Users say harmful content from accounts they do not follow appears even after
requests to block it
Debbie was scrolling through X in April when some unwelcome posts appeared on
her feed. One showed a photo of someone who was visibly underweight asking
whether they were thin enough. In another, a user wanted to compare how few
calories they were eating each day.
Debbie, who did not want to give her last name, is 37 years old and was first
diagnosed with bulimia when she was 16. She did not follow either of the
accounts behind the posts, which belonged to a group with more than 150,000
members on the social media site.
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Tag - Health
Brain implants to treat epilepsy, arthritis, or even incontinence? They may be closer than you think
Startups around the world are engaging in clinical trials in a sector that could
change lives – and be worth more than £15bn by the 2030s
Oran Knowlson, a British teenager with a severe type of epilepsy called
Lennox-Gastaut syndrome, became the first person in the world to trial a new
brain implant last October, with phenomenal results – his daytime seizures were
reduced by 80%.
“It’s had a huge impact on his life and has prevented him from having the falls
and injuring himself that he was having before,” says Martin Tisdall, a
consultant paediatric neurosurgeon at Great Ormond Street Hospital (Gosh) in
London, who implanted the device. “His mother was talking about how he’s had
such a improvement in his quality of life, but also in his cognition: he’s more
alert and more engaged.”
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GMB union urges Health and Safety Executive to investigate ‘shocking’ figures
revealed by the Observer
Ambulances have been called out to Amazon warehouses more than 1,400 times in
the past five years, the Observer can reveal. The figures, which were described
as shocking by the GMB trade union, raise fresh questions about safety at the
American giant’s UK workplaces.
Amazon centres in Dunfermline and Bristol had the most ambulance callouts in
Britain, listing 161 and 125 across the period respectively.
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It helps to think local
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Science secretary backs five quantum technology hubs in push for UK to transform
healthcare and industry
Britain’s plans to create advanced devices based on the mind-bending physics of
the quantum world have received a £100m boost, in a move ministers hope will
have a transformative impact on healthcare, transport and national security.
Peter Kyle, the science secretary has announced funds to establish five quantum
technology hubs across England and Scotland. They will work with industry and
government to develop and commercialise devices and ultimately drive a new
economy.
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‘C the Signs’ artificial intelligence program scans medical records to increase
likelihood of spotting cancers
Artificial intelligence that scans GP records to find hidden patterns has helped
doctors detect significantly more cancer cases.
The rate of cancer detection rose from 58.7% to 66.0% at GP practices using the
“C the Signs” AI tool. This analyses a patient’s medical record to pull together
their past medical history, test results, prescriptions and treatments, as well
as other personal characteristics that might indicate cancer risk, such as their
postcode, age and family history.
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Artificial intelligence is heralded as helping the NHS fight cancer. But some
warn it’s ‘bionic duckweed’ that distracts from present-day challenges
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What if AI isn’t that great? What if we’ve been overstating its potential to a
frankly dangerous degree? That’s the concern of leading cancer experts in the
NHS, who warn that the health service is obsessing over new tech to the point
that it’s putting patient safety at risk. From our story yesterday:
In a sharply worded warning, the cancer experts say that ‘novel solutions’ such
as new diagnostic tests have been wrongly hyped as ‘magic bullets’ for the
cancer crisis, but ‘none address the fundamental issues of cancer as a systems
problem’.
A ‘common fallacy’ of NHS leaders is the assumption that new technologies can
reverse inequalities, the authors add. The reality is that tools such as AI can
create ‘additional barriers for those with poor digital or health literacy’.
AI is a workflow tool, but actually, is it going to improve survival? Well,
we’ve got limited evidence of that so far. Yes, it’s something that could
potentially help the workforce, but you still need people to take a patient’s
history, to take blood, to do surgery, to break bad news.
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application of science and technology.
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Beset by the doctors’ strike, the prime minister swelters under the glare of a
shining Keir Starmer
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