What changed

Medicare pays teaching hospitals for a capped number of full-time equivalent (FTE) residents. The AAMC notes that this cap dates back to the Balanced Budget Act of 1997. Section 126 added 1,000 new FTE cap slots, phased in at no more than 200 per year beginning in fiscal year 2023. With Round 5 posted, all five rounds are now out.

• Size of this round: 200 FTE slots for 99 hospitals in 31 states, according to the AAMC.
• Specialty mix: the AAMC reports that CMS estimates about 42% of the new positions will go to primary care and psychiatry programs. This is an estimate, not a final count by specialty.
• Start date: the CMS Section 126 FAQ says slots awarded in this round take effect July 1, 2027.
• Permanent funding: CMS states that all cap slots awarded through Section 126 are permanent.
• Limits: no single hospital can receive more than 25 Section 126 slots in total.

To qualify, a hospital had to fit at least one of four groups: rural (or treated as rural), already training more residents than its Medicare cap, located in a state with a new medical school or branch campus, or serving a geographic Health Professional Shortage Area (HPSA). CMS ranked applications by HPSA score, so hospitals serving areas with the greatest shortages were funded first. CMS also says the law's requirement that each of the four groups receive at least 10% of the slots has now been met.

Section 126 is separate from Section 4122 of the Consolidated Appropriations Act, 2023, which added another 200 slots beginning in fiscal year 2026, at least half of them for psychiatry. CMS posted those results on December 18, 2025.

Why it matters for students and residents

Every residency position needs funding, and Medicare is a major source of GME support. Permanent new slots at hospitals in rural and shortage areas can, over time, mean more training positions in places that have struggled to grow programs. For international medical graduates and U.S. students applying broadly, these are often the community and rural programs already on their lists.

Two points keep expectations realistic. First, 200 slots is small next to a Main Residency Match that offers tens of thousands of positions each year. Second, a cap slot is funding, not automatically a new seat. One of the four eligible groups is hospitals already training residents above their cap, so some awards may pay for residents a hospital already trains rather than add new positions. Programs that do want to grow usually also need accreditor approval for a larger resident complement before they can add seats.

The AAMC projects a shortfall of up to 86,000 physicians by 2036. Its president and CEO, David J. Skorton, MD, said "our country remains in desperate need of additional, permanent residency positions." The AAMC is urging Congress to pass the Resident Physician Shortage Reduction Act of 2025 (H.R. 4731 / S. 2439).

What to do now

• Applicants in the 2027 Match: the July 1, 2027 effective date lines up with the start of the next residency year, but do not assume a program has more positions. Check each program's website and its listing in the NRMP system for its current number of positions. Our residency process guide walks through building a balanced list.
• Students planning ahead: awards were ranked by HPSA score, so programs in rural and shortage areas are worth a closer look. CMS estimates about 42% of these positions will go to primary care and psychiatry.
• Residents: if your hospital received slots, ask your program leadership how they plan to use them. New funding can affect program size over the next few years.
• GME leaders: CMS posted the full award list as a ZIP file on its DGME page. Confirm your hospital's award and plan with your finance and cost report teams before July 1, 2027. MedRise supports hospitals and GME offices with recruitment and IMG onboarding.

What we don't know yet

CMS has not published a specialty-by-specialty count in the sources we reviewed, so the 42% figure for primary care and psychiatry is an estimate. It is also not yet clear how many of the 200 slots will create new training positions versus fund residents already in place, or whether lawmakers will create more slots now that Section 126 is fully distributed.

Want help planning your next application cycle? See our support for medical students and residents.

Sources: CMS, Direct Graduate Medical Education (DGME), Section 126 and Section 4122 (Round 5 posted Nov. 9, 2026); CMS, Frequently Asked Questions: Section 126; AAMC, CMS Announces Distribution of Last Medicare-Supported GME Residency Positions (Nov. 10, 2026); AHA News, CMS allocates 200 Medicare-funded residency slots to 99 teaching hospitals (Nov. 10, 2026); AAMC, Applications Open for Final Round of Section 126 Residency Distributions (Jan. 9, 2026).

MedRise Medical News summarizes public announcements and research for education only. It is not medical, legal or immigration advice.

What the study will test

GB-PRIME is a feasibility study of the safety and early functionality of Neuralink's N1 Implant, run at University College London Hospitals, the lead site, and Newcastle upon Tyne Hospitals (UCLH). It plans to enroll up to seven people with severe neurological conditions, such as spinal cord injury or motor neurone disease, that make it hard to use digital devices (BiopharmaTrend).

Eligible participants have tetraplegia or tetraparesis, meaning paralysis or weakness in the arms and legs. The implant is designed to let them control computers or smartphones with their thoughts. UCLH says the study will not, at this stage, include controlling a robotic arm.

The N1 records brain signals through more than 1,000 electrodes spread across threads finer than a human hair, which Neuralink's R1 surgical robot places within microns of target neurons (UCL).

The funding and the road here

Two months earlier, on June 2, 2025, Neuralink closed a $650 million Series E round (TechCrunch). Semafor reported that it valued the company at $9 billion before the new money, and the round brought total funding to about $1.2 billion (pharmaphorum).

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration initially rejected Neuralink's request for human trials in 2022, citing safety concerns; after further testing it allowed the U.S. PRIME study, and the first person received an implant in January 2024 (eWeek). GB-PRIME builds on that U.S. study.

Why it matters for medicine

Brain-computer interfaces could restore some independence to people who cannot move their arms, but the big questions remain open: how long implants keep working, how safely they can be removed or replaced, and who owns and protects the neural data they record. Early feasibility studies like GB-PRIME are designed to answer safety questions first, with small numbers of participants, before any larger trial.

For students, BCIs sit at the meeting point of neurology, neurosurgery, rehabilitation medicine and engineering, and they raise ethics questions that are likely to show up in interviews and journal clubs.

Related: Google's MedGemma chest X-ray models and NVIDIA's push into medicine.

This article is news and education, not medical or legal advice.

By MedRise News Staff

At the AI4 conference, Ryan Wang—co-founder and general partner of Outpost Capital and managing partner at Solaris Venture Partners—unveiled a deep dive into Spatial AI, calling it “the new frontier where AI meets 3D.” His session, “Spatial AI: A New Frontier – The Industry Landscape & Investment Thesis,” mapped out a rapidly emerging sector poised to transform robotics, gaming, and immersive computing.

What is Spatial AI?

Spatial AI sits at the intersection of artificial intelligence and 3D spatial computing. Unlike traditional AI systems that process 2D data, Spatial AI is designed to natively understand and interact with three-dimensional environments.

According to Wang, Spatial AI takes 3D data as its default input, produces 3D output without translation into 2D or text, and applies spatial reasoning to interpret real-world space and relationships—similar to how humans process their surroundings.

The First Industry Map for Spatial AI

In a landmark reveal, Wang presented what he called the world’s first industry map for Spatial AI, categorizing companies into sectors such as:

• Interactions & Manipulation – Robotic perception, control, and brain-computer interfaces.

• Media & Entertainment – Animation, virtual beings, co-presence, and immersive games.

• Developer Tools – AI assistants, game engines, and AR/VR spatial interfaces.

• Foundational 3D Models – Generative 3D, world simulations, and foundational AI labs.

• Data & Simulation – Synthetic data and digital twins fueling AI training.

Notable players span from NVIDIA, Apple, Google, and Meta to startups working on brain-computer interfaces, generative 3D asset creation, and real-time spatial sensing.

Ecosystem Enablers

Wang outlined three critical enablers driving this sector’s growth:

1. Infrastructure – High-performance compute for large-scale spatial simulations, with NVIDIA’s Omniverse platform leading the charge.

2. Big Tech – Meta and xAI investing heavily into spatial computing foundations.

3. Enterprise Data – A surge in synthetic spatial data enabling richer AI training environments.

These elements feed into the “Spatial AI Engine,” an interconnected ecosystem that depends on advancements across hardware, software, and simulation.

Why It Matters

Spatial AI has implications far beyond gaming or robotics—it could redefine how machines perceive, navigate, and collaborate in the physical world. From autonomous drones to industrial digital twins, the ability for AI to natively understand and operate in 3D space unlocks possibilities in manufacturing, logistics, telepresence, and healthcare simulation.

The investment landscape is heating up, and those who position themselves early in Spatial AI’s infrastructure and tooling could shape the foundations of a trillion-dollar industry.

The designation is meant to speed development and review when early data suggest a drug may substantially improve on available therapy. For families of the roughly 13% of Duchenne patients with exon 51-amenable mutations, it put a new option on a faster track.

What the designation was based on

The designation rested on the Phase 1/2 DELIVER trial, where patients showed sustained functional improvements such as faster time to rise and improved walking speed over 18 months, according to Parent Project MD. It brings extra FDA guidance and eligibility for rolling and priority review, CureDuchenne noted.

It was the company's second breakthrough designation of the year. Its myotonic dystrophy type 1 drug, DYNE-101, had received one earlier in 2025, Dyne said.

How the drug works

DYNE-251 links a phosphorodiamidate morpholino oligomer, the same class of molecule used in existing exon-skipping drugs, to an antibody fragment that binds the transferrin receptor 1 on muscle cells. The goal is to get more of the drug into muscle so cells can make near full-length dystrophin.

Update, November 2026: an FDA decision is due in January

• The drug was renamed zeleciment rostudirsen (z-rostudirsen).
• Japan's health ministry granted it orphan drug designation on September 29, 2025, Dyne announced.
• Dyne submitted a Biologics License Application on May 26, 2026, seeking accelerated approval based on dystrophin as a surrogate endpoint, with a proposed dose of 20 mg/kg given intravenously every 4 weeks.
• The FDA accepted the application with Priority Review and set a target action date of January 21, 2027, Dyne announced on July 20, 2026.
• A confirmatory Phase 3 trial is under way, as accelerated approval requires.

Why it matters for students and residents

Duchenne is a staple of pediatrics, neurology and board exams. Accelerated approval on a surrogate endpoint such as dystrophin is a recurring debate: the drug reaches patients sooner, but clinical benefit must still be confirmed. Expect that tension to come up on rounds. More in MedRise Medical News and our Shelf Prep guides.

January 21, 2027 is the date to watch for families, clinicians and the trainees who will care for these patients.

MedRise Medical News summarizes public announcements and research for education only. It is not medical, legal or immigration advice.

The detail that matters for hospitals: Joby becomes Strata's preferred partner for electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft wherever Joby operates, putting organ transport on the list of early uses for electric air taxis.

The deal

• Joby pays up to $125 million in cash or stock for Blade's passenger business, which flew more than 50,000 passengers in 2024 from 12 urban terminals, including JFK and Newark.
• Blade's medical division was excluded and was renamed Strata Critical Medical, Air Med & Rescue reported.
• Blade founder Rob Wiesenthal leads Blade as a Joby subsidiary and serves as non-executive chairman of Strata, Axios reported.
• Blade's chief financial officer, William Heyburn, and president, Melissa Tomkiel, became co-CEOs of Strata, according to Axios.
• Joby said Blade's passenger flights would continue as normal, and that it planned to carry its first passengers in Dubai in 2026.

Electric air taxis like Joby's take off and land vertically like helicopters but run on batteries. Joby's plan is to move Blade's existing customers gradually from conventional helicopters to its own aircraft, using Blade's terminals instead of building its own.

Why organ transport is a test case

Donor organs are flown under tight time limits, and transplant teams already rely on helicopters and planes to move them. A June 2025 federal executive order also called for eVTOL pilot projects that include medical response, Axios reported. Whether electric aircraft improve transplant logistics in practice has yet to be shown. Range, weather limits, landing sites at hospitals and certification by aviation regulators will all decide how quickly these aircraft can carry anything as critical as a donor heart or kidney.

What it means for students and residents

• Transplant logistics are clinical. Ischemic time affects outcomes, so how organs move is part of transplant medicine.
• Watch for evidence, not announcements. The question is whether eVTOL flights shorten transport times and improve graft outcomes in real programs. More in MedRise Medical News; meet transplant and aerospace physicians at events on our conference list.

The aircraft are coming. The data on patient benefit will take longer.

MedRise Medical News summarizes public announcements and research for education only. It is not medical, legal or immigration advice.

The September 2025 announcement

On September 25, 2025, the President announced on social media a 100% tariff on branded or patented drugs starting October 1, unless the manufacturer was building a U.S. plant (Foley Hoag). That tariff was not put into effect at the time; the administration instead negotiated company-by-company deals on pricing and U.S. manufacturing (Ropes & Gray).

The April 2026 Section 232 proclamation

On April 2, 2026, after a national-security investigation the Commerce Department opened in April 2025, the President signed a proclamation imposing 100% tariffs on patented pharmaceuticals and their key ingredients. They took effect July 31, 2026, for 17 large drugmakers named in the proclamation, most of which were exempt because of agreements with the administration (Arnold & Porter).

• Not covered: generic drugs and biosimilars, and U.S.-made products (Covington).
• Exempt: companies with "most favored nation" drug-pricing deals, or negotiating them, through January 20, 2029 (EY).
• Since September 29, 2026: the tariffs apply to branded drugmakers beyond the first 17, though exemptions, trade-deal rates and pricing deals still decide who pays and how much (Managed Healthcare Executive).

What it means for patients and hospitals

Because generics are excluded, the direct effect falls on imported brand-name drugs whose makers lack an exemption. A benefits consultant quoted by Managed Healthcare Executive did not expect a cost impact for the 2026–27 plan year, but open questions, such as how ingredients and biosimilars are treated, could change costs later.

What to watch

The proclamation lets the President revise rates or the list of covered products depending on negotiations with trading partners, and a joint status report on those talks was due by July 1, 2026 (Thompson Hine). Expect the rules to keep changing.

For residents and students, the practical effects show up in formularies, prior authorizations and the price of brand-name drugs without a generic. It is worth knowing which of your patients' medicines are imported brand-name products.

Related: White House presses 17 drugmakers on Medicaid prices and CMS awards the final Section 126 residency slots.

This article is news and education, not medical or legal advice.

Two months earlier, HHS had announced a restructuring to cut its workforce from about 82,000 to 62,000 and fold five agencies into a new Administration for a Healthy America. Together, the two moves reshape the prevention, nutrition and primary care programs that trainees work alongside.

An assessment of causes, not yet a rulebook

The May report, formally the Make Our Children Healthy Again Assessment, diagnosed problems rather than setting rules. It gave the commission 82 days to produce a strategy. That strategy arrived on September 9, 2025, with what HHS called more than 120 initiatives.

The assessment drew criticism over its sourcing. Days after release, the news site NOTUS found that seven of the more than 500 studies it cited did not appear to have been published, and the White House said the report would be updated, NPR reported.

The reorganization: 28 divisions down to 15

According to the HHS fact sheet published March 27, 2025:

• Full-time staff would fall from about 82,000 to 62,000. NPR reported that about 10,000 of the cuts would come through layoffs, with the rest from early retirements and buyouts.
• HHS would shrink from 28 divisions to 15 and from 10 regional offices to 5.
• The Administration for a Healthy America would combine the Office of the Assistant Secretary for Health, HRSA, SAMHSA, ATSDR and NIOSH.
• Its planned divisions cover primary care, maternal and child health, mental health, environmental health, HIV/AIDS and the health workforce.

Why it matters if you are in training

• Workforce programs are inside the merger. HRSA runs programs many trainees rely on, such as the National Health Service Corps. Check each program's official page for current rules before you apply.
• The four drivers are now federal talking points. Expect patients and families to ask about ultra-processed food, screen time and medication use, and be ready to explain what the evidence does and does not show.
• Check the primary study. The citation errors are a reminder that any report, including a government one, is only as strong as its sources.

What to watch

How the strategy's initiatives become agency rules, and how programs from HRSA and SAMHSA are organized under the new structure. We cover policy that affects trainees in MedRise Medical News; see also our guides for students and residents.

The report set the agenda. The reorganization decides who carries it out.

Sources: HHS, May 22, 2025; HHS, September 9, 2025; HHS restructuring fact sheet; NPR, May 29, 2025; NPR, March 27, 2025.

MedRise Medical News summarizes public announcements and research for education only. It is not medical, legal or immigration advice.

A day earlier, HHS relaunched HealthData.gov with more than three times as many public datasets. One story is about what medicines cost. The other is about the data anyone can now use to study it.

Four demands and a deadline

The letters asked each company to:

1. Extend most-favored-nation pricing to Medicaid.
2. Commit to those prices on newly launched drugs for Medicare, Medicaid and commercial payers.
3. Negotiate harder with other countries and return the extra revenue to lower U.S. prices.
4. Sell directly to patients or businesses at most-favored-nation prices.

The recipients were AbbVie, Amgen, AstraZeneca, Boehringer Ingelheim, Bristol Myers Squibb, Eli Lilly, EMD Serono, Genentech, Gilead, GSK, Johnson & Johnson, Merck, Novartis, Novo Nordisk, Pfizer, Regeneron and Sanofi, BioPharm International reported. The letters warned the administration would use “every tool in our arsenal” if companies did not act.

How the industry and markets reacted

The S&P 500 Pharmaceuticals Index fell 2.7% that day, Bloomberg reported. PhRMA spokesman Alex Schriver said, “Importing foreign price controls would undermine American leadership.”

What happened next

The White House has since announced pricing agreements with drugmakers, including nine more in August 2026, and launched TrumpRx.gov on February 5, 2026, according to a White House fact sheet.

HealthData.gov: from about 3,000 datasets to more than 10,000

On July 30, 2025, HHS announced that HealthData.gov had grown from about 3,000 datasets in January 2025 to more than 10,000. It published version 1.0 of an HHS Open Data Plan, a Metadata Standard and a Data Inventory, and added search tools, APIs and dashboards. HHS Chief Data Officer Dr. Kristen Honey called open data the “foundation for radical transparency, innovation, accountability, and public trust.”

Why it matters for students and residents

• Medicaid patients feel drug prices first. Cost shapes which prescriptions get filled. Ask about coverage before you choose between equivalent drugs.
• Free data for your research. HealthData.gov is a starting point for quality improvement and research projects. Our research course walks through the basics.

Prices are being negotiated in letters and deals. The data to judge the results is public. More in MedRise Medical News.

Sources: Manatt; BioPharm International; Bloomberg via SupplyChainBrain; White House, August 2026; HHS, July 30, 2025.

MedRise Medical News summarizes public announcements and research for education only. It is not medical, legal or immigration advice.

The target is familiar to anyone who has admitted a patient: the paper intake form and the records that do not follow patients between systems. The companies promised results by the first quarter of 2026.

What the companies signed up for

According to CMS:

• 21 networks pledged to meet the CMS Interoperability Framework criteria and become CMS Aligned Networks.
• 11 health systems or providers committed to participate and support patient use.
• 7 EHR vendors committed to help exchange data and “kill the clipboard.”
• 30 companies pledged apps for diabetes and obesity management, conversational AI assistants for symptoms, navigation and scheduling, and digital check-in to replace paper forms.
• CMS plans a Medicare.gov library of vetted digital health tools.

The initiative grew out of a May 2025 request for information in which CMS asked the public how to modernize the country's digital health system, Reed Smith noted. CMS also said it could share Medicare claims data through aligned networks as early as the first quarter of 2026.

Voluntary, not a mandate

CMS describes the framework's criteria as voluntary. Patients would reach their records through aligned networks using a digital identity, rather than separate accounts and passwords for each portal. CMS Administrator Dr. Mehmet Oz said, “We have the tools and information available now to empower patients to improve their outcomes.”

Not everyone was reassured. FedScoop reported that some analysts warned health information could be put at risk as more apps gain access to records.

What has happened since

CMS has since launched the first wave of Health Tech Ecosystem tools, The HIPAA Journal reported. Which tools reach your hospital depends on its EHR vendor and network.

Why it matters for students and residents

• Histories may arrive pre-filled. A medication list pulled from a patient's app still needs reconciliation. Verify it rather than copying it forward.
• AI may see the patient first. Symptom checkers and scheduling assistants will shape what patients expect from the visit.
• Privacy is part of the job. Know your institution's rules on patient-shared data. See our resources for residents and other Medical News.

The clipboard is not dead yet. But the companies that build most of your daily software have now promised, on the record, to try.

Sources: CMS, July 30, 2025; FedScoop; The HIPAA Journal.

MedRise Medical News summarizes public announcements and research for education only. It is not medical, legal or immigration advice.

The models are free to download and adapt. That matters because hospitals and researchers can run them on their own systems instead of sending patient data to an outside service.

What Google released

• MedGemma 27B Multimodal, which adds image and long-term health record interpretation to the earlier 4B multimodal and 27B text-only models.
• MedSigLIP, a 400-million-parameter image encoder that links medical images and text for classification and search.
• All are part of Google's Health AI Developer Foundations, a set of open models meant as starting points for developers.

How well does it work?

In an unblinded review, a US board-certified radiologist judged 81% of chest X-ray reports from MedGemma 4B accurate enough to lead to similar patient management as the original radiologist reports. MedGemma 4B scored 64.4% on the MedQA exam benchmark, among the best small open models, Google said. DeepHealth in Massachusetts has been exploring MedSigLIP for chest X-ray triage and nodule detection.

Google also said the larger MedGemma 27B models are competitive with much bigger models on several benchmarks, including retrieving and interpreting information from electronic health records. The announcement, by Google Research's Daniel Golden and Rory Pilgrim, points readers to a technical report with the full evaluation.

The catch

81% also means about one in five reports would not have led to similar management. The review was unblinded and done by one radiologist. Google offers these models as developer starting points, so any hospital tool built on them needs its own validation before it touches patient care.

What it means for students and residents

• AI drafts, you sign. If a draft report is wrong one time in five, the person who reads it carefully is the safety net.
• Ask how a tool was tested. Who judged it, on which patients, and was the review blinded? Our guide to AI in medicine lists the questions to ask.
• Open models lower the barrier to research. A student project can now start from a medical model instead of a general one. More in MedRise Medical News.

The models are free. Checking their work is still the clinician's job.

MedRise Medical News summarizes public announcements and research for education only. It is not medical, legal or immigration advice.

The drug was not treating malaria. Ivermectin kills mosquitoes that bite people who have taken it, so the idea is to cut transmission across a whole village, including in places where mosquitoes resist the insecticides on bed nets.

What the trial did

• Where: Kwale County on the coast of Kenya, where malaria is highly endemic and bed net use is high.
• Who: 84 clusters with 28,932 eligible participants, randomized 1:1.
• What: ivermectin 400 µg/kg, or albendazole 400 mg as an active control, once a month for 3 months at the start of the short rains.
• Measured: malaria infection in children 5 to 15 years old, tested monthly for 6 months.

The trial had two primary outcomes, malaria infection in children and adverse events in all eligible participants, analyzed by intention to treat. It was funded by Unitaid and led by Carlos Chaccour of ISGlobal in Barcelona with the Kenya Medical Research Institute.

The result: 2.20 versus 2.66 infections per child-year

Infection incidence was 2.20 per child-year at risk with ivermectin and 2.66 with albendazole, an adjusted incidence rate ratio of 0.74 (95% CI 0.58 to 0.95). Serious adverse events did not differ significantly between groups, and the authors identified no safety concerns.

Why a new tool is needed

The World malaria report 2024 estimated 263 million cases and 597,000 deaths in 2023, about 11 million more cases than in 2022. The trial's authors cite insecticide resistance and changes in mosquito behavior as threats to current control methods.

What it means for students and residents

• Know the mechanism. This is vector control: protecting a community by killing mosquitoes, not curing an infected patient. Malaria treatment remains artemisinin-based therapy.
• Read beyond the headline. The effect was measured in one region, over one season, against an active control. Questions about other settings, resistance and cost remain open.
• Expect patient questions. Ivermectin's history makes it a lightning rod. Be ready to explain exactly what this trial did and did not show. More in MedRise Medical News; sharpen your appraisal skills with MedRise Viva.

An old deworming drug may get a new job, but only as one tool among several.

MedRise Medical News summarizes public announcements and research for education only. It is not medical, legal or immigration advice.