where treatment options are limited. This is a deeply concerning trend.

7. There was also optimism around a new policy approach aimed at a more lenient and faster-moving FDA regulatory environment, with an emphasis on deregulation and accelerated approvals for medical products and manufacturing.

8. On the funding front, the life sciences landscape remains challenging. The bar for investment is higher, requiring not just strong science, but also clear milestones, founder credibility, and validated product-market fit through disciplined customer discovery.

9. With the SBIR program currently paused, companies were introduced to alternative funding channels such as foundations, ARPA-H, and academic research partnerships. Competition in these channels is fierce, and the bar remains high.

10. China is rapidly emerging as a global leader in life sciences and biotech. Some panelists expressed concern that this momentum could come at the expense of U.S. leadership. Several side events focused specifically on China biotech investments and partnerships. One panelist noted that running a Phase 1 clinical trial in China is now roughly 30% cheaper and faster than in the U.S.