A $26.5 million federal bet is putting artificial intelligence in the exam room — with a goal of bringing more medical care to rural America without the price tag of staffing every clinic with specialists.

SRI, a nonprofit research institute with a Princeton, New Jersey-based team on the project, is building an AI-powered system that uses cameras, voice recognition and real-time prompts to guide nurses, nurse practitioners and general clinicians through selected medical procedures.

The pitch: A small clinic — or even a mobile medical van — could offer more treatment close to home, reducing expensive specialist staffing and long road trips to faraway hospitals.

“The biggest cost actually in delivered care is the skilled staff,” Jason Tyan, who leads SRI’s PARADIGM project, said September 14, 2026. Providing a wider range of procedures in rural areas often means hiring a multi-person specialist team or sending patients hours away, he said.

To dig deeper, visit the original article on the Thomson Reuters blog.