Healthcare and Big Pharma leaders convened this week at the J.P. Morgan Healthcare Conference—here are 5 key developments to know now that the event has wrapped.

1. OpenEvidence develops subspecialty AI models to boost precision for doctors

What happened: OpenEvidence founder Daniel Nadler discussed his company’s goal of developing“medical super-intelligence.” That means building OpenEvidence’s AI platform on top of AI specialty models like oncology or neurology to broaden its use to a greater number of clinicians, per STAT.

Why it matters: OpenEvidence’s AI search tool handled 18 million physician queries in December 2025, up from 2.6 million about a year earlier. The platform has become a leading clinical support tool due to licenses with top medical journals for sourcing answers. Focused subspecialty AI could give clinicians more precise outputs since models would be trained only on literature relevant to each specialty.

2. Eli Lilly taps NVIDIA’s AI muscle to speed up drug development

What happened: Eli Lilly and NVIDIA will jointly invest up to $1 billion in an AI innovation lab, chiefly designed to accelerate the use of AI for drug discovery. Lilly’s scientists will work with NVIDIA’s AI engineers to analyze large amounts of data and create advanced AI tools that help develop new medicines faster.

Why it matters: The new collaboration builds on an earlier Lilly–NVIDIA effort to create a pharma “supercomputer” that lets scientists train AI models on millions of experiments to identify potential drug candidates. Lilly’s partnership with NVIDIA underscores the drugmaker’s commitment to investing in AI for drug discovery, and will likely drive other Big Pharma to forge more tie-ups with tech firms to tap their AI expertise and speed up the identification, development, and delivery of new drugs.

3. Pharma’s top leaders are frustrated by vaccine backlash from US health officials

What happened: Big Pharma CEOs expressed frustration with the Trump administration’s recent efforts to scale back recommendations for some established vaccines, per Bloomberg. Pfizer CEO Albert Bourla called the administration’s anti-vaccine agenda “political” and lacking “scientific merit,” while Sanofi CEO Paul Hudson noted that other than presenting evidence on vaccine efficacy and safety, “there’s really very little else we can do.”

Why it matters: Pharma is running out of patience with federal health agencies’ efforts to undermine its products, especially vaccines. Drugmaker CEOs might feel hamstrung, but the industry will need to continue working with medical groups and pharmacists to ensure vaccine misinformation is countered with evidence-based science.

4. GoodRx teams with Surescripts to show drug prices via text

What happened: GoodRx and e-prescribing network Surescripts are launching a product that shows patients the cost of their medication when their provider sends an electronic prescription through Surescripts’ network. Consumers can see the information via a text message, which will include the insurance copay price, the GoodRx discounted cash price, as well as other available savings programs.

Why it matters: Consumers are commonly surprised by the cost of their medication upon arriving at the pharmacy counter. Knowing the cost upfront—and seeing savings options when insurance falls short—could reduce prescription abandonment and improve adherence. It could also steer more users to GoodRx, whose Rx coupons are often cheaper than insured prices.

5. Novo Nordisk agrees big pharma lagged on GLP-1 price sensitivity

What happened: Novo Nordisk CEO Mike Doustdar said sellers of compounded weight loss drugs had a better grasp on consumer price sensitivity than pharma companies, which drove many patients to the lower-cost copycat GLP-1s, per Reuters.

Why it matters: Competition from compounded weight loss drugs finally pushed Novo Nordisk and Eli Lilly to lower GLP-1 prices for cash-pay patients. Compounded GLP-1s remain marginally cheaper than the brand-name versions, but a shrinking price gap and lower-cost pills from Novo and Lilly will weaken the case for unapproved alternatives.

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