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. Continue reading...

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.” Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

It helps to think local * See more of Fiona Katauskas’s cartoons here Continue reading...

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. Continue reading...

‘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. Continue reading...

Artificial intelligence is heralded as helping the NHS fight cancer. But some warn it’s ‘bionic duckweed’ that distracts from present-day challenges • Don’t get TechScape delivered to your inbox? Sign up for the full article here 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. Become the centre for digital expertise and delivery in government, improving how the government and public services interact with citizens. We will act as a leader and partner across government, with industry and the research communities, to boost Britain’s economic performance and power-up our public services to improve the lives and life chances of people through the application of science and technology. Continue reading...

Beset by the doctors’ strike, the prime minister swelters under the glare of a shining Keir Starmer Continue reading...

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