Latest news with #academic
Yahoo
13-07-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
3 AI-Driven Medical Device Stocks to Watch in 2025
Globally, generative artificial intelligence (Gen AI) and agentic AI are increasingly being integrated into medical devices, transforming both clinical workflows and patient care. Gen AI is primarily being used for content creation and design optimization within the medical device space. For instance, Gen AI models generate synthetic medical images like magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), computed tomography (CT) and X-rays to train diagnostic tools and augment datasets. NVIDIA NVDA cofounded the Medical Open Network for AI ('MONAI') with the world's leading academic medical centers to establish an inclusive community of AI researchers, developing and exchanging best practices for AI in healthcare imaging across academia and enterprise researchers. Additionally, Gen AI powers real-time clinical documentation tools embedded within diagnostic devices, such as Nuance Communications's Dragon Ambient eXperience ('DAX'). These devices transcribe doctor-patient conversations into structured clinical notes, minimizing administrative burden and enhancing documentation accuracy. Alternatively, agentic AI enables medical devices to act autonomously and make decisions based on real-time data. Agentic AI also supports predictive maintenance in connected medical equipment, such as MRIs and ventilators. This enables fault detection and automated service scheduling, thereby reducing equipment downtime. In the surgical field, AI-guided robotic systems, such as Intuitive Surgical's ISRG da Vinci platform, are integrating agentic AI features to assist with real-time tissue navigation and instrument movement. Here, we have picked three medical devices stocks, namely Boston Scientific Corporation BSX, Johnson & Johnson JNJ and GE HealthCare Technologies Inc. GEHC, which are likely to perform well in 2025, driven by strong AI adoption. Rising Demand for Precision and Personalized Medicine: AI enables medical devices to deliver highly individualized diagnostics and treatments. For instance, AI algorithms can analyze patient-specific imaging data or genetic profiles to guide the design of implants, surgical plans, or therapeutic regimens, improving patient outcomes. Favorable Regulatory Environment: Regulatory oversight for AI in the United States falls under the FDA's Software as a Medical Device (SaMD) segment. Over 700 AI-enabled devices have been approved, which is more than 10 times the number available in 2020. In January, the FDA released a draft guidance on adaptive AI systems, which have reduced uncertainty for developers, encouraging innovation and faster approvals. Boston Scientific is a major manufacturer of interventional medical devices. The company has been investing in AI to support its devices and improve procedural outcomes. It's HeartLogic is a heart failure diagnostic that utilizes AI to detect worsening heart failure in patients with implantable cardioverter-defibrillators (ICDs) and cardiac resynchronization therapy-defibrillators (CRT-Ds). The Rhythm AI module in the Rhythmia HDx mapping system can automatically interpret electroanatomical maps to identify arrhythmia circuits, enabling electrophysiologists to target ablation therapy more effectively. Meanwhile, the company's Coronary Advanced Analysis software uses AI to analyze optical coherence tomography images to characterize plaque. Boston Scientific, carrying a Zacks Rank #2 (Buy) at present, has a projected 2025 sales growth rate of 16.4%, higher than the industry's flat growth. The company has a favorable current cashflow rate of 26.5% against the industry's -2.6%. For 2025, its earnings are expected to grow 15.9%. Boston Scientific Corporation price | Boston Scientific Corporation Quote Johnson & Johnson is a healthcare conglomerate with a major MedTech division (Johnson & Johnson MedTech) focused on medical devices and diagnostics. The company employs AI for surgical robotics, digital surgery analytics and imaging. It has developed an ecosystem called Ottava, its next-gen robotic surgery platform, and the Caresurgical/VELYS digital surgery systems, which use data and AI for procedure planning. Its Polyphonic Digital Ecosystem connects operating rooms, allowing surgeons to share live video and data with remote peers. AI in this system helps identify significant events in the surgery video feed for discussion. Johnson & Johnson, carrying a Zacks Rank #2 at present, has a historical earnings growth rate of 5.5%, higher than the industry's 2.8%. The company has a net margin of 24.4%, outperforming the industry's 18.6%. For 2025, its sales are expected to grow 2.8%. Johnson & Johnson price | Johnson & Johnson Quote GE HealthCare is a global leader in medical imaging, diagnostics and healthcare. AI is central to the company's digital strategy, which focuses on its precision care framework. In 2023, it topped the FDA list of AI-enabled medical devices with 80 listed 510(k) clearances or authorizations to date in the United States. Recently, the company has launched CleaRecon DL — an AI-driven solution that enhances cone-beam computed tomography image quality. Also, its Invenia Automated Breast Ultrasound Premium, the latest 3D ultrasound, offers advanced AI and innovative features to drive faster, reproducible supplemental screening and streamline exam readings on patients with dense breasts. GE HealthCare, carrying a Zacks Rank #3 (Hold) at present, has a projected 2025 sales growth rate of 3.2%, higher than the industry's flat growth. The company has a favorable current cashflow rate of 9.7% against the industry's -2.6%. GE HealthCare Technologies Inc. price | GE HealthCare Technologies Inc. Quote Want the latest recommendations from Zacks Investment Research? Today, you can download 7 Best Stocks for the Next 30 Days. Click to get this free report Boston Scientific Corporation (BSX) : Free Stock Analysis Report Johnson & Johnson (JNJ) : Free Stock Analysis Report Intuitive Surgical, Inc. (ISRG) : Free Stock Analysis Report NVIDIA Corporation (NVDA) : Free Stock Analysis Report GE HealthCare Technologies Inc. (GEHC) : Free Stock Analysis Report This article originally published on Zacks Investment Research ( Zacks Investment Research
Daily Mail
11-07-2025
- Politics
- Daily Mail
Harvard makes biggest concession to Trump yet after he said Ivy League college was anti-conservative
Harvard is scrambling to shake off its woke image with a multimillion-dollar plan to launch a new academic center championing conservative thought - after months of pressure from Donald Trump and the White House. The Ivy League giant is reviving plans for a 'viewpoint diversity' center, modeled on Stanford's Hoover Institution - a hub for free-market ideas and small-government principles, the Wall Street Journal reported. Talks that had been happening behind the scenes picked up speed after pro-Palestinian unrest hit campus in late 2023 and the Trump administration ramped up attacks on what it brands Harvard's 'Marxist' ideology. The Journal reported that Harvard is courting deep-pocketed donors to fund the initiative, which insiders say could carry a price tag of $500 million to $1 billion. A Harvard spokesperson said the center wouldn't take sides politically but would 'model the use of evidence-based, rigorous logic and a willingness to engage with opposing views.' The effort unfolds as Harvard remains locked in a fierce clash with the Trump administration, which has accused the university of allowing antisemitism and enforcing what it calls biased DEI policies. In response, the government has slashed its federal funding, challenged its tax-exempt status, and taken aim at its international student programs. Education Secretary Linda McMahon said this week that talks with Harvard and fellow Ivy League college Columbia are still underway, noting, 'We're getting close... it's just not moving as fast as I'd like.' Some members of the Harvard Corporation view the initiative as a reasonable way to encourage viewpoint diversity while maintaining the university's independence, a person familiar with their thinking to the Journal. But a source close to the Trump administration dismissed it as 'window-dressing.' Harvard President Alan Garber has pushed back against external influence, even as he promotes a broader campaign for 'intellectual vitality' on campus. Internal surveys show growing concerns over self-censorship - and a 2023 poll found only 3 percent of Harvard College faculty identify as conservative, the Journal reported. Former Harvard Business School Dean Nitin Nohria floated the idea to donors back in 2020, according to the Journal - and now Provost John Manning is leading the charge to bring it to life. If the initiative moves ahead, Harvard would be the latest elite school to join a growing wave of universities launching centers dedicated to civics, classical education, and Western political thought - a trend already embraced by Arizona State, the University of Florida, and Yale. 'This is a national reform movement,' Paul Carrese, founding director of one such center at Arizona State, told the Journal.
Associated Press
11-07-2025
- General
- Associated Press
Announcing the 2024 Parrish Law Firm Academic Scholarship Winner, Ma'at Mosley-White
Ma'at Mosley-White is the winner of the Parrish Law Firm's Annual Academic Scholarship MANASSAS, VA / ACCESS Newswire / July 11, 2025 / Ma'at Mosley-White, a political science student at Florida A&M University, has been awarded the Parrish Law Firm's 2024 Academic Scholarship. This annual scholarship recognizes one exceptional student who shows promise and dedication to their Mosley-White Ma'at Mosley-White, winner of the Parrish Law Firm's 2024 Annual Academic Scholarship In addition to excelling academically as a Dean's list scholar, she truly cares about her community. She customizes campus tours for 100+ prospective students and families each week as part of the Office of Campus Visits. She is also a 2025 Orientation Leader with the Office of New Student Orientation and the founding historian of Project C, a student research organization that helps students effect social change through coaching, collaboration, and community building. One of her standout projects was a giveaway that supported young business owners and provided free resources for students. Ma'at's video essay demonstrated the struggles she has faced and her plan for a bright future in the legal field. Ma'at spoke of her difficult upbringing, parents' divorce, and unstable family situation, crediting these experiences as part of the reason she chose law. 'Growing up in a challenging environment, I saw firsthand the impact of [the] lack of representation and the importance of strong advocates in the legal system.' Ma'at plans to use the scholarship to reduce financial stress, allowing her to focus on school, pursue an internship, and take paralegal courses. These will help her 'sharpen the practical skills needed for law school and expose [her] to the day-to-day realities of legal work.' 'More than this', she said, 'this scholarship would serve as a reminder that hard work, resilience, and purpose-driven leadership are seen and supported. It would give me the freedom to continue growing without limitations and bring me one step closer to becoming an attorney who advocates for justice and uplifts underserved communities.' Ma'at hopes to become a civil and family lawyer focused on mental illness, family instability, and systemic injustice-issues she says resonate deeply with her background. She also aims to break barriers in the legal field. Noting that Black women make up just two percent of lawyers, she said, 'While this reality can seem daunting, it only strengthens my passion. This underrepresentation emphasizes the need for more voices like mine and motivates me to work to increase diversity and equity within the legal field.' We are honored to support Ma'at in her goal 'not just to practice law but to serve with purpose-bringing justice, clarity, and compassion to people who often feel voiceless.' About The Parrish Law Firm The Parrish Law Firm is a personal injury firm in Northern Virginia that has been fighting for injured people, protecting them from insurers for over 20 years. Jim Parrish and his team are dedicated to supporting the community through legal help, scholarships, and contributions such as founding a coat drive and an organization that gets kids outdoors. Applications for the 2025 Annual Academic Scholarship are due by November 1, 2025. Contact InformationLuis Fernando Castillon Marketing 571 229 1800 SOURCE: The Parrish Law Firm press release
RNZ News
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- RNZ News
Commonwealth Poet Laureate
This week notable New Zealand poet and academic, Selina Tusitala Marsh has been named as the very first Commonwealth Poet Laureate. The position will involve Marsh crafting original poems for flagship events like the Commonwealth People's Forum and Ministerial and Heads of Government Meetings. It's already turning out to a very big year for Selina, who was awarded the Katherine Mansfield Residency in Menton in the South of France. To embed this content on your own webpage, cut and paste the following: See terms of use.
ABC News
25-06-2025
- Politics
- ABC News
Pluralism in search of a new curriculum: The challenge of religious education in the Middle East and North Africa - ABC Religion & Ethics
Since the 1990s, I've had extensive experience engaging with universities in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) region around the study of religions — especially in Morocco and Jordan, which are both close US allies. In fact, I've just finished a year teaching at the University of Jordan in Amman. Time and again, I have found myself running up against the question of religious pluralism . In my experience, colleagues and students at these universities, all Muslims, were as kind as any people I've encountered. They recognised the human dignity of all. But other religions didn't have a specifically religious value for them — only Islam did. These were open-hearted and generous people, who nonetheless would switch to attack mode when the conversation turned to religion. Now, I am fully aware that people of my own religion — Christianity — can be highly polemical. What has come as a surprise to me was to face such polemicism in the university classroom. How was I supposed to explain what initially appeared to me as a kind of schizophrenia? How disinterest gives rise to theological susceptibility Imagine a country where ignorance of other religions is pervasive, not on fringe websites or from one-eyed pundits, but within state-accredited academic institutions. Imagine a country where university students study other religions only to demonstrate their falsehood. They might be polite to people of other religions — if they were raised to be polite by their families — but would nonetheless be prone to imagine that God is not pleased with those who adhere to 'false' religions. Imagine a country where there isn't a single university scholar with internationally recognised expertise in the study of other religions, or with experience engaging religious communities sympathetically in order to understand their convictions as they themselves understand them. Such is what I've generally found to be the case in MENA universities. I often say to colleagues, 'It's fine to see your religion as the true one, but you still have to be fair. If you want others to study your religion as you understand it — rather than as terrorists who act in the name of Islam do — you have to study the religions of others as they understand them.' I'd go further and say that the goal of studying another religion is to enter into a life-giving relation with its adherents, allowing us all to know new life in the one God. But my MENA colleagues are typically nonplussed. The society is overwhelmingly Muslim, they say. Nobody in our country is actually interested in religious pluralism. It doesn't really make sense for us. (And to be fair to my colleagues, there is no state support for the study of religious pluralism, only slogans and rhetoric — though that doesn't mean it's not a vital issue.) Disinterest is the general outlook, and disinterest makes for theological susceptibility. If you're ignorant of other religions and have been taught that they are a bundle of lies and devotions to false gods — making their adherents enemies of the one God — you will be susceptible to messaging that tags them as a threat. The situation is similar in religious education in the region's state schools. The textbooks may call Muslims to be kind to everyone but leave gaping holes when it comes to positive knowledge of other religions. Others might be disbelievers, and yet you're to be nice to all, as Islam teaches. But then a clash occurs — close to home or on the other side of the world — and it suddenly makes more sense to emphasise the status of others as disbelievers, whose truth is a threat to your own. It's no wonder Christians will rarely send their children to state schools — even in a place like Jordan, which is held up as a model of religious tolerance in the MENA region. How theological susceptibility fuels populism Over the last years, MENA universities have begun to host programs on the study of religions. The language of instruction is English, which, it is felt, is the only way to connect to global religious studies, but such instruction is destined to remain isolated and irrelevant to the religious discourse in Arabic that shapes the region's public life. To be sure, the real MENA-region challenge is the lack of economic development, which has left large swaths of young people unemployed and discontent with the regimes that rule them. But material factors alone don't explain the tensions between religious communities in the region — tensions that sometimes turn into conflicts. A system of education that makes young people theologically susceptible to conflict is also a factor. If your schooling does not allow you to identify specifically religious bonds between your religion and that of others, if it teaches you that your religion and others have nothing in common, as I've said, you'll be susceptible to messaging that tags them as a threat. That's populism in the MENA region. You are made to feel that your religious community — Sunni, Shi'i, Christian, Jewish, Druze — is at risk. In good times, cordial relations prevail. Communities may even intermarry. But when things fall apart in society, the crisis is read through the lens of theological susceptibility. Shi'a with their Iranian backers are the threat. Sunnis with their Saudi backers are the threat. Christians with their Western backers are the threat. Jews with their American backers are the threat. Druze with their Israeli backers are the threat. Theological susceptibility, a mere idea, thereby turns into social reality. The possibility of religious synergy With no vision for the academic study of religious pluralism and no positive knowledge of other religions in schools, what is to immunise against such susceptibility? What if your religious education taught you to view other religions, despite differences, as essentially related to yours — and that their peoples are also guided by God? The question is doubtless challenging. It breathes relativism. If other peoples are guided by God through — and not despite — their religions, which religion is the true one? I'm sympathetic to the question. The idea of religion as a source of guidance has largely been tabled in the Western study of religions. It's generally taught as a social phenomenon. As a result, religion is frequently treated as little more than a curiosity. But that's not the whole story. Religion guides people in powerful ways (as does atheism). The commitment of MENA-region schooling to the idea of religion as a set of compelling truths is a helpful corrective to the Western approach. But can we see those compelling truths as shared in some measure — as uniting rather than dividing? The powerful nature of public religion on the global stage is not going away, raising the prospect of endless sectarianism — but it also opens up new horizons of meaning. A common future requires us to see the religious synergy. You can regard your religion as the true one, I suggest to colleagues and students here in Amman, and still recognise that other peoples are guided by the one God. After all, it doesn't make theological sense to say that divine guidance is somehow bound to human categories. Students especially warm to the idea. They're quick to point out the falsehoods in other religions, as they've been taught, but they're also receptive to non-polemical explanations. A student came to my office last autumn and was relieved to hear that Christians and Hindus both have a sense of divine oneness, despite what he had learned. He still believes Islam is the one true religion, but he discovered that he doesn't have to hate other religions because — as he had been taught — they're not monotheistic. Hatred is self-destructive. Freedom from it is relieving. Despite widespread institutional disinterest, a rising generation is eager to reconsider religious pluralism. The MENA region can become a leader in the global study of religions — doing so innovatively, beyond Western world-religions approaches that are based on claims to objectivity now seen as naïve. Innovation is needed in all fields, not just in technology, but for the welfare of humanity. Educational institutions in the MENA region are well positioned to develop programs that take divine guidance seriously as a reality all peoples seek. There's no silver bullet when it comes to the study of religious pluralism. The current approach in Western institutions is certainly not the solution, nor is the one in MENA-region institutions. The way forward requires a great deal of patient dialogue across cultures. But we urgently need a way forward that takes people's religious convictions seriously as a source of knowledge, rather than a mere curiosity with no truth value, as in Western institutions, but that also sees them as they truly are, as deeply aligned across religious traditions — points of mutual discovery and mutual inspiration rather than mutual fear. Paul L. Heck is Professor of Theology and Islamic Studies at Georgetown University. His most recent books are Skepticism in Classical Islam: Moments of Confusion and Political Theology and Islam: From the Birth of Empire to the Modern State.
