Neko Body Scan, futuristic brainchild of Spotify co-founder Daniel Elk, is hoped to revolutionise healthcare In the 2016 movie Passengers, the crew of a spacecraft bound for a distant planet had access to a scanning chamber known as Autodoc that could instantly diagnose their medical problems and even predict the time of their death. I’m reminded of this, and countless other sci-fi plots, as I strip off my robe and step semi-naked into the gleaming capsule of the Neko Body Scan. Like Autodoc, it promises to conduct a comprehensive examination of my health – inside and out – within minutes, and, while unable to estimate the timing of my demise (yet), it can identify whether I’m at imminent or future risk of developing some of the biggest killers and causes of chronic ill health. 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...

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...